Tankhouse is a Brooklyn-based real estate development firm with over 30 years of collective experience in architecture, urban planning, development, and construction. Formed in 2013 by partners Sam Alison-Mayne and Sebastian Mendez, Tankhouse was built on the belief that design and development are symbiotic disciplines, and the best results emerge from an integrated and holistic approach.
THE TEAM AT 450 WARREN ROOFTOP
Tankhouse develops projects in Brooklyn, where they live and work. By prioritizing shared spaces that reinforce community, thoughtfully considering the journey from street to doorstep, and offering abundant private outdoor spaces, Tankhouse has quickly defined a niche for themselves in an incredibly competitive industry.
Experimental with architectural forms, materiality, and layouts, the team is always rethinking ways to improve quality of life and turn route apartment living into singular homes. For every project, Tankhouse curates a team of like-minded talents who push one another to find the optimal design solution for each unique location.
Tankhouse purposefully chooses challenging and unexpected sites to develop, and considers the unique qualities of each to find a solution that fits within the context of the surrounding built environment. In addition to 144 Vanderbilt, projects include: 450 Warren Street, Nine Chapel, and 450 Union Street.
PENTHOUSE TERRACE
AT 450 WARREN
450 Warren Street, the company’s first completed development, is located in the heart of Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill neighborhood. The 52,479-square-foot residential building offers a new paradigm for dense urban living. This first collaboration with architects SO-IL resulted in a design that demonstrates both parties’ philosophies and approaches to simultaneously facilitating intimacy and community. Arranged around a trio of voids carved from the structural volume, the 18 residences all enjoy multiple orientations, and are connected by outdoor corridors, bridges and stairs.
450 Warren Street has since sold-out and received critical acclaim in The New York Times, Fast Company, Architectural Digest, and Architectural Record. Along with Nine Chapel, Tankhouse is also currently working on a residential and retail development at 144 Vanderbilt Avenue in Fort Greene, slated for completion in 2024, and another at 450 Union Street in Gowanus.
OUTDOOR SPACE
AT 450 WARREN
450 WARREN ATRIUM
AND WALKWAYS
Nine Chapel is a 14-story freestanding condominium tower, draped in a fine undulating, shimmering skin of perforated lightweight metal.
The unique façade catches light throughout the day, changing color to reflect the hour and season, creating a striking yet soft ethereal quality. The reflectivity of Nine Chapel permeates outside and in, allowing it to simultaneously blend with, and stand out against, its context, adding a dramatic presence to the diverse skyline and creating a new visual icon for its location where Dumbo meets Downtown Brooklyn. Depending on weather conditions or the time of day, the building can disappear into the sky, glisten with pearlescent hues, or mirror the fiery sunset.
Each residence features at least one and up to four distinct private outdoor terraces. For the larger homes, some of these exterior spaces face in different directions and others wrap around to enjoy multiple orientations—maximizing sun exposure throughout the day.
NINE CHAPEL INTERIOR
144 Vanderbilt and its precast concrete facade sits at the corner of Vanderbilt Avenue and Myrtle Avenue. The project's 26 units, ranging from two to four bedrooms, capitalize on the site's corner condition to produce homes with multiple exposures, exterior space, shared gardens, and premium amenities.
144 VANDERBILT’S PRECAST
CONCRETE FACADE
"In terms of the relationship to the street, Vanderbilt is a very important and quite beautiful historic avenue in Brooklyn. Very early on we were conscious of the presence on the sharp corner of Myrtle Avenue, and how important it was to give that key corner something really robust, which announces itself a few blocks down. But we also needed to negotiate with the context, which very quickly drops down to the townhouses of the Wallabout Historic District, and design a composition that meets the scale of the neighborhood. This is somewhat tightly related to materiality as well. Typically when there's a large massing, architects break the building down into different materials. But for us, there was a real excitement to work with a single material and embrace the idea of a continuity of a palette throughout the entirety of the building. This adds to the sculptural and object-like quality of the building itself, and Sam and Seb were interested in working with precast concrete from early on."
— Florian Idenburg, SO-IL
