And the award for Most Diplomatic Turn of Phrase goes to…Evan Erlebacher, founder of architecture firm Also Office, for this description of a project pre-intervention: “Like many townhouses in Brooklyn, this one had been maintained piecemeal over decades and not always in a professional way.” [Emphasis ours.]  Translation: The building was a mess, a hodgepodge of DIY home improvement projects from the 1970s through the 1990s—all of it dated and bad.

The three-story townhome in the historic district of Bed-Stuy was built in 1881. Its new owner hired Evan and his team to bring cohesion to the chaos. “[The project] required a different design approach to each floor depending on their respective states of disrepair and architectural quality. This entailed executing a contemporary gut renovation with a new single story addition and a new garden design on the ground level, while preserving and renovating the historic parlor level, and overseeing a modest cosmetic restoration of the second floor,” explains Evan.

Once the house was nudged into the 21st century with sensitivity and in a holistic manner, interior design firm Colony was brought on to “play a part in unraveling it into the present moment,” says its founder Jean Lin.

Here’s what their collaboration yielded.

Photography by David Mitchell, courtesy of Also Office.

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