Archimatika's Snail Brings Slow Living to Manhattan

Archimatika has designed a modern high rise residential scheme for Manhattan. “The Snail” prioritizes slow living in the high-paced metropolis, providing residential amenities usually lacking in typical Manhattan housing. While proposing a departure from New York City’s fast-paced lifestyle, the scheme blends with the city’s urban fabric with mosaic concrete facades over a steel frame structure.

On the exterior, a mosaic concrete facade reinterprets a traditional New York ornamentation technique with modern materials and technologies. The scheme features polymer concrete with two types of marble, resulting in a curved, polished block of warm terra-cotta brown speckled with complimenting marble. These concrete elements are accentuated with a brass-clad entrance and curved windows, offering a fluid, airy rhythm.

The scheme contains 30 apartments with 16 spatial layouts ranging from 290 square feet to 1830 square feet, aiming to create a varied tenant mix of young professionals, families, and older tenants. The conceptual idea is to create a comfortable living environment translated through all design elements: a safe point of arrival, thoughtful space arrangement, and pleasant tactile materials.

The gradual buffer zone between private and public areas allows for a gentle transition from street to home. At the point of entrance, the lobby is intimate and welcoming; the following levels offer multifunctional spaces like gym, garden, barber shop bar, cigar room, and work space. The gradient shift from the street to home starts on the first-floor cafe, leading up to a barber shop, which becomes a bar in the evening.

In the words of the architects, “this project aims to create a new typology of housing in New York, the melting pot of different cultures and experiences. It has re-thought a typical home purpose while implementing unique design characteristics to maximize the use of space and amenities.”

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