It’s not you, it’s we

The Common

Unless you’re some kind of hedge-fund manager or trust-fund baby, you can pretty much forget about buying a building in New York, even in Brooklyn (especially in Brooklyn). But what if we told you that there was a way to purchase a house in Greenpoint for around $675,000? Ordinarily, that price would get you a one-bedroom apartment, if you were lucky. But you can afford it, and do so in style—if you’re willing to put your money together with other people’s.

The Greenpoint building

TONY asked architect Craig Konyk and his team at Konyk Architecture to come up with a communal-living plan for two families (each with two children) and two other couples, based on a warehouse at 155 Freeman Street in Greenpoint, currently on the market for $1.5 million. His design, dubbed “COMMUNE-ISM,” is a throwback to college living, though college living was never this cool: Konyk imagines a sort of boutique hotel plus café that wouldn’t be out of place in the Meatpacking District. Its main features: a first floor that can be opened to the outside front and back, and a second floor containing a series of individual “cabins” where occupants sleep and bathe. “The idea is to minimize the private quarters and maximize where you do your eating and entertainment.” In other words, hotel rooms upstairs, and lobby, dining room and public areas (including a pool!) downstairs. “It’s really living like Eloise,” Konyk adds.

He budgets the construction of his design at $1 million. Add that to the building price, and you’ve got $2.5 million to split four ways. Turn the page to take a look inside. (And for more on whether or not group living is financially right for you, click here.

The big picture
This transparent view shows the entire building from the street to the backyard. The top floor houses wooden cabins for each shareholder. The first floor, which Konyk dubs the Common, starts with a dining area in front, followed (in order) by a kitchen-Laundromat-bathroom; a lounge; a home theater; a play area for kids; and a “park” with a small pool. Folding glass panels can close off the space front and back, but in warm weather, Konyk imagines the place wide-open, with the front functioning as a kind of sidewalk café or stoop.

1 Cabin in the sky
Shown is one of the four cabins that serve as private quarters. Two are configured for couples and two for families, but each has some combination of bedrooms and baths. Their exteriors use different wood to set them apart. Although the cabins can function as a place to get away, Konyk says “you’d do no more in one than you would in a hotel room,” namely, sleep, bathe, go to the bathroom, have sex and maybe read.

2 Common charges
Here’s another look at the Common, specifically the transition from the lounge to the play area. Note the light well, one of four, in the ceiling; it’s actually the translucent floor of the cabin directly upstairs (each of them has a small skylight connected to the roof). “The light is actually filtered through the cabins,” says Konyk, “and if you look at their shape, you can see that each is basically two funnels stuck together.”

3 Pooling your resources
Above is a view of the backyard park and pool, which is divided into indoor and outdoor halves that can be closed off with folding glass panels (Konyk uses the same system in front). “This is the place to get away from the street,” says Konyk. He also suggests that the building hire a maintenance company to keep the common areas clean, since relying on individual occupants to do it “never really worked in college.”

Inside the cabin the light boxes are built into the ceiling and the floors—that's not a hole in the floor but a window.

THE BUILDING In warm weather, the commune-ists can relax outside in the public space.

For more Konyk, go to konyk.net. Building provided by Massey Knakal Realty Services (masseyknakal.com).

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