Avenue A Co-Op

Organization Name: Shakespeare Gordon Studio

Project Title: Avenue A Co-Op

Project Location: East Village, Manhattan, New York

Project Description:
204 Avenue A, a new residential building in the East Village, adds ten income-restricted apartments and a ground-floor commercial space to a once-abandoned site in the middle of a busy commercial block. The property is located on a narrow interior lot between East 12th and East 13th streets, replacing a condemned structure that had been City-owned since the 1970s with a new building that meets current as-of-right zoning. To promote home ownership in the East Village, a portion of the new building’s ten units will be offered first to the former residents of the previous structure. The seven-story building features elegant terracotta-colored brick patterns and a grid of tall rectangular windows, on its upper floors, forming a cohesive, yet expressive addition to the existing street wall, and referencing traditional masonry patterns and details. Beneath a copper-colored metal trim, blue glazed bricks animate the building’s streel level façade and reflect the energy of the busy commercial thoroughfare. The building’s programming contains a mix of one- and two-bedroom apartments, each intended to maximize comfort and functionality despite the constraints of the narrow site plan.

Community Impact:
This project aims to expand access to homeownership in the East Village, where the homeownership rate is approximately 13%, or about half the citywide average. The building is an income-restricted cooperative with 10 units—eight one-bedroom apartments and two two-bedroom apartments—each available to households earning no more than 80% of the area median income. The building also provides housing to residents who were vacated from the condemned structure previously located on this site. Former tenants will be given the first opportunity to purchase the co-op units in the newly constructed building, allowing them to remain in their neighborhood. Homeownership provides residents with a lasting connection to their community, and this project seeks not only to create opportunities for homeownership, but to provide thoughtfully designed, resilient residences for tenants to remain in their community. The building’s historically inspired materials and fixtures, as well as the inclusion of a ground floor retail space further enliven the building’s surroundings supporting a vibrant and resilient local community.

Organization Description:
Shakespeare Gordon Studio is a 21-person office based in Brooklyn that focuses on work within New York City, primarily for public and non-profit clients. It is our mission to create architecture that has an enduring positive effect on its users and on the physical landscape of our city. Our work is defined by its playfulness, elegance and public-spirited nature, which is expressed across a wide range of typologies and uses. We approach each project with care, compassion and a sophisticated understanding of its social purpose and urban context.

Team Members:

Nicole Vlado Torres, Amy Shakespeare, Sean Kennedy, Ashima Chitre, Jae Choi, Zhangzheng Yang