20+ Modern Warehouse and Garages Conversions

Web developer Rich Yessian involved local preservation groups early and often to gain permission to unite home, office, and outdoors at an aged warehouse that, according to Sanborn Maps, predates the Civil War.

Linda Hutchins and John Montague hired Works Partnership Architecture to turn a former Portland, Oregon, warehouse and auto repair shop into a versatile live/work space.

Tribeca Manufacturing Building New York–based architect Andrew Franz undertook the renovation of a landmark circa-1884 former soap warehouse in Tribeca, originally designed by George W. DaCunha in the Romanesque Revival style. Franz reorganized and modernized the six-story building—which retains its original 16-foot beam ceilings, brick walls, timber columns, and elevator winches from the former freight shaft—by incorporating steel, glass, handmade tile, and lacquer to complement the masonry and heavy timber. An interior courtyard and rectangular mezzanine are situated below the original 16-foot gull-wing ceiling planes.

By burnishing historic details and adjusting the floor plan, multidisciplinary studio Loft Szczecin restored and transformed a loft in a warehouse that dates from before World War II. The living room rug is a Polish textile from the 1930s.

By burnishing historic details and adjusting the floor plan, multidisciplinary studio Loft Szczecin restored and transformed a loft in a warehouse that dates from before World War II. The living room rug is a Polish textile from the 1930s. Most of the furniture is vintage from Denmark, the Czech Republic, Poland, and the Netherlands.

The living areas and an office are arranged in an open layout around a central atrium that is open to the outdoors.

It’s important to confirm that there are no rotten columns, beams, or other damaged supporting elements before you buy a home.

“The building is listed as a building of individual heritage significance,” architect Andrew Simpson says of this two-story structure in Melbourne. “There was very little scope to alter the exterior.”

Architect David Hill, his wife, Elizabeth, and their three children (from left: Wade, eight, Luke, six, and Breyton, ten), have an unusual home by the standards of their college-town setting in Auburn, Alabama. Built in 1920, the industrial brick building has had previous incarnations as a church, a recycling center, and a pool hall, among others.

This 19th-century New York factory houses the apartment of Brandon and Amy Phillips as well as the workshop for their company, Miles & May Furniture Works.

Beneath a recycled-wood ceiling and centered by a Bokhara rug, the living area contains furniture of their own design.

Keeping the original mottled, worn-brick walls and outfitting the kitchen with their own custom cabinetry were among this couple’s cost-saving measures.

In the guest bedroom, a painting by Monique Crine hangs on the original brick wall above a Miles & May bed and side table. The rug is from ABC Carpet & Home.

The bathroom evokes the building’s industrial bones. The pendant light is from Ikea, and the towel racks are repurposed train car luggage racks. The Carrara tiles are mismatched seconds. “It works if you let yourself not try to fix it,” says Brandon.

The Trues host parties in the glass-walled structure, located steps from their vacation home, or they escape to it to catch some rays and read a book. Bill reclines on cushions hidden under the reclaimed-fir floorboards that are propped up with Sugatsune hinges.

To allude to the nearby ocean, the architects designed a seaweed patterned for the interior of the garage door (seen here raised). It successfully reads like a leather padded wall and makes “the cube” feel that much more customized.

Standing-seam copper siding accentuates sections of the structure that provide shear support for the steel moment frame.

To reference the original structure and to offer privacy, Grizzle left two of the shingled walls standing. The building, accessed by a cedar deck, opens to its surroundings via a sliding glass wall by Fleetwood and a bifold steel-and-glass garage door from Wilson Doors.

The “tiny but mighty” structure—as Grizzle describes it—packs a wealth of uses into a compact footprint.