A Skinny Brooklyn Townhouse Stacks Spaces for Living, Working, and Entertaining

Red Hook is "the farthest you can get from New York while still being in New York," quips Anna Clark of the once-industrial waterfront area of Brooklyn. The village-like neighborhood’s sense of remove from the wider city and opportunities for live/work space were part of the appeal when Anna, an artist/book publisher/radio host, and her partner, designer and musician Thanhyen Nguyen, bought a three-story townhouse there in 2019.

Located just a few blocks from where the couple had been renting, the 1,862-square-foot space is one of five that incorporate elements of a large early-20th-century carriage house. When they found it, the double-height ground floor and increasingly compact living spaces upstairs—with setbacks that create a series of terraces—offered an ideal floor plan. "We liked to call it the layer cake house because it reminded us of boxes stacked on boxes," Thanh says. "The farther up you went into the house, the smaller the boxes became."

Thanh and Anna envisioned creating distinct living, working, and entertaining spaces inside the house, and they reached out to a friend, designer and building technology consultant Gjergji Shkurti, for his advice about who should design it. He recommended Aria Jahanshahi, principal at Opa Architecture in New York City, and the three hit it off. As self-described creatives, the couple appreciated Jahanshahi’s collaborative approach. "We didn’t want to just say yes or no to choices that were being made," Thanh says. "We really wanted to be a part of the process."