Located in central Harlem, The Vidro is a new six-unit residential building highlighting the potential of small new buildings on small urban-infill sites to help address NYC’s housing crisis. 

These small, leftover, and often overlooked infill lots are opportunities to affect positive social change in underserved communities throughout NYC and other large urban centers around the world.

NYC infill sites present unique challenges due to limited space on small and narrow sites with zoning and code regulations intended for larger buildings. Our goal was to strategically maximize limited available floor area (FAR) while making compact interiors feel spacious and desirable places to live.  

To make these challenging sites viable, we add-value and reduce costs through design-based solutions that strategically maximize limited floor area, squeezing the most utility and value out of every inch by making compact interiors feel spacious. The Vidro’s sculptural front façade is the result of precise manipulations that pivot and punch the building’s massing to optimize internal space by strategically adding floor area where needed (on lower levels) and removing it where not needed (at kitchen/living rooms), all while responding to the site’s 23’-9” width and required code/zoning constraints. This strategy transformed a useless alcove into something large-enough for a study, bedroom or dining-room

Combining design details found in high-end residences with exhaustive space-planning, high-quality environments are created with a greater sense of openness, efficiency and value not typically found in smaller NYC buildings. 

The Vidro, meaning “glass” in Portuguese, reveals the potential of small buildings to help solve large urban problems, becoming a model for multifamily urban-infill projects while illustrating how design can add value by making compact and efficient urban housing desirable places to live.

Small Lots are the next big thing.