Bringing Daylight into a Narrow House

How do you bring the most daylight into a narrow house? Over years of working on these types of sites, we’ve developed an approach we love: wherever possible, we remove the entire ceiling of the stair hall and turn it into glass. This transforms the center of the house into a volume of daylight that becomes the circulation core, with light flowing into the rooms around it and down to the floors below. We carefully specify the glass to soften the light itself, using interlayers that reduce glare and the appearance of dirt over time, and to manage heat gain without sacrificing light.

This townhouse, a two-family building in Bushwick, Brooklyn, will be defined by striking materials mixing historic, new, and construction-inspired details. Look for more updates as it takes shape and approaches completion later this year.