Studio Geiger Architecture & Design

For Sākrid Coffee Roasters' original café at 20 Nassau Street, we served as architect of record and provided construction administration, giving physical form to a brand built around moments that inspire and revive. A long white bar anchors the narrow storefront, opening up the room and drawing the eye toward the espresso counter at its heart.

Set within the building's existing historic brick shell on Nassau Street, directly across from Princeton University, the design holds the character of the original structure while introducing handcrafted inviting finishes suited to a modern café.

Area: 1,100 sq ft

Starting with such a beautiful stone home in Princeton, New Jersey, we've tread lightly — adding function, light, and a glass addition that opens the house to its classic yet natural gardens without overpowering the original masonry. On the addition, interior steel columns rise from a limestone floor, wrapped in a glass skin. Inside, the material choices — brass, Belgian bluestone, white oak — carry the same restraint into the kitchen, family room, and the rooms beyond.

3,350 sq.ft. Main House, with 2,500 sq.ft. Guesthouse / Garage. Full gut renovation and porch additions to the main house; new construction guesthouse and garage.

Whenever on Shelter Island, the client uses his motorboat much as one might normally drive a car: he picks up guests at the ferry, eats lunch in town, and takes architectural tours of the island with it. In fact, the idea of being on Shelter Island for him is to be constantly near the water, and the design of his house allows for this effortlessly. The back of the house which faces Dering Harbor and the client's motorboat dock actually acts as a second front of the house, with large openings and strong symmetric forms inviting guests from the yard, terraces and pool, where all of the daily activities take place. While on the property or in the house, one is always at most only a few steps away from experiencing the harbor. Even from the Motor Court, the placement of glazed windows and doors allow transparency through to the sailboats and water beyond.

To come upon these two structures under the towering Oak trees is to recognize the familiar island vernacular architecture and its minimal material palette of white shingles, deep red clay brick, and dark green shutters and evergreen plantings. To spend time in this house is to understand that the organization is about experiencing the landscape, light, views and connections between and within the structures. The idea behind the simple sometimes classical detailing is to dress up the house, while allowing it to be the casual, All-American summer house that it wants to be.

Construction: Delamere Building

Interior Decoration: Bierly-Drake

Landscape Architecture: Ashley Penn Christopher Landscape Design

Set on Shelter Island with water views beyond, this shingle-style house was expanded with a series of low-roofed, glass-walled additions — capped in copper and detailed with large-format windows — that bring light deep into the home while reading as a quiet, contemporary counterpoint to the original shingled form. A wraparound porch, added as part of the same scope, extends the living space outdoor and ties the house to its gardens.

The grounds were reshaped to match: a new stone terrace and pool, a retaining wall, and full regrading of the site laid the groundwork for the surrounding landscape design. Stone garden paths, mature plantings, and a fenced perennial border now extend the architecture's calm, layered sensibility outward, framed by the long lawn approach to the house.

Landscape Design:

Farm Landscape Design

4,700 sq.ft. Main House, with 400 sq.ft. Garage - Gut renovation & Addition including Kitchen, Mud Room, Pantry, Breakfast Room, Master Bedroom and Bath, Library, Garden Room, Green Roof, Solar energy.

Upon finding this immensely beautiful three story redwood house which had not been updated since the turn of last century, this family simultaneously planned a renovation and a move across country to the Bay area with their two young girls. After decades of living in New York, what they valued most would be a strong connection to nature. The bond with nature became a guiding design principle. When the Structural Engineer advised re-building the foundation to better withstand future earthquakes, it was an invitation to open the entire floor to the landscape - a Garden Room, Wine Cellar, Library, and crafts Studio. The focus on nature would also include modernizing for environmental efficiency - a living roof on the Garage, on-demand hot water and solar hot water systems, a zinc roof which allows pure rainwater run off into the gardens, and sustainable materials such as wood, stone, ceramic, steel and natural rubber.

Wherever possible, Studio Geiger chose artisan-made or handmade items in keeping with a reinvented modern spirit of the Arts and Crafts movement - an idea which translated into hand painted tiles in the Kitchen, handmade Heath tiles in the Bathrooms, hand-blocked wallpapers, and all cabinetry made by a local cabinetmaker or manufacturers whose products embody an attention to craft. The deep redwood tones inside and out provided a rich backdrop against which all other color and material choices followed.

The design received an Honor from the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association.

