Chermayeff Residence Upper East Side New York This addition to the Chermayeff penthouse apartment celebrates the mundane and ubiquitous Manhattan rooftop water tower. The penthouse floor of this building presents a stark contrast to the neo-classical façade of the conventional pre-War apartment-house below. Carved out of fourteenth-floor rooftop spaces that originally housed building staff and servants, the apartment faces out on a generous roof terrace and stunning views of the Manhattan skyline. However, when Ghiora Aharoni Design Studio was brought in to renovate the existing apartment and design a home-office addition, the apartment turned its back on the rooftop's most dramatic architectural element, the water tower looming thirty feet above the roof. For the apartment renovation, Ghiora Aharoni Design Studio broke open the dining room with a skylight and floor-to-ceiling windows, creating dramatic vistas that incorporated the formerly invisible water tower into the apartment as an environmental sculpture. Further accentuating the water tower’s relationship to the residence, the new window mullions echo the massive structure of the water tower. In contrast to the sober apartment house underneath, the exterior of the penthouse apartment is clad in weathered copper. The water tower's rough beauty was the inspiration for a future addition, home-office at the southern end of the apartment. In Scheme C of the schematic design phase, the home-office addition consists of a 300-square-foot office linked to the apartment by a narrow, 200-square-foot hall. Inspired by the water tower's powerful, industrial design elements - rough wood, steel bands and trusses - the home-office almost appears to be a water tank that has tumbled down to sit sideways on the roof. Structurally, the office and hallway are interlocking ovoid cylinders, their pre-fab steel structures clad with weathered copper and pierced by windows. No longer seen from afar, the water tower - an iconic element of the Manhattan skyline - has metamorphosed into a residential idiom. clear the logs