unreal estate: borrowed light.
interior windows and artfully divided spaces that let the sunshine in.
The wish for a home was intense, yet I could not place it geographically, nor did I know how to achieve such a spectacular house with my precarious income. All the same, I added it to my imagined property portfolio, along with a few other imagined minor properties. …In this sense, I owned some unreal estate.
- Deborah Levy, Real Estate
In the throes of a search for a rental apartment that threatens to destroy whatever remaining grasp on sanity I have, I’ve decided to lean into a search that’s much more fun—an imaginary one. This decision might indicate the extent of my cracking up, or perhaps it’s the healthy response to the gloom of real estate reality. In either case, I’ve decided to launch a new series, gathering inspiration and making moodboards for elements that—who knows—might one day make their way into a place I actually call home.
Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s Manifesting.
First up in the series, a study in borrowed light—that soft, diffuse light that filters from one room into another, and is especially welcome in city townhouses that tend to be short on exterior windows.
Having browsed hundreds of New York City apartments in the past month, I’ve had many occasions to bemoan crude renovations that have either added walls, or taken them down, and have not done the place any favors along the way.
In already cramped apartments, I keep seeing walls that have been erected as a way to claim an extra bedroom or closet, without seeming to consider the light that they block or the movement they stagnate. In other cases, the opposite has been done, whole walls with french doors removed, getting rid of a space that had been cleverly cordoned off into a separate zone of its own.
I’m begging renovating landlords and the apartment gods for more borrowed light. If you’re going to carve out extra rooms from already small spaces, the least you can do is bring back the tuberculous windows. Give us back the borrowed light and for heaven’s sake, uncover the transom windows above the doors in pre-war buildings. They were put there for a reason!
I might not take a sledgehammer to a rental wall, but with a bit of imagination, open spaces can be creatively divided. Consider as inspiration the beautiful coach house in London (1), where windowed walls create a clear delineation of space without sacrificing light. For the renters among us, built-in windows and custom millwork is probably not in our future, but salvaged glass doors hung from the ceiling, or affixed to bookcases can still make a kind of temporary wall and provide a bit of privacy.