To call it a home of our own

The lot was on the edge of the residential neighbourhood of Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn, near a concrete plant and the Gowanus Canal, and it had an old garage on it. To many people, it wouldn’t have seemed like an obvious place to build a dream home. But when Philippe Baumann and Lisa Sardinas saw the property, they knew they wanted it.

“I really liked that edge condition: the mix of residential hard against industrial,” said Philippe, 50, an architect who has his own firm in Manhattan and teaches at Pratt Institute. At the same time, he said, “it had the unusual mix of a great school just up the street” for the couple’s six-year-old son, Oskar, and brownstones that appealed to his wife, a 43-year-old writer.
Change is inevitable
And there weren’t many tall buildings, which was important to Philippe, since he intended to design a home with an internal courtyard and didn’t want shadows encroaching on their outdoor space. “Things will change,” he said, acknowledging the inevitability of development. “But, by and large, we’re going to have that sky.”After buying the property in 2009 for $700,000, the couple demolished the garage to make room for the two-storey, 3,500-square-foot house (including a 1,000-square-foot cellar) that Philippe designed. In addition to three bedrooms and four bathrooms, it has extensive outdoor space - a ground-level courtyard and two levels of roof gardens.


But the most arresting element is the modern twist on wrought-iron security bars that he devised: a facade made from galvanised steel screens with operable shutters and doors, which shelters a secondary facade of cypress wood behind it.


“The idea is to engage the street, but separate from it a little bit,” said Philippe, explaining that the space in between serves as a porch, and the design allows the family to leave their doors open for cross-ventilation in the summer, with the screen doors providing security.

Inside, inspired by “the old modernist ideas about honesty of materials,” he said,
he left many surfaces unfinished, including parts of the steel frame, the limestone plaster walls and the concrete floors. But these materials are warmed up by hits of colour from the pumpkin millwork and paint in the kitchen and foyer, wooden cladding recycled from the old garage in the courtyard and art by friends that came as gifts, loans or trades for Philippe’s architectural services. 
Love and sweat

To keep costs down to about $225 a square foot, Philippe was the general contractor, organising tradespeople and overseeing construction. (“That’s when my hair turned grey,” he joked.) He also did some of the work himself, with friends’ help. “It doesn’t look like the kind of house you would do yourself, but so much love and sweat has gone into it,” said Lisa, who would cook elaborate meals to thank anyone who came over to help.

The family moved into the home in 2011, although construction wasn’t finished until 2013. Now that they’re settled, one of their favourite features is the view out the back, from the roof gardens and the master bedroom, of a stretch of elevated subway track for the F and G trains. “I never would have thought that looking at the subway would be considered having a view,” Lisa said. “But it’s a moving view.” Philippe added: “It’s our urban river.”