Asymptote Architects carving a niche on Perry Street.

By the time developer Richard Born decided the canvas was primed to transform an old parking garage at 166 Perry Street directly adjacent to the twin Richard Meier residential towers into a condominium, he knew the public was primed to accept the "retro futuristic" vision of Asymptote Architects, the young design team he hand picked for the project.

Born credits his firm Perry Street Development Corp LLC and their groundbreaking of the first two Meier buildings in New York almost ten years ago with the onset of the Starchitects trend and the throng of designer buildings that have popped up since then. Born is now confident that architecture is so integral to the industry, the design of the 24-unit condo at 166 Perry which includes honeycombed glass, metal scrims with computer generated laser cut openings and other features that strike him as "something you would imagine seeing in a Jetson's cartoon," will be well received.

"We tend to like to build interesting things. When the rezoning of the West Village and the extension of the landmark area occurred we knew there would be a lot less development in the area, and we thought this project would be unique there. We believed the neighborhood could use another artfully designed project and we had the means by which to create it," Born said.

Asymptote Architects were ready too. The firms two principals Hani Rashid and Lisa Ann Couture were responsible for building designs for the Guggenheim Virtual Museum, the HydraPier pavilion in Holland and the virtual-reality 3D trading Floor for the New York Stock Exchange and spent most of the early part of their career devoted to what they considered "research" into the nuances of their craft. They drew on the lessons they learned through many of these projects to create 166 Perry Street, their first attempt at residential development in their home town.

"The developers were great--having cut their teeth working with Meir they now approach us and architects of our generation and are open minded and ready to let us go in at it our own way," said Hani Rashid, co-principal of Asymptote Architects." "As architects we spent much of our younger years kind of discovering everything that we could. We were like musicians who spend years and years practicing scales and waiting for the moment when they finally are ready to perform. We've done a lot of practicing and this project has become our performance."

Inspiration for the muted glass that sheathes each of the twenty four lofts isolated in their own separate corners of the building was drawn from their work on a glass optic installation at a local gallery and an optical experiment they did in a Venice competition several years ago. The glass is double skinned to both capture the light from the sky above, and mute the view inside to offer residents a "painterly abstraction of New York City Street Life." The panes are juxtaposed in different directions to capture different degrees of light.

"We liked playing with the light because New York City streets are so cavernous," Rashid said. "Each unit feels like a glass house in the sky," Rashid said.

The firm drew upon components several experimental retail interiors they had worked on including the American Flagship Stores for Carlos Liele and Alessi, and some of their holographic work to create the scrims for the facade to protect ground floor apartments. The white metal scrims are comprised of computer generated laser designs he likens to the dots on a Lichtenstein painting which give the residents an oddly distorted and futuristic view of pedestrians while keeping pedestrians from being able to see in.

Though the buildings lobby, skin, and many of the the buildings features will be decadent, Rashid said the firm was careful not to impose their aesthetics on the interior of each apartment. Slight variations to apartments interiors including sculpted cabinets and tables in the kitchen will not be too overpowering he said, as the artistic design is meant to "comfort and inspire but also disappear into the background."

When the building is complete next year that perspective and the fact that Asymptote Architects are one of the few star firms born and bred in New York, will make the two and three bedroom lofts and penthouses whose costs range from $2 million to $11.5 million, distinct from the rest of the artistic pet projects throughout the city.

"Some of the design buildings lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day this is a place for people to live their lives," he said.