Brooklyn-born and -raised Shane Neufeld is an artist who happens to be an architect; he earned his graduate degree from the Yale School of Architecture in 2009 after receiving his B.A. in fine arts from Amherst in 2004. He worked for Rogers Marvel Architects and Christoff: Finio Architecture before launching his own firm, Light and Air (L/AND/A) in 2017. For the past ten years, he lived in a Bed-Stuy loft big enough for his painting studio, but after getting married in 2015, and having a child, Malcolm (who is nearly a year old), it was time to put down deeper roots. So Shane set out looking for a wreck that he could breathe new life into with a full-throttle gut renovation. And the result is downright glorious. The key to Shane’s light-filled drama at home? It’s all about the switchback staircase.

“We were lucky that certain parts of the building were in such good structural shape,” Shane says. “The brick wall by the stairs, for instance, is almost completely straight — all the way up 30-feet high.” Still, he noted that the plasterwork had been so damaged that it needed to be removed, along with the plumbing and electricity. Neufeld used standard masonry paint on the brick wall. Photo: Courtesy of Shane Neufeld/Kevin Kunstadt

The new switchback staircase (on the right) that replaced the former stacked stairs has lots of design power: “It allows you to look up directly to the roof,” says Shane, who also installed a 14 x 6 foot skylight that lets natural light flow through the house. Stylistically, it looks fresh and modern, but it also eliminated the hallways that linked the stacked stairs, helping light and air circulate into adjacent rooms. Photo: Courtesy of Shane Neufeld/Kevin Kunstadt

“The wood walls were sort of like a coding for the more private utilities: the bathroom and the storage space,” Shane says. “The white walls are for the more public space.” The fridge is Sub Zero, the dishwasher is Miele, and the cooktop is Wolf. Photo: Courtesy of Shane Neufeld/Kevin Kunstadt

The new bathroom features 8 x 8 Clé cement tiles for the floor and 3 x 12 tiles by Heath Ceramics for the shower. Photo: Courtesy of Shane Neufeld/Kevin Kunstadt