A Green Apartment Remodel: Accidental Environmentalists

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The couple renovated the new space—“to a point,” according to Amy—when they first moved in, turning the entire living room into an office and the tiny second bedroom into a dining area. Three years later, they knew more changes were needed.

“Our apartment was 90 percent work space and 10 percent living space,” says Amy, an affirmative-action consultant. Instead, the couple wanted to work comfortably in a much smaller part of the apartment so that their professional work became “a part of our life space, but not our life,” she explains.

“I also wanted to do more cooking,” Oscar adds. “So I wanted a place to prepare food without having to be in a separate room when we had company.” In addition, the Schachters needed a less formal space for casual, intimate entertaining than the downstairs dining room, which seats eight.

The couple was prepared to renovate right this time. “We were determined to really think it through so we wouldn’t have to redo anything,” Amy says. “We wanted to make sure everything was ready and right before we moved ahead.”

Bergman’s solution was to gut the windowless galley kitchen and blow out the enclosing walls so that it became a part of the living and office areas—turning a boxy apartment into an open, airy, loft-like space. A mobile kitchen island on wheels provides plenty of storage, as well as additional counter space and a spot for two people to eat dinner. Bergman moved the office area next to the kitchen and hid Oscar’s file cabinets (which are shrinking in size because he now stores many of his files electronically) behind a pivot sliding door made of recycled-content resin. The door pulls out from an interior pocket at the side of the refrigerator and folds over to hide the front of the files.

Building character

Throughout the process, Bergman and the Schachters focused on bringing character and color to an apartment that Bergman describes as having “8-foot ceilings with no details at all.” Randomly placed maroon cork tiles undulate through the wood-tone floor, adding unexpected shots of color. Brilliant blue natural linoleum dresses up the built-in desktops. And the powder-blue, recycled-content resin panels hiding both the utility closet near the kitchen and the file cabinet in the office “pull the whole look together,” Amy says. “It’s an industrial element that’s very New York.”

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