120 Allen Street by Grzywinski+Pons

Designed by Grzywinski+Pons, 120 Allen Street is a multi-residential project in Manhattan’s Lower East Side that includes a mix of furnished studios, apartments and commercial workspaces. Part of a new breed of residential design dubbed ‘apart-hotels’, the apartments and studios combine the slick theatre of a modern boutique hotel with the cosy intimacy of a comfortable home.

The narrow site presented many challenges for the architects, who designed the building, the interiors and most of the furnishings. Two structures were built to resolve the slim proportions and maximise floor space and light, including a slender ten-storey tower and an adjoining five-storey volume.

For us, the facade is the stand-out. The first five floors of each volume are clad in handmade coal-fired brick, paying homage to the rustic masonry facades of the surrounding buildings in the neighbourhood. The bricks are laid in a gradient of warmer to cooler tones to balance the blend between the existing buildings and upper levels. To avoid looking like a ‘finger building’, the upper part of the taller volume, is clad in zinc panels and a veil of louvers, a textured solution that gives the building an interesting depth and works in harmony with the earthy cladding on the lower levels.

The interior spaces are raw, and expose the steel structure of the building wherever possible, including columns, bolts, beams and junctions. A luxe palette of warm finishes, fabrics and furnishings are used to soften the industrial grit and lighten the space.