Landscape: Elysian Landscapes

Interiors: Commune Design

This 2,150 sq. ft. apartment in the mid-century Butterfield House complex has views of a courtyard garden on the south side and West 12th Street on the other. We made minimal but high-impact architectural moves to emphasize the spatial strengths of this apartment with open, flowing spaces and large, billowing glass and steel windows. Rooms that had been closed off were opened up to one another and unneeded construction was removed. Every surface is orchestrated, from paint and wall paper, to details of cased openings, backpainted glass, poured concrete countertops, walnut flooring, marble slab walls, teak, and metallic lacquer surfaces on cabinetry, to the crafted walnut slab sliding door and heating enclosure, as well as architectural and decorative lighting and a custom armoire. The clients desired what they termed a "happy" environment, and they are pleased.

Photographer: Mikiko Kikuyama

This Stanfordville NY house emerged from the client's simple need to purchase a new kitchen range. They wished for their huge extended family to gather at the house and so the range started reorganizing the kitchen -- we added a pizza oven that doubles as a fireplace and a large dining table, then needed it to connect and make sense with the rooms nearby and the rest of the project unfolded and grew from there.

We reorganized the main rooms so that they'd each be larger, connected them through an "enfilade" from one end of the house to the other, and added the largest room — with a 20-foot-high ceiling — at the far end. Elsewhere in the house, new full-height windows punctuate the walls to open the house up to the views and landscape in a way that hadn't been possible before. Our scope of work extended to the interior surfaces throughout — millwork, built-in cabinetry, kitchen and bath finishes — forming the quiet framework beneath the home's layered, collected furnishings.

The house settles into its rural Dutchess County setting, near Millbrook NY, expanded, opened up, and ready to welcome the family.

Studio Geiger's scope extended to the interior architecture and surfaces throughout — millwork, built-in cabinetry, kitchen and bath finishes — forming the quiet material framework beneath the home's layered, collected furnishings.

The house settles into its rural Dutchess County setting even as it opens outward to meet it — grounded and expansive at once.

Interior Design: Markham Roberts Inc.

This Brooklyn townhouse renovation was guided by the building's original character. A partial gut renovation focused the work on the kitchen, baths, and key living spaces, while ornate plaster ceiling medallions, decorative fireplace mantels, and an arched masonry doorway between the kitchen and hall were preserved and restored as anchors of the design. Against that historic framework, a new kitchen in a deep charcoal-green sets a contemporary counterpoint: a farmhouse sink, marble countertops, and brass hardware bring warmth and precision to the material palette without competing with the original architecture.

Throughout the home, tall original windows and restored millwork carry natural light and period detail into every room, from the parlor-floor living room to a dining room anchored by its own working fireplace. Renovated bedrooms and baths continue the balance of old and new — a bold botanical wallpaper and clawfoot tub bring personality to one bath, while a loft-accessed sleeping area makes use of the home's full volume.

The result is a townhouse that reads as continuously historic, with targeted updates for how the family actually lives today.

This Princeton residence was reimagined around the kitchen as the heart of daily life. To gain the space the family needed, we added a new foundation beneath the existing exterior porch, extending the kitchen's footprint and opening it directly to an adjoining butler's pantry — a walnut butcher-block counter bridges the two, offering both storage and a quieter work surface set against white shaker cabinetry. A series of new windows throughout brings in daylight the original layout hadn't allowed for, including a bay-windowed breakfast nook with built-in bench seating that turns a circulation space into a place to linger.

The gut renovation extended beyond the kitchen and pantry to the Powder Room, Dining Room, Master Bedroom Suite, and an upstairs Guest Suite, along with exterior work to integrate the new construction seamlessly with the original house.

Throughout, the goal was a house that works harder for the family living in it, without losing the character of the original home.

This Princeton, NJ medical office is under construction. We're using natural materials — white oak, plaster, concrete, glass, simple forms and greenery — to create a space that feels calm, private, and quietly welcoming.

This Westhampton Beach house on the South Shore of Long Island NY began as a modest string of connected fishermen's cottages, low and unassuming beneath their weathered cedar shingles. When the clients asked for a Master Bedroom suite, we resisted the urge to sprawl outward — instead, a simple new volume rises above the original roofline, its shingled form echoing the cottages below rather than announcing itself over them.

Inside, the transformation runs deeper than the addition suggests. We opened the ceilings of each cottage, letting the old roof structure become part of the room below, and carved an upstairs porch into the new volume — a private perch that turns what was once purely functional attic space into a moment of real drama, with views stretching out over the garden and pool beyond.

Brick paths thread the cottages together outside, as they likely always have, while the new work above quietly extends what was already there — the same house, simply given room to breathe.

Renovation & Addition

We undertook a major renovation and addition to a Skillman NJ farmhouse with work ranging from the site configuration and increasing light on the interiors to exterior materials and the construction coordination.

To safeguard the privacy of the owners we aren’t posting images of the home itself. We would, however, like to share the beauty of the place @greenflashfarm that inspired the project.

