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The mandate: incorporate a young couple’s love of Ancient Rome, James Turrell skyspaces, and stormy beach days into a tip-to-tail renovation of an 1840s Greek Revival brownstone. Fortunately for these clients, a pair of tech executives with a now toddler daughter, the ensemble team they enlisted for the three-year undertaking arrived with a shared understanding of their dream and a surfeit of creative ideas to achieve it.

“Building our home and building our family are forever entwined for us,” the wife explains, underscoring their deep personal investment in the project. Local architecture firm the Brooklyn Studio and its partner Brendan Coburn, who grew up down the block from the property and now lives around the corner, had masterminded several similar projects in the neighborhood. “There’s definitely a Brooklyn town house look nowadays, and one thing we loved was how each of the Brooklyn Studio’s previous works felt distinct,” the husband comments of their choice in architect. “They clearly tailor to each family rather than rehashing a particular aesthetic.” Meanwhile, AD PRO Directory interior designer Augusta Hoffman, whose work the homeowners had admired for some time, added a clear-eyed approach to functional interiors and a knack for serene, evocative spaces.

The rear stair, crafted from stained mahogany to echo the home’s central Queen Anne–style staircase, is another point of great interest in the residence. Using a 3D printer to create multiple versions—“the way your hand felt as you were going down was really an important part of that experience,” notes Coburn—project manager Balute happily obsessed over the sculptural element. “Brendan’s the guy with the big ideas, and then I try to make it sexy,” she says. The Venetian-plaster walls and limestone floors amplify the hushed James Turrell–inspired experience in the space, which is topped with a glass skylight. The stools are by Green River Project.

Case in point was the stairwell in a two-story extension on the back of this 4,800-square-foot edifice; it offered the perfect opportunity to accomplish part of the bespoke brief. “The stair is just a lovely piece of sculpture; it’s what architects fantasize about doing all the time,” says Coburn of the mahogany piece, whose domed skylight nods to both Rome’s Pantheon and Turrell’s skyspaces. “We felt that location is a moment where we can marry those two interests,” adds The Brooklyn Studio project manager Jenna Balute, who worked hand-in-glove with the contractor from Chilmark Builders, Inc. (It also complements the home’s more traditional mahogany Queen Anne–style staircase running through its core.) “As you move toward the back, it becomes a more minimal, ethereal language and experience,” she notes of the gradual dissolution of crown moldings, baseboards, and intricate trim toward the garden, where a large Juneberry tree and other lush plantings put on a show for much of the year.

To maximize natural sunlight and views through the garden-facing windows, the Brooklyn Studio team encouraged the homeowners to bring their kitchen up one flight of stairs from the garden level to the parlor floor. Though the clients are not avid cooks, they still spend much of their time in the space, which includes Pierre Augustin Rose stools covered in a Pierre Frey fabric, ceiling fixtures from Apparatus Studio, and white-oak-herringbone floors. The contractor on the project was Chilmark Builders, Inc.

On the garden level, a more formal dining and bar area, termed “the loggia,” offers direct access to the rear landscaped greenspace and grill area. A ceiling light designed by Hoffman illuminates a vintage marble dining table surrounded by circa-1960s Joe Colombo for Pozzi chairs. “It’s amazing to be able to host a summer dinner party and open all the doors to the backyard,” observes Hoffman.

“Overall it was a very intentional, minimal, almost modern Parisian approach,” concurs Hoffman of the clients’ early vision for the public and private spaces covering five stories (including a new windowed penthouse reading room). “It was important to us that our home balances beauty with practicality,” says the wife, and Hoffman’s “elegant but relaxed work was love at first sight.” Though the designer admits a penchant for using rich colors, she didn’t fumble here delivering a cooler palette of blues and grays that, regardless of season or hour, evokes a stormy day at the beach. Custom furnishings covered in a rash of sumptuous textiles, creamy plaster walls, and visual Easter eggs—as seen in the bathrooms, each of which takes inspiration from a different locale loved by the clients, and in the nursery, with its hand-painted James Mobley murals depicting even more places of personal import—gave it the warmth for which Hoffman’s oeuvre is known. Living room artwork by Robert Mapplethorpe and one-of-a-kind de Gournay wallpaper further enhance the abode’s tailored aura.

A view of the living room in a 1840s Greek Revival brownstone in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, that was recently renovated for a young family by architects Brendan Coburn and Jenna Balute of the Brooklyn Studio alongside interior designer Augusta Hoffman. The calming parlor-floor space features a pair of Studio Giancarlo Valle armchairs facing a vintage Pierre Paulin lounge chair and custom sofa covered in a Loro Piana wool. An Andrea Claire Studio ceiling fixture hangs over a Courtney Applebaum Design coffee table on a custom Augusta Hoffman Studio rug.

