Development

Three Bubbly, Mod Space-Age Townhouses Take Shape in South Williamsburg

An unusual townhouse project with a precast concrete curtain wall facade is shaping up nicely on South 2nd Street in south Williamsburg.

Photo by Cate Corcoran

by Cate Corcoran

01/05/2022 5 minute 0

An unusual townhouse project is shaping up nicely in south Williamsburg. Precast concrete panels and rounded rectangular windows give the trio at 74, 74A and 76 South 2nd Street a 1960s utopian cities-in-the-sky flair.

Custom prefab concrete curtain wall facades have been popular in Brooklyn skyscrapers for at least a decade. Only recently have costs come down to make them practical for a townhouse development.

While the look is something new for the block, at a slight remove from the busy East River waterfront and the hefty towers of the Domino Sugar redevelopment, the size and shape of the townhouses fit right in with the streetscape. Developed in the 19th century, the stretch is home to a mix of townhouses spanning the decades just before and after the Civil War, as well as a few late 19th century apartment buildings and a recently erected parking garage.

The project was not inspired by historic architecture, and any resemblance to mod style is a coincidence; the intent was to solve a problem, said architect Murat Mutlu, principal of INOA, or International Office of Architects, which designed the project.

The Manhattan-based firm has created houses, apartment buildings and schools in Brooklyn, New Jersey and as far away as Dubai. Before founding the firm in 2010, Mutlu worked at Zaha Hadid Architects and Skidmore Owings & Merrill.

“Our design philosophy is not about getting inspired by something, as that type of design approach is often ‘fictional’ and lacks reasoning,” he wrote in an email. “We approach our projects as a three-dimensional problem to solve for programmatic, contextual and technical parameters, and we like to solve our problems in a way to create visually cohesive building forms.”

exterior showing empty lot — The site in 2012. Photo by Christopher Bride for PropertyShark

The goal for the exterior was to create a unified form while also visually indicating a clear separation between the houses. The designers also wanted to include a porch and set back the top floor, as required by zoning.

V-shaped reveals separate the three houses and demarcate panels that repeat across the facade and were “cost effective to fabricate,” Mutlu said. “All these geometrical moves were coordinated to create a visually cohesive building exterior design for the entire project.”

The property was purchased by an LLC for $3.9 million in 2018. Its original two lots held a mid-19th century three-story wood frame Greek Revival house and a later one-story garage. Construction permits were issued in 2019. The new owner, Idan Shitrit of Investmates Real Estate & Development, according to permit filings, demolished the buildings and subdivided the property into three tax lots.

The buildings peeking over the green construction fence look just like the rendering. Glimpses of the ground floor visible through the fence show work is ongoing.

“The interiors are currently being built and we are targeting to get sign-offs” early this year, said Mutlu. Interior renderings show clean, modern spaces with white walls, light colored wood and living rooms with double-height ceilings.

The project is not the first modern townhouse row in Williamsburg; others include the Williamsburg Townhomes on South 3rd Street near Bedford and the Townhouses of Wythe Lane on Wythe Avenue at South 4th Street. Other modern townhouse rows are scattered throughout the borough and include Atlantic Commons in Fort Greene, 14 Townhouses on State Street in Boerum Hill and Heights Park in Prospect Lefferts Gardens.