Built from the ground up on the water in Castine, Maine, this house takes its cues from the working shingled forms of the coast — gabled volumes, weathered gray shingle, simple white trim — as if it had always belonged to this harbor. A sailboat drifting past the window wasn't incidental to the design; the house was set and shaped to hold that view from its principal rooms.

Inside, a low, paneled ceiling and a run of French doors keep the rooms tied to the outdoors even in a Maine winter, while black soapstone counters and pale green subway tile bring quiet color into spaces built mostly around light. Behind the house, a guest house and garage stand like a salthouse pulled from the same shore — simple, weathered, and scaled to the same regional proportions.

The result is new construction that reads as though it grew out of the site — restrained, coastal, and at home on the water.

This gut renovation and addition takes on one of the oldest brick houses in Sharon, Connecticut — a structure whose history asked to be handled with some restraint. Rather than compete with that weight, the new work sets itself apart in scale and material: a double height addition and a loft-like kitchen and family room, with ceilings rising to 12 feet beneath walls of glass, extends off the historic brick form as something lighter yet seamless with the traditional exterior. Porches flank the addition on either side, softening the transition between the landscape and new volume.

Sited across a sloped, wooded property, the house shares its grounds with a pool house of our own design, sited to hold its own quiet presence without drawing attention from the main house. Together, they settle into the hillside the way the original brick structure likely did generations ago — working with the land's contours rather than against them.

The result is a house in two voices: the gravity of the original brick house held intact, and a new, glass-walled space and addition that let in the kind of light the historic rooms never could.

For the first phase of this Greenwich Village landmarked townhouse renovation, Studio Geiger is excavating the existing garden terrace to bring it to the level of the Kitchen and Family Room area - where the family spends much of its time. In addition, we are building a two-story glass and metal extension to open the Ground and Parlor Floor interiors to the garden and plantings that will grow there. In the Kitchen and Family Area renovation, we are unearthing the natural textures of the townhouse - the brick walls and wood ceiling joists - preserving the antique floor and re-making simple traditional wooden windows to create a warm, simple and inviting atmosphere. The second phase of the renovation which includes modifications to the the Master Bedroom Suite and a Green Roof Garden is in progress.

1,710 sq.ft.

Studio Geiger Architecture was awarded an Honorable Mention for its entry in the Building Trust International competition entitled PLAYscapes. As prompted by the competition brief, our aim was to propose a playful public landscape for a neglected, forgotten part of a city – in this case New York City. Our proposal, STAIRSCAPE, is an active extension of the city bench. Located on a narrow vacant lot on the Bowery in the Lower East Side, the project maximizes the vertical space of the lot to create a multi-purpose, dynamic space for play, rest, motion, people watching, eating, and contemplating. Through material continuity and adaptation of the stair module, STAIRSCAPE provides a space that is accessible and engages all age groups. Stairs of two different sizes create steps for seating, as well as for movement through the tiered vertical garden space. Terraces provide areas to gather and rest, while the slide, monkey bars, and tethered balls add colorful playfulness to the vertical pocket park. STAIRSCAPE redefines the concepts of the city bench and the pocket park to make them accessible to a broader public, as well as providing a whimsical space of play and respite for the Lower East Side of Manhattan. For more information, see here.

What the clients liked most about this 3,000 square foot townhouse when they purchased it was its history and potential as a home. At the time, the house itself was in complete disrepair, and any original details had been stripped away. We undertook a complete renovation from structural stabilization and digging out the Basement, to installing a full new mechanical system, electrical and plumbing, reconfiguration of rooms on the floors, new wood floors, and stairway, to the numerous custom wood and stone details throughout. The clients asked that the construction techniques be as true as possible to building methods of the time of original construction, including using solid wood and wood joinery with as little steel as possible. Simple Greek Revival detailing typical to late 19th Century New York townhouses is woven together with inspiration from colonial homes and Paris, France and integrated into a whole.

Keywords: New York NY Princeton NJ New Jersey Architect Architects Architecture Firms Interior Design Designer House Residential Renovation Additions

When our studio began work on the design, this 2,050 square foot Crosby Street loft was a raw space with grand, classical details at the ceiling and baseboards and floors showing the patina from age and industrial wear. Sensitive to the existing space, we restored the original detailing along the exterior perimeter of the loft while adapting a two bedroom apartment to keep as much of the open space and impressive proportions as possible. Insertions, including a Wine Room, Kitchen, two bathrooms and two bedrooms, insinuate themselves into the space adding drama of light, and subtle juxtapositions of materials and styles to create a comfortable, functional home.

