Architensions Completes Blurring Boxes Residence

Three pavilions have been designed to add new functions to the original house & revitalize a Brooklyn backyard.

Brooklyn, NY - The evolution of living in our cities more and more tries to embrace nature, almost negating the urban character of neighborhoods. The design for a renovation and additions to a townhouse in Brooklyn is generated from the idea of fusing the interior space with the outdoor landscape through the creation of ground-up pavilions with specific experiential qualities.

Two main pavilions have been juxtaposed to the existing building— in a way to have an unobstructed view of the garden through the windows and also blurred views—obtained from the partial over imposing of a wooden screen to the addition facades. The exterior cladding is achieved layering vertical wooden slats of Shou Sugi Ban (or Yakisugi), an ancient Japanese exterior siding technique that preserves wood by charring. The two volumes are devoted to sound/vision and smelling/tasting activities and they complement the existing functions with natural light being the main component of the white bare interiors minimally furnished.

The experience is extended to the landscape outside where the original bluestones have been restored and reused as the material for the hardscape that leads the user to a third volume: a shed-like typology balloon frame construction. This third programmatic element is providing the function of isolation for meditative activities and it serves as a winter plants shelter for the garden.

The sectional shape of the three pavilions revolve around the presence of skylights with different configurations that capture the sun and the diffused light reflecting from the trees, making the interior changing with the seasons and further connecting with the exterior.

Project Credits:

Design Principals: Alessandro Orsini & Nick Roseboro

Project Designer: Richard W. Off

Team: Rigo Gonzalez, Giorgia Gerardi

Landscape Design: Architensions

Lighting Design: Architensions

General Contractor: A-G Home Improvements

Structural Engineering: ADG Engineering

Photography: Cameron Blaylock

Interior Area: 163 m2 / 1754 sf

Landscape Area: 100 m2 / 1076 sf

Project Year: 2016

Location: Brooklyn, New York, USA

Manufactures: AionLED, Velux, Marvin Windows, Kohler, Hansgrohe, Duravit Geberit, Travis Creek Wood Products (wood façades – Shou Sugi Ban).

Note: All cabinetry was designed by Architensions. Dining room table lamp – Artek Pendant Lamp A330S (Alvar Alto)

Detailed Floor Plans, Courtesy Architensions

Access Press Kit Here

About Architensions

Architensions (ATE) is an architectural design studio operating as an agency of research led by Alessandro Orsini and Nick Roseboro and based in New York & Rome. The studio was founded in 2010 as a vehicle to investigate the city and its spatial form and was re-founded in 2013 with Nick Roseboro. Diverse in backgrounds and creative experience, the studio looks at architecture, design, and the city with a perspective rooted in site-specificity enabling us to explore new ways to connect history and culture.

Architensions works at the intersection of theory, practice, and academia, focusing on architecture as a network condition in continuous dialogue with the political and social context and aiming to create new possibilities for the contemporary city. Our search for an aesthetic is an ever-changing process grounded in drawings, collages, sketches, and models. We like discrete geometries and grids, but we constantly seek new interpretations of their spatial outcomes. Researching and teaching for us is a mode of practice, not just in the academic space but also in the studio. We believe in a pedagogical approach to practice: we design and we learn at the same time. We expand our practice through writing to critically connect the ontology of our work with the discourse and curate to index the diverse architectural trajectories of our time. We see design as a way to define fields of action for the built environment that reconnect urbanism and architecture through processes that promote inclusivity and challenge the paradigm of architecture as a financial tool.

Our work and research have been published in international magazines such as Domus, Frame, Wallpaper, Architectural Digest, and exhibited at the Casa dell’Architettura in Rome, the Van Alen Institute, The Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Center for Architecture, and the Java Project Gallery in New York. In 2015, Libria published the volume Forma Urbana, focusing on studio research through a selection of projects and writings. Architensions was commissioned to design a large public installation for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2022. In addition, the studio was profiled as the Next Progressives in Architect Magazine in September 2020, and in 2021, Cultured Magazine selected Architensions as part of their inaugural young architects list.

Alessandro Orsini is an architect and founding principal of Architensions with experience working on a wide range of projects both internationally and in the US. His work focuses on architecture at the intersection of the political, social, and environmental spatial networks with specific interests on redefining new modes of collective living. Alongside practice, he teaches design studios at Columbia University GSAPP and has served as a guest critic in various schools of architecture. He was also the director of the Summer Study Abroad Program from 2017-2019 at Hillier College of Architecture and Design at NJIT. Alessandro has contributed to journals including Vesper, Studio Magazine, and Forma Urbana, Architensions’ first book, published by Libria in 2015. Alessandro received his Master’s in Architecture “Summa Cum Laude” at Roma Tre University in Rome and was a visiting scholar at Columbia University GSAPP.

Nick Roseboro Assoc. AIA, is a designer and musician with experience across many creative disciplines. Following his music studies at The New School, he worked on various editorial and exhibition projects that evolved toward his first collaboration with Architensions. Roseboro’s research revolves around user interaction centered around perceptions of our environment. In particular, Roseboro’s interpretation of the urban context reads the city as a complex organism of social, civic, political, and ludic insertions within an ever-changing reality. In addition, he is interested in redefining architectural practice through curatorial, pedagogical, and cross-disciplinary means of exploration toward new architectural outcomes.

Roseboro has led many projects, including the experimental space Aesop World Trade Center, a large-scale installation for Coachella 2022, and a house in Long Island that questions aspects of domesticity. In Spring 2020, Roseboro joined “Design Advocates,” a network of designers and architects that provide research and design services to nonprofits and marginalized communities. His interests in the social aspects of design have led to his participation in various symposia and presentations on the studio’s research. Roseboro is the editor and designer of Architensions’ first book Forma Urbana, published in 2015 by Casa Editrice Libria and presented as a catalog to the studio’s first solo exhibition, Fifth Dimensional Cities, 2016.

Architensions Completes Blurring Boxes Residence

Access Press Kit Here

Get updates in your mailbox

About Architensions

Contact