Frederick Tang Architecture Transforms a Historic Building for the Artist Adam Pendleton in Brooklyn

New York, NY—Part of an ongoing collaboration with artist Adam Pendleton, Frederick Tang Architecture (FTA) has completed the renovation and design of a new studio space for the artist in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighborhood. The project transforms a historic, three-story brick building from 1930, into an office, exhibition space, library, meeting and production spaces for the artist’s multimedia body of work.

Says FTA Founder Frederick Tang, “Our design is organized around connections between the programmed spaces -- from exhibition to office, archive room to spray room, Adam’s studio to the library. We treated the plan like a bento box -- one big rectangular box divided into a series of smaller and smaller boxes. We made sure to preserve the view through the space -- some of them are axial, keeping a clear front to back aligned with windows and doors, and other ones are oblique, composing surprising views diagonally across the corners of different rooms.”

Informed by the pared-down palette and graphic forms of Pendleton’s practice, the design features clean lines and a muted color scheme invigorated by moments of texture and transparency. Materials employed across both the interior and exterior were kept neutral in order for Pendleton’s work to be the visual focus. FTA chose to focus on materiality rather than color – spaces are primarily black and white and punctuated by a range of textural surface treatments including white oak flooring, brushed aluminum cabinetry, white walls, glossy black doors, and steel framed doors.

The facade is clad in jet-black, raked stucco while the rear yard pairs a gravel ground with a corten steel fence. These exterior elements are meant to be raw, textured, and tough in keeping with the industrial character of the neighborhood, whose historic buildings were informed by shipping and industrial activity rooted in the neighboring Brooklyn Navy Yard. Says Tang, “We love the back facade with the rhythm of 3 nearly square windows and door. On the inside these windows are set very deeply into recesses that make the rear wall feel massive. (Integrated window treatments are concealed within the ceiling.) These were created out of off-the-shelf black aluminum storefront components.”

Inside, the building’s original timber-framing columns were exposed throughout, and FTA had to work around the tight grid of original timber columns. Continues Tang, “All of the door heights were calibrated to accommodate Adam’s largest painting sizes. But the front door was the greatest challenge. We had a pair of 12’-0” tall steel and glass doors custom made in Italy with no horizontal divisions.” Broad, black-stained wood sliding doors and translucent frosted glass separate rooms, while aluminum cabinets by Reform punctuate the kitchenette and the bathrooms are clad in gray stucco.

Flexibility is built into the design of the studio, since many of its spaces will be used for different functions over the course of its use. For example, the exhibition area will also be used to move, crate, uncrate and display Pendleton’s giant paintings; and the studio space will also be used as a display area.

Tang’s office previously collaborated with Pendleton on the scaffolding design for his Who Is Queen? exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art earlier this year. That initial collaboration has led to a series of other projects that FTA is designing, including this art studio space in Brooklyn.

This particular space was designed over time evolving with Adam's needs. The space doubled half way through the project. We organized all the components -- the library, the spray room, the copy room, the archive room, the model room, in a way that mirrors his process.

“It's exciting and inspiring to work with an artist like Adam because our design conversations always extend in so many different directions. We can go from discussing Cedric Price's Fun Palace to digging deep on technical requirements for the air filtration system and all of it informs the design equally. Conceptual implications and utilitarian problem-solving go hand in hand. It's all part of the design process,” says Tang.

Tang and Pendleton are currently collaborating on a number of upcoming projects including more exhibition design work, additional studio spaces throughout Brooklyn, as well as the artist’s private home in upstate New York.

“Even though each project is so different, there are a lot of similarities in approaches to all of them – simple geometries, a limited palette of modest materials, diagrammatic organizations, an attention to proportion and a play on volume/mass versus lines/planes,” says Tang.

Photography by Jason Schmidt