"We would like this space to feel like a loft", said the clients who were living in a Tribeca loft at the time they decided to renovate two one-bedroom apartments into a 1,300 sq.ft., two-bedroom apartment in The Alden, a pre-war Emery Roth building on the Upper West Side. The ensuing design allows a simultaneous view out the nine windows to the treetops of Central Park when the doors are open, allowing the space to flow from the main Living and Dining spaces, through the Boudoir Hall, to the Master Bedroom Suite, then back around to the Study which doubles as a Second Bedroom. The materials chosen were to evoke those from India, where the client's families are from, even as the lines are kept simple and the palette restrained. Now a loft-like space exists within the rhythms and elegance of the pre-war boundaries.

A neutral palette, attention to textures, lines and materials add a layer of simplicity and focus to the interior of this 6,500 sq. ft. Queen Anne brownstone on the West Side of Manhattan. When we began work on this house, the clients had just purchased it, but had not yet moved in. The design had been renovated numerous times, and there was inconsistency from floor to floor, room to room. Additionally, the design was not to the clients liking. We jumped in to provide full design services, from choosing the paint palette for the entire house, to designing custom marble mantelpiece surrounds, providing carpeting, window treatments, upholstery fabrics and services, refinishing floors, re-placing architectural light fixtures, as well as custom furniture design and choosing furniture and fixtures such as sofas, antique sconces and chandeliers, floor lamps and art lighting. After the client moved in we undertook a renovation of the full Ground Floor, including the Kitchen, lighting, HVAC, cabinetry, stairs and storage to make it a comfortable center of their family life.

Keywords: New York NY Princeton NJ New Jersey Architect Architects Architecture Firms Interior Design Designer House Residential Renovation Additions Manhattan Brooklyn

We transformed this 10,700 square foot floor of a loft building in SoHo from a raw factory space into what would be the forerunning post-production film studio in Manhattan, with state-of-the-art equipment, high quality sound isolation, and other desirable amenities. The program required numerous on-line and off-line editing studios where clients could rent space, as well as open studios for the Edgeworx employees to use. As editors spend long hours, day and night on deadlines, an emphasis on communal living and comfort drove a number of decisions, such as the main circulation path, a large functional Kitchen, library and lounge, easily accessible cabinetry and storage, and individually monitored heating, cooling and air systems. Sustainable materials and surfaces are incorporated where possible.

A brand known for feminine clothing and footwear asked us to design the concept for their 1,200 sq.ft. flagship boutique on a prominent Nolita corner location. Drawing from Hollywood cinema, 1930s spatial design, vacation getaways and the brand color blue, we worked closely with the designer to refine the design which was accepted for development and construction.

Liesl Geiger-Kincade acted as Project Manager for the Interior Architecture of this Dormitory at the Taft School while working with Robert A.M. Stern Architects.

As Robert A.M. Stern’s website describes this project, the “new residence hall links with the existing Charles Phelps Taft Hall to allow the Taft School to complete the process of becoming a coeducational residential school. The new building provides the flexibility essential to improving the quality of both student and faculty housing in the School's existing dormitories. It includes three classrooms, forty-eight student rooms, four common rooms, and four faculty apartments.

In its design, the new residence hall reflects the high quality of the Taft School's architectural heritage. During major building campaigns in the early twentieth century, the School was designed in an almost seamless fashion by Bertram G. Goodhue and James Gamble Rogers, forming in effect one single building. The composition was unified by a common architectural vocabulary and use of materials designed to celebrate the institution as a whole. In the 1960s, the School unfortunately strayed from this language. Our building returns to the original architectural vocabulary of the campus, forming a single composition with the existing dormitory. It has been carefully sited so that it creates, along with existing buildings, a new courtyard.”

Liesl Geiger-Kincade acted as Project Manager for this house while working with Robert A.M. Stern Architects.

As Robert A.M. Stern’s website describes this project, “on a 24-acre site with views of the Napa Valley and distant mountains, this house recalls the California farmsteads of such Bay Area architects as William Wurster, as well as the rural vernacular of Tuscany and Provence. The house is composed of a series of variously-scaled stucco-faced and tile-roofed volumes arranged linearly along an axis of circulation, as if to suggest expansion over time. The volumes correspond roughly to the individual rooms of the plan, each a formal entity in its own right, but which are disposed informally in relation to each other. The result is a relaxed composition that straddles its knoll and creates a series of implied and real courtyards to impart a more human sense of scale on the majestic landscape.

Outbuildings include a garage set apart from the main house by a walled garden and a rubble-stone-faced guest house by the pool. Both of these structures nestle into the hillside to open up views from the main house and to minimize the degree of building on the site.”

Liesl Geiger-Kincade acted as a Junior Architectural on this project while working with Peter Marino Architect.