30 orchard street
lower east side, ny | 
A 20,000 sf condominium apartments building in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The 13 apartments range from one and two bedroom to penthouse duplex units. The ground floor and basement is a gallery. “Wabi-sabi” is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. It’s simple, slow, and uncluttered. It reveres authenticity above all. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind. We learn to embrace liver spots, rust, and frayed edges, and the march of time they represent. The scale of this “as of right” 12-story building towers over the neighbors creating exceptional views where the deliberate craft-like quality of the wood windows and corten steel panels that clad the facade situates this project historically into the ‘special’ urban fabric of the Lower East Side.
