450 Warren seeks to create a new paradigm for dense urban living in Brooklyn by rediscovering essential qualities that have disappeared from New York City's residential landscape. The project comprises a cluster of efficient, sustainable, and intensely private homes imbued with those missing qualities — light, air, outdoor space and privacy — in a project designed to simultaneously facilitate intimacy and community among the building’s 18 residential units and the neighborhood beyond.
Three lushly-planted courtyards divide 450 Warren’s plan and provide for essential porosity, bringing openness, light, air and greenery into three to four orientations for each unit, while minimizing shared walls and increasing privacy for each home. A series of exterior corridors, bridges and stairs stitch the project together — horizontally and vertically, physically and visually — creating dynamic shared spaces for communing with neighbors. Private and semi-private outdoor spaces are part of every single unit, maximizing the living experience in all seasons.
The building operates through layering: together, layout and materials create a gradient of public to private, eroding the dense urban block and inviting the flow of air, light and movement throughout the building. In this organization, intimacy and openness exist in equal measure in each apartment, and in their surrounding community.
