NYCxDesign: On Craft, History, and Practice in Brooklyn
During NYCxDesign, Emily Abruzzo joined architects Bretaigne Walliser and Brent Buck for a conversation about what it means to practice in Brooklyn — and what the borough continues to demand of designers and firms that work here. The talk was introduced and moderated by Architectural Record’s Mangaing Editor, Leopoldo Villardi.
Abruzzo Bodziak Architects began in Brooklyn in 2009 and has grown to work across New York City, Connecticut, and beyond. Our work spans civic and cultural buildings, neighborhood library renovations, historic townhouse restorations, and custom residential projects—project types that are, in many ways, products of the borough itself. Brooklyn’s density, its landmark districts, its mix of industrial and domestic fabric, and its deep culture of craft have shaped both what we design and how we think about architecture.
The conversation kept returning to regulation and preservation as active forces in the work. New York City’s building codes and landmarks processes don’t just constrain what gets designed; they shape how architects work, how they communicate with clients, and how they navigate the city’s political and procedural complexity. For a firm whose projects include a New York Public Library branch renovation in the Bronx, landmarked rowhouse restorations in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Clinton Hill, and Greenpoint, and civic work through the NYC DDC Design Excellence program, that knowledge is foundational. It doesn’t arrive all at once. It accumulates project by project, block by block.
There’s also something specific to Brooklyn’s culture of practice: an unusual openness among architects and designers who share resources, refer work, and push each other’s thinking — even across firms that might otherwise compete. That ethos has been part of ABA’s experience since the beginning.
The event was hosted at the studio of Brent Buck. Thanks to NYCxDesign for creating space for this kind of conversation outside the ordinary pace of practice.
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Emily Abruzzo joins a candid panel discussion on what it means to run an architecture studio in Brooklyn today — part of the NYCxDesign Festival.
Hosted by Brent Buck Architects and moderated by Leopoldo Villardi, Managing Editor of Architectural Record, this intimate salon brings together Emily Abruzzo (Abruzzo Bodziak Architects), Bretaigne Walliser (TBo), and Brent Buck for a conversation about architectural practice in one of the world’s most visible and complex design contexts.
The discussion will move between practice, place, construction, and the realities of “brand Brooklyn” — exploring what shapes how small studios work, the values they bring to their projects, and what role emerging practices can play in shaping the borough’s future over the next five to ten years.
Abruzzo Bodziak Architects brings firsthand experience to this conversation. The Brooklyn-based studio has developed deep expertise in designing and renovating townhouses throughout the borough, navigating the particular challenges of rowhouse typologies, historic districts, and the layered approval processes that define building in Brooklyn. That ground-level knowledge of how the borough is actually constructed — block by block, project by project — is central to the practice’s perspective on what architectural practice in Brooklyn looks like today.
Agenda: 6:45pm — Doors open 7:00pm — Salon discussion 8:00pm — Reception with light refreshments
Venue is wheelchair accessible. RSVP on Eventbrite
Our renovation of Lefferts Manor House, a historic Brooklyn townhouse in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, was recently featured on ArchDaily. Designed by Abruzzo Bodziak Architects, the project reconsiders a landmarked corner townhouse through daylighting strategies, unified materials, and a transition to fully electric systems. The work demonstrates our approach to Brooklyn townhouse renovation, where spatial clarity, light, and performance upgrades are developed within the constraints of historic structures.
Lefferts Manor House is located in the Prospect Lefferts Gardens Historic District in Brooklyn, a neighborhood of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century houses whose generous scale often conceals interiors that are dark, divided, and difficult to adapt to contemporary life. The approximately 3,300-square-foot townhouse came to us with compartmentalized rooms, limited storage, awkward circulation, and aging building systems. Rather than erase the historic condition, the Brooklyn townhouse renovation by Abruzzo Bodziak Architects works within the fixed envelope of the landmarked exterior while reorganizing the interior to clarify movement, increase daylight, and support contemporary family life.
At the center of the intervention is light. The roof above the stair hall was opened to introduce a large skylight that draws daylight deep into the plan, carrying it down the stair and into the lower levels of the townhouse. This vertical shaft of light reshapes how the interior is experienced, turning circulation into a spatial focus and reducing reliance on artificial lighting. The stair itself was recalibrated so that movement between floors feels continuous rather than compressed.
Throughout the house, a continuous system of white oak millwork consolidates storage and establishes a consistent architectural language across the renovation. Cabinetry, wainscoting, and built-ins extend from room to room, organizing spaces that were once visually fragmented. The material palette is intentionally limited: white oak paneling, terrazzo flooring in high-traffic areas, plaster surfaces, and refinished parquet floors quiet visual noise and foreground proportion, light, and use. In the kitchen and dining spaces, veined quartzite counters and handmade tile introduce texture while remaining within this restrained framework.
Upper floors continue the same approach in pared-back bedrooms and bathrooms, including a primary bath shaped in part by Japanese bathing precedents, with a deep soaking tub positioned beneath natural light.
Behind the walls, the historic Brooklyn townhouse renovation also rethinks the building’s performance. Gas fixtures and steam radiators were removed in favor of all-electric systems with heat-pump conditioned air, while new insulation and upgraded windows improve thermal performance. Rooftop solar panels help offset energy demand.
View the full project: Lefferts Manor House – Brooklyn Townhouse Renovation
Abruzzo Bodziak Architects was profiled in The Cut by Wendy Goodman in a story that captures the spirit of our Clinton Hill brownstone renovation. Goodman traces how the house moves between influences without settling into a single lineage, letting Nordic clarity, Japanese restraint, and Brooklyn texture meet in a way that feels lived rather than styled. The piece lingers on the custom steel stair, the softened palette, and the way light threads through the re-organized rooms, framing the project as a study in simplicity with depth.
We appreciated the chance to walk Architectural Record’s Joann Gonchar through Stick House, Brick Garden for her feature on the project. The article underscores how we used “typical materials in unexpected ways” to transform a Brooklyn row house into something both “surprising and familiar.” It highlights how a subtle forward shift of the façade, a brick base that extends into the garden, and calibrated daylighting work together to re-ground the house in its context while giving it renewed presence. The piece reflects our belief that precise decisions and material intelligence can yield meaningful change—and that clients’ needs and concerns can catalyze reinvention rather than limit it.