By gutting the interior and demolishing all but two interior walls, Richard Garber and Nicole Robertson of Gro Architects turned a dark, cramped apartment in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of upper Manhattan into an open and inviting living space for a pair of graphic designers, Ned Drew and Brenda McManus. The couple's first child, a boy, was born in 2013.
Photo by Christopher Sturman.Designing living spaces in densely populated urban settings poses a particular set of challenges. Richard Garber and Nicole Robertson, principals at the Manhattan firm GRO Architects, will join us at Dwell on Design New York on Saturday, October 11, for “Small Spaces, Big Ideas,” a discussion about creative ways to make the most of a limited footprint. Examples from their portfolio include a cramped 600-square-foot Manhattan apartment that they recast as an open, inviting dwelling for a pair of graphic designers, and a concrete house with an open layout that they managed to squeeze into a 22-by-56-foot lot in Jersey City, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from New York’s Financial District. Garber and Roberston will also detail how they incorporate prefabricated elements in their designs to minimize cost, construction time, and waste, as they are preparing to do with an 88-unit micro-housing project near the Grove Street PATH station in downtown Jersey City.
