Abelow Sherman Architects LLC

Abelow Sherman Architects
Partner-in-Charge: David Abelow
Contractor: James Luty
Photographer: Michael Moran
Completed: 1993
Project Team: David Younglove
AWARDS:
AIA New Jersey Chapter, Design Award of Excellence, 1994
PUBLICATIONS:
Working at Home: Living + Working Spaces, December 2000
Lofts, Ginko Press, June 1999
New York Interiors, Taschen Press, April 1997
New York magazine, "Seriously Cool Apartments", October 1995
Exhibition: Bristol Myers Squibb Corporate Headquarters, Princeton, NJ, 1995 AIA New Jersey Chapter Annual Awards Panel Discussion, 1995 View towards Control Room

Industrial scale and materiality distinguish a previously vacant urban loft in Jersey City. Supporting the former warehouse and horsestable?s sloped roof and large span timber trusses are timber columns and brick bearing walls. The fallow space remained virtually intact since its construction in the 1880?s. The owner?s program contained elements of everyday domestic life and the full assemblage of studio and recording requirements. The architect?s approach was to synthesize into a functioning and creative whole the elements of the owner?s musical and home lives. These pieces assume a dual reading as both object and space. The essential volumetric character of the loft shell allowed for vertical and horizontal connections between the wrapper and the insertion of the new forms. A large residual double height studio space, used as an acoustical and living environment, alludes to an outdoor court yard. In developing the design, an initial sketch gesture of a radian line and an arc overlays on the plan. The notion of circular motion - the intervallic sweep hand of a watch, and the musical scale as a circle of fifths - is set forth. Further evolution of this gesture includes three major organizational elements: a galvanized
metal screen wall, a Douglas fir post and beam frame, and redwood ship-lapped siding forming a compound curved wall. The following materials are also utilized: Finnish plywood floor tiles, stained plywood walls and stranded composition board surfaces.