From the start, the intent for The Malt House was to restore, repair and reuse the old, while expressing the new as something different. The block, occupied by an early 20th-century brewery, was not designated by the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, so the main question was an architectural one: how to add and create something new while celebrating the historic nature of the old? The easiest approach would have been to demolish the existing building. But the old brick has a texture, a certain unquantifiable value—and a very quantifiable one in terms of embodied energy and carbon.

Bookended by two old structures and responding to the setback requirement, The Malt House completes the street wall, blending the existing brick with a unitized curtain wall. Matching the height of its pre-existing neighbors, the new glass façade clearly differentiates from the brick but maintains a similar tone, and character with the rest of its surroundings: the rhythm of the new curtain wall acknowledges the composition of the existing façade; glass inside corners are reminiscent of brick inside corners; the use of four different tints of glass adds texture and detail while lowering the scale of the building’s base.

Inside, the old is left as raw as possible—the existing state of the building treated as a historic witness—while the new pieces are distinct and clearly delineated.

At the back, the contextual strategy was to blend old and new by creating a patchwork of pieces that embraces the original hodge podge. In a sentence: The Malt House reflects its context.