The Gerken Residence occupies 6,000 interior square feet and 1,500 square feet of roof garden on the 13th and 14th floors of a historic Tribeca building. Completed in 2016, the renovation included a complete interior gut as well as major structural alterations to achieve the architectural proposal, which explores shifting relationships of solid and void through the interplay of three nested prisms. At the entrance to the loft, a massive courtyard cut opens to the sky and city. This initial void is subsequently revealed to be bounded by a larger cut through the 14th floor, allowing the courtyard to be read as a floating glass volume, bridging the east and west sides of the plan and opening the section between floors. The larger cut also exposes the existing building core as a monolithic mass that grounds the choreography of void and solid around it. This core is clad in custom pulled plaster panels, a technique developed through the controlled collision of a centuries-old fabrication technique with contemporary digital design language. The project is formally restrained but spatially provocative through the improbability of the empty courtyard positioned as a positive mass of air and landscape within the loft.
