Green on Brownstoner: Salvage on State Street
[nggallery id=”24946″ template=galleryview] Earlier this year, Mr. B gave this place a bit of a whooping for what he thought was an out-of-scale addition (though plenty of readers disagreed with us). If only we’d known how the addition helped reinvent this State Street townhouse into a green haven courtesy of Tesoro Architects and Ryan Enschede…
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Earlier this year, Mr. B gave this place a bit of a whooping for what he thought was an out-of-scale addition (though plenty of readers disagreed with us). If only we’d known how the addition helped reinvent this State Street townhouse into a green haven courtesy of Tesoro Architects and Ryan Enschede Studio. More from Ryan below. Got a green project you want to publish? Send us a note.
The owners needed to replace the worn-out interior of their home damaged by previous renovations, and to expand for a growing family. We worked hard to create a new green house within a historic shell. We started by preserving the original façade: stoop, window, and door openings have been left as they were. The cornice, which was crumbling and unable to be repaired, has been rebuilt nearly as it was. Above the cornice line the new floor extends the structure upwards behind a new mansard roof-with-dormers.
Demolition revealed the rear wall to be a rotting swiss cheese of holes and dissolving lime mortar. This facade had to be dismantled and rebuilt for greater connection to the treasured rear garden. Re-using the same brick, we made larger window openings for greater penetration of the sun, added larger rear doorways at the first three floors, new terraces, a top-floor balcony, and connecting exterior stairways. Finally, at the roof, a new deck is planned to take advantage of panoramic views of Brooklyn, to be shaded by a photovoltaic solar panel array that doubles as a sunscreen trellis.
At the interior of the house little proved able to be salvaged. After demolition we discovered that the original floor structure had been cut for plumbing in so many places by previous renovators that it sagged as much as 6 at the center of the 20′ wide house. Places in the roof bounced like a trampoline. Most of the original interior finishes were gone. We have kept what was worthwhile of the remnants, including the marble living room fireplace, lovely aged mahogany handrails, and the classic sweeping stair from the living/dining floor to the floor above.
A few notes specifically about the green measures incorporated into the house:
Best-practices green measures:
-Southern (rear) façade rebuilt with relatively large window openings, shaded to the summer sun, allowing solar heat gain in winter. Northern (street) façade preserved with relatively small window openings, emphasizing the insulation of an opaque wall where solar gain is not available and preserving the original façade.
-Reflective-finish metal shingles at the vertical East and West party wall extensions respond to the large summertime exposure to solar heat gain at these surfaces by reflecting solar radiation off of the building.
-High-performance open and close-cell foam insulation, at deep and shallow stud cavities respectively, provide maximum R-Value in minimum space and increase air-sealing.
-Thorough air sealing at windows and doors for increased energy efficiency.
-High-performance air conditioning equipment with variable speed condensers, fans, and zone dampers allow more or less conditioned air to individual rooms and varying portions of the home based upon varying cooling needs. This improves comfort and increases energy efficiency by cooling only the spaces that need cooling.
-High performance boiler provides domestic hot water and radiant floor heating, again zoned for temperature control of individual rooms to increase comfort and capture the efficiency of the wintertime passive solar gain in the south-facing rooms without leaving the north-facing rooms cold.
-Recirculating loop hot-water system saves heat lost as water cools sitting in pipes, saves water lost from running the tap to reach hot water.
-Fluorescent and LED lighting throughout.
-Interior transom windows for daylight penetration to interior spaces, reducing lighting demand.
-Low-VOC interior paint and floor finishes.
-Dual-flush toilets.
Additional green measures:
-3.7kw photovoltaic solar panel array to offset electrical demands and provide shading for rooftop deck.
-FSC certified flooring and cabinet materials
-Recycled glass/cement countertops.
-Re-use of salvaged brick.
Project Credits:
Architect: Tesoro Architects
Sustainability Consultant, Project Architect: Ryan Enschede Studio
MEP Engineer: M Ramos Assoc.
Structural Engineer: Chen Engineering
Contractor: Loranco Construction
Hi all – A quick note to reply to a couple of the above:
I do believe that any townhouse gut deserves “green†credit inasmuch as a townhouse incorporates efficiencies of structure, footprint, and thermal envelope (at the sacrifice of space and privacy) which a detached single-family home cannot claim. I would add that any project which re-uses or partially re-uses an existing structure also deserves “green†credit, as does any NYC project for its urban density and freedom from reliance upon automobile transit. However I would offer that this house is not a “greenwash†– that it is “greener†than the average NYC townhouse gut. In my experience it is actually very rare that a full set of best practices are implemented, whether because of ignorance, lack of interest, a modest cost increase or a small design compromise required, or because the focus is on more exciting “green†features. I believe we have started from a philosophically defensible position by making the best basic building decisions available to us, with the goal of insuring that whatever “green-ness†we achieve is real. From that point we have added measures which make less sense economically, like the PV solar array, which the owner nonetheless felt were an important gesture to make. I feel that the owners deserve a great deal of credit in this regard… they have pushed hard to know what the “green†options available to them are and they have been fully committed to paying any extra costs associated.
Ryan Enschede
PS: as the house is under construction the SUV parked in the driveway belongs to the contractor…
“You’re all very silly…”
-silly to say this is the ugliest addition in the neighborhood?
I think sane and not blind would be better adjectives.
If you don’t care about preserving the beauty of historic architecture in our neighborhoods, then you don’t get it.
This isn’t Las Vegas or Miami. People don’t move here to buy “unused” homes.
I love the look of the addition- hate the proportions. It’s too outscale. If the window frames were black or very dark grey, I think it would help. But I bet the interior space is gorgeous- what with those windows. It is interesting to read all the disagreements about what is really “green” or not. My take on a lot of this stuff is that it’s marketing. green is good so everyone is tweaking how they define their product.
There is really good stuff out there- but how do you find out which is which?
Why is every gut job these days considered ‘green’? As ringo points out, efficient boilers and insulating practices are just simple common sense money-saving issues. I’m not a fan of these plopped-on extra floors either.
Mr. B., along with 9 out of 10 commenters on Brownstoner, should just exit the design review business, because they really have no taste, which is almost as bad as bad taste.
Take the obsession with “original details.” Without a doubt, some Brooklyn houses deserve to be preserved in amber. Others have been so poorly maintained that there’s not much left to save. (Often by people who think they should win preservation awards for watching them decay because they left them “intact.”) And many others were junk when built and are still junk today. (Do you think Trump Boulevard should be landmarked 75 years from now because it will be old?)What’s wrong with creative destruction in those cases?
By the way, I’m not talking about ruining landmarked facades in Park Slope. I’m talking about the in teriors, which are usually dowdy at best, and no one’s business anyway.
Oh, and by the way….the addition to this BH house is hideous. So why did Mr. B. get suckered by someone waving green cliches around?
Lisa, I believe you mean “whupping,” vernacular for “whipping,” rather than “whooping,” as in crane or cough.
— your resident pedant
I’m with you Sam. It looks like it was “designed” right out of the Sweets Catalogue.
If you don’t think this building looks bad from the front, you are architecturally illiterate. The top has no relation to the bottom. And actually clashes with it. You don’t have to be Nicholas Ourousoff to get that. It lacks any sense of beauty or aesthetic harmony. It is a big fat piece of real estate, and therein lies the appeal to many of you I’m sure, and that’s OK.
The only good thing here are the street trees that will hide most of it when in full leaf.
green or not, it’s still fugly.