clear the logs Rethinking the Tenement Apartment Leroy Street Residence Greenwich Village This project celebrates turn-of-the-century construction methodology of a 1903 tenement apartment by exposing the brick walls, ceiling beams, and wooden studs that lay hidden beneath layers of paint, plaster, and lathe.  White paint lends a minimalist unity to the rough charm of the construction elements that are, on close inspection, coarse and quirky: the bricks, beams, and studs are uneven, irregular, and rarely truly square.  The apartment building was originally built to house the Italian-American families that crowded into Manhattan’s West Village in the late nineteenth century, and the renovation did not erase this past.  The apartment interior was completely demolished so that the original walls are largely gone, but the configuration of the ceiling beams retains the memory of the apartment’s original floor plan.  Within this architectural framework, cutting-edge technologies – in particular new design softwares –  are used to rethink ergonomics, materials, and fabrication methodologies.  The front door handle redefines ergonomic expectations by aligning the sinuous aluminum lever vertically instead of horizontally.  In the bathroom, a stainless steel and resin sink evokes a shimmering pool of water.  The result is a gesamtkunstwerk:  the kitchen cabinets and the bookshelves were custom designed, as were numerous other elements in the apartment, from the stainless steel counters and shower ring down to the intercom panel, the bathroom hardware, and a mezuzah at the entrance.