Art: Calla Lily, 1987 © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

In the end, the designer and architects were highly attuned to natural light, they say, and it guided most of their critical decisions—from the relocation of the kitchen to the parlor level to the sheer window treatments and Venetian plaster lining the walls. “Drinking a morning coffee and getting a meal together for our toddler while the light shifts in our skylight and dances through the trees outside our breakfast nook, seeing the sunset echo in the warm colors of our penthouse reading room, and settling in for a screening in our moody den,” reflects the wife, “I love how the home works with its environment at all times of day and across the seasons.”

The serene sitting room on the primary floor includes a rug, screen, and ottoman designed by Augusta Hoffman Studio. The chaise longue, from Design Within Reach, sits opposite a rust-colored floor lamp from Ruemmler and an Amy Meier side table. The picture light is from Visual Comfort.

The breakfast nook, located in a two-story rear extension off the kitchen, is a favorite spot for a number of people involved in the project. Not least because it offers expansive views of the extra-deep garden and its large Juneberry tree. Hoffman relished the chance to appoint the space with touches of deep red, as seen on the RW Guild banquette standing before a custom dining table and chairs. The overhead light fixture is the result of a collaboration between Hoffman and the architects. The brass sconce is by Joseph Dirand.

A view of the wet bar in the newly built penthouse reading room depicts a perforated-steel Green River Project sconce, whose motif Hoffman designed to complement the nearby square wall clock—one of many clocks the clients have given each other on their wedding anniversary each year.

“This room, for me, is very important to the overall scheme and feeling of the home,” says Hoffman of the primary, “because there was a little bit of this push and pull between warm and cool tones, and I think this really brings it all together.” That subtle and alluring mix includes a custom gray mohair rug by Augusta Hoffman Studio, gray plaster walls, and warmer Rose Uniacke textiles on the Roman shades, bed, and canopy. The nightstands, from BDDW, are topped by Blend Interiors table lamps, while the chaise longue and pillows are also by Hoffman.

Each of the home’s bathrooms is subtly inspired by a different locale beloved by the clients: Turkey, China, Spain. “They wanted [the primary bath] to be very Roman inspired, but of course we all sat down and discussed, ‘How do we not make this feel like a theme park?’” Hoffman recalls of including the delicate destination nods. Here, they include Clé zellige tiles, Bianco Namibia stone vanities, a Postmodern chandelier by Tobia Scarpa for Flos, and circa-1960s Carlo Nason for Mazzega sconces. The Roman shades are made of a sheer linen from Rose Uniacke.

In the primary dressing room, cooler tones—in the custom gray rug and circa-1960s Guillerme et Chambron stool, wrapped in a Holland & Sherry celery-colored fabric—are balanced by walls painted in a warmer hue. Behind the vintage English mirror, a custom de Gournay botanical wall covering depicts plants that represent the four seasons in traditional Chinese culture. The wall sconce is by Pierre Yovanovich and the cabinet hardware is by Waterworks.

After jumping through a few hoops presented by the landmarks commission and various neighbors, the team was able to build a sensitively designed penthouse, with a wraparound terrace, on the brownstone’s roof. The aerie, a favorite hideaway for the wife, is appointed with a custom daybed and bookcase (designed by the Brooklyn Studio), ceiling light and rug (designed by Hoffman)—alongside a Seventh House LA armchair, Obsolete coffee table, vintage Willy Guhl lamp, and Roman shades cut from a Rose Uniacke fabric.

A view of a powder room, inspired by China, features de Gournay’s A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains wall covering, Jamb mahogany mirror, and Sun Valley Bronze plumbing fixtures.

The clients found out they were expecting a daughter partway through the design project, so the opportunity to include a nursery in the scheme was a fun surprise, says Hoffman. Continuing the theme of location-based Easter eggs, the walls are covered in a hand-painted mural by James Mobley featuring meaningful spots around NYC. A Noguchi ceiling light, Pottery Barn Kids crib, Lawson-Fenning stool, and Kelly Design Mobiles mobile add soft visual interest in the room. “They’re a young, very cool couple and this is their dream home,” says the designer of the clients, “and they appreciate it so, so much—you can tell how grateful they are.”

Art: James Mobley

The daughter’s bathroom shower, with Waterworks fixtures, is lined in Calacatta Turquoise stone. Other design elements in the space were inspired by Barcelona.

A shower stall, in the bathroom inspired by outer space, is lined in Bianco Namibia stone and includes Waterworks fixtures.

Inspired by outer space, this bath is perhaps the only one influenced by a place the clients have never actually visited, including a vintage stone sink that reminded Hoffman of moon rock. The mirror is by Matter; the flushmount fixture is by Swadoh; and the plumbing fixtures are by Sun Valley Bronze.