Miriam Peterson and Nathan Rich rebuild a Williamsburg home featuring natural lighting and durable “childproof” materials.
Then PRO devised a plan to strip the existing building down to its wood framing and rebuild it, adding an extension at the back and a steel structure on stilt-like columns above to support an additional story.
“It’s basically this steel table that sits over the top” of the original building, Mr. Rich said. “That steel allowed us to make those massive openings — a big, glass wall at the front and a big skylight at the top — which bring all this natural light into the building, which is totally atypical for these types of houses.”
If the Rapaports were nervous about such an ambitious project, they didn’t show it. “They just said, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s make this what we really want,’” Ms. Peterson recalled.
– Tim McKeough, NY Times