Row Office

The Row Office is located in a typical neighborhood of row houses. Practices of expansion are common in this typology and are aided by grey areas in the local building code, which allows for various types of extensions for sun shades and parking. This design leverages that ambiguity to double the area using marginal increases, and inventively applies the rules of engagement for a bold new form. The design adapts an old, dark row house to create a narrow new workspace full of light. As an intervention to extend the life of aging building stock, it is representative of the great potential for transformation that lackluster, dated buildings can have. Lines between furniture, interior, and architecture are blurred to generate a seamless habitable space, structured by the demolition of walls and insertion of a steel frame, which stabilizes the opened structure. A bi-centric spiral staircase of steel fills the cut-out that allows light to fall through all the floors. The workspace extends above the building under the shade of an enveloping roof, which also ties the new framework and completes the operation.