Stamberg Aferiat Loft
Description

In 1976 both of us were just a few years out of school and struggling to get by on the income of young architects. Paul was working for Richard Meier and Peter was building do-it-yourself furniture for books and magazine articles. We were looking for the cheapest place we could find to live in Manhattan. The place also had to be big enough for wood shop. An advertisement in the Village Voice brought us to a half-empty loft building in a deserted neighborhood. The space had no running water and only DC current. With a tiny budget, we brought in water and power and put up metal studs and some drywall. Over time the drywall was finished and, bit by bit, taped and spackled. Eventually a floor was laid, in tow parts over several years.

Our starting point was the realization that the views were most spectacular from close to the windows, so we would conceal the views until visitors were farther into the space than the entry. We designed the walls to create objects within the space and lots of storage and to define a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a place for friends to stay. Walls were kept away from the windows to preserve the panoramic views, and, where possible, they were not built to the ceiling in order to maintain the loftlike, spacious feeling. Flying beams carried power and phone lines between the objects. Finally, in 1991, fourteen years after we moved in, we painted all the walls in colors inspired by David Hockney and Henri Matisse, a signature for which we are now known.

We had begun to collect twentieth-century furniture and art even before we met, but the collection increased geometrically when we became a team.

Photographs © Paul Warchol