In the back of a 142-year-old building in Manhattan’s bustling SoHo neighborhood, a 1,600-square-foot apartment features lofted bedrooms with glass block floors and a 16-foot-high skylight that hovers over the living area. British architect Alastair Standing, managing member of the eponymous New York firm Standing Architecture, transformed the prewar unit—originally a large, open studio—where he lived and worked until the current owners, George and Diana Sharp, bought the space in 2006.

“The architect’s primary objective was to open the space to the sky and keep the light ‘moving’ until it could be refracted,” says listing agent Esteban Gomez of Compass. “This was accomplished with a large skylight and glass block floors. The combination of high and low spaces is intended to continue the scale of the existing loft volume but also form more intimate spaces for living.”

When George, who works in the fashion industry, and Diana, a ceramicist, moved into the unit with their teenage son, they loved the architect’s original vision, but the couple made a few cosmetic changes to reflect their minimalist preferences. The owners coated the existing red-brick walls with white paint, replaced the tile flooring with dark wood, and decorated the interior with a muted palette. “Architecturally speaking, nothing has changed,” says the listing agent. “Aesthetically, everything got revamped.”

Upon entering the apartment, which sits on the ground level of a five-story cooperative at 426 Broome Street, a long corridor with dark-gray walls leads to a small bedroom—formerly Standing’s workspace—on the right. Custom drapes offer privacy in the compact room, which looks out onto the main living area through floor-t0-ceiling windows and includes a walk-in closet.

The hallway leads past a bathroom clad in terrazzo and concrete tile to the open kitchen, living, and dining room. The kitchen features crisp, white countertops, a Miele dishwasher, and a Bertazzoni range. Overhead lighting illuminates the cooking area below the glass block floors of the bedroom above. Across from the kitchen, the dining area sits below the other lofted bedroom propped up by white plinths. A closet with extra storage conceals a laundry area.

In the towering living room, three oversize windows frame a curvilinear, dark-brown leather couch from the 1970s, which sits below a 16-foot-high glass ceiling that floods the interior with light. “Every time I walk in here, I’m amazed by how much I still love it,” says George of the luminous apartment. “The contradiction of finding this calming space in the middle of this exciting neighborhood is something we haven’t tired of.”

From the first level, a narrow stairwell near the entry leads to an aluminum bridge that connects the two lofted bedrooms and an office. At the far end of each bedroom, mirrored walls built at an angle below rectangular light wells refract light into the spaces. The floors, comprised of two glass block layers—one frosted for privacy—allow artificial light from the ground level to pass through.

“The whole apartment is about a play of light, natural or otherwise,” says George. “Leaving a light on in one room allows it to filter into another, creating a play of multiple, softly diffused light sources.”

426 Broome Street, Unit 1R in New York, New York, currently listed for $2,350,000 by Esteban Gomez of Compass.

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