BFDO Architects is an award-winning architecture and design firm based in New York City founded in 2006 by Alexandra Barker, AIA. We work at a broad range of scales and programs, from residential and interior projects to retail, institutional and cultural buildings and spaces. We embrace the challenge of bringing into dialogue each project’s unique inputs–from requirements, restrictions, and constraints to influences, desires, and dreams–to produce buildings and spaces that enduringly engage the evolving conditions of contemporary life. We enjoy working through the complexities of sites from dense urban conditions to delicate coastal landscapes. Our residential clients range from professional couples with families to writers and artists. We have extensive experience with everything from Brooklyn brownstones to Tribeca lofts to Upper West Side apartment combinations as well as coastal and upstate weekend houses. Our commercial portfolio includes wellness and retail projects as well as creative business offices, while our institutional work includes preschool design and speculative projects at larger scales. Our work has received awards and recognition from the AIA, Architect’s Newspaper, Architizer, and NYCxDesign. Projects have been featured in Metropolis, Architecture, Architectural Record, ARC Magazine, Architect’s Newspaper, Dezeen, ArchDaily, New York Magazine, and Brownstoner. A monograph of the firm’s work is expected in the fall of 2018.
Five years after Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on the coastline of New York City, the Surfboard House was completed on a waterfront lot in Breezy Point, Queens, where a house had been washed away. Rebuilding required following strict flood regulations. The resulting building envelope allows nearly every room to have an ocean view.
For this renovation, the existing building volume was carved and expanded to carefully proportion room sizes, sequences, and adjacencies, and to capture daylight with generously-sized skylights, window walls and glazed corners.
A Hong Kong-based businessman, the father of three adult children, purchased this brownstone. Three duplexes and a parents’ suite were designed so the family could live together all under one roof.
The historic details in this parlor-basement duplex in a Landmarked brownstone in Fort Greene, Brooklyn were in fantastic condition. The preservation of the plasterwork on the parlor level, the working fireplaces, the existing parlor doors and trim, and the exposed beams in the lower level were prioritized in the design approach to the project.
The clients purchased this wood frame row house in east Williamsburg after falling in love with this beautiful, small tree-lined street. We worked to combine historical elements and modern details throughout the house, with a strategy of a historically correct approach in the front and a modern attitude toward the back.
