After a decade in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Chaitanya Harshita Nedunuri Kahn and Zachary Kahn knew that they wanted a change. They were aimed at the red hooks, an enclave on the water that has a short transit and is largely cut off by the rest of the district by the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.
In January 2023, they visited a spacious Duplex apartment on the lower two floors of a two-family-friendly town house, but with a big journey to visit the family in India and to contest other obligations, they did not think it was feasible to move in time.
But the apartment was still available months later. And when the Kahns started the approval process for the apartment, they were a little surprised to meet the neighbors who had the apartment on the upper floors.
The owners of the lower duplex – the future landlords of the Kahns – knew that the walls were thin between the units and that this sound was worn. In addition, the safety box was for both units in the Kahns living room, and the apartments had the same key.
Ms. Nedunuri Kahn, designer and researcher, and Mr. Kahn, a dealer for stocks, clicked with the family on the upper floor-a couple and their two teenagers and moved to the two-room two bedrooms, two and a- Half bathroom apartment. (You have not changed the key situation from “mutual trust”, said Ms. Nedunuri Kahn.)
The simple relationship with the neighbors was for Ms. Nedunuri Kahn, who grew up in a close -meshed community in New Jersey, in which people in a close community in New Jersey grew up in which people kept standing under households and guests. She wanted her own home to share this friendly atmosphere with her friends and her new neighbors.
“I love my neighbors for red hooks. It's really a kind of cult y, ”said Ms. Nedunuri Kahn. “After a while to live in New York, it feels like a really rare corner of the city.”
Shortly after his arrival, a neighbor welcomed the fragrance company pharmacy based in Red Hook – with a candle. Ms. Nedunuri Kahn learned that she could rely on the owner of Red Hook Pilates to hear the latest events in the neighborhood when she visited the lessons, and this visits to the Red Hook Café would lead to long conversations. Mr. Kahn and Ms. Nedunuri Kahn got to know an owner of Open Invite, a local household goods business, and finally commissioned an owner of Open Invite.
$ 6,000 | Red Hook, Brooklyn
Chaitanya Harshita Nedunuri Kahn, 31; And Zachary Kahn, 32
Professions: Ms. Nedunuri Kahn is a consultant, designer and researcher; Mr. Kahn is a dealer at a bank.
Become locals: Before the couple was visited regularly in the summer. Now they realize that they had experienced the neighborhood as tourists. “The experience of being a local one is to have a very tight pulse when tourist things happen and then have small secret places,” said Ms. Nedunuri Kahn.
To expected Dessert: Mr. Kahn has set himself the habit of baking a sweet treat every Sunday and – often cookies or cakes – share it with the neighbors on the upper floor. One of the parents wrote an SMS to him one night and said that her son asked himself if it would be dessert because he had school the next day and had to prepare for the bed. “It's almost finished!” Mr. Kahn assured you.
The following summer, Ms. Nedunuri Kahn found a way to open her home in the neighborhood by transforming the heated, free -standing studio into an art gallery in the back yard. The couple had largely used it for storage, so Ms. Nedunuri Kahn cleared it. She worked with a contractor to build up wooden walls and install lighting to illuminate the art.
Ms. Nedunuri Kahn called the Spill 180 gallery, a name that pointed out the interdisciplinary way of work that she wanted to show, and “rooted in the idea that only doors open and went to each other in the life of the other,” said she. “Maybe sometimes it's a bit chaotic, but I think it's really about mutual dependency.”
She commissioned the help of friends – and Mr. Kahn – to set off and had the first show in August.
First, Ms. Nedunuri Kahn had open gallery times in which she would sit in front of her house to lead people to the studio. But soon she moved to a system that allows you to allow visits to poems, a reading of poems, a Paella dinner party and a concert among you.
A current show at Spill was rituals of recursion with a representation of letterpress Printing by Aarati Akkapeddi, which has created a computer program to encode text in Kolam designs. Kolams is a traditional form of South Indian art and are drawings that are usually made with rice flour in one entrance to a house and MX. Akkapeddi created one on the floor during the opening.
“Working with a person in your house was just such a nice experience because we could simply think about what was important for the room and for the people who visit him and how we wanted to attract people and what kind of conversations and There could be joint structure ”, MX. Akkapeddi said.
Ms. Nedunuri Kahn hoped to promote an environment to feel more at home artists and visitors than in a typical art gallery. Sometimes it was literally as if visitors were entering the house of the Kahns in and from the first floor. The emigration could be overwhelming.
“To be honest, I didn't always love it, but it was something in which it was not our bedroom, at least not our bedroom,” said Kahn about the area on the ground floor. He is also grateful that the bedrooms are up. “The two separate rooms make the conversation easier. It makes a room like this as comfortable to have in a way. “
Despite the business of the gallery, Mr. Kahn and Ms. Nedunuri Kahn gathered for frequent meeting points: they threw a diwali a wall outside. The neighbors on the upper floor looked from the roof.
Her friends, who visit the Kahns from distant parts of the city like Bushwick, sometimes sleep in the guest room to save the long way home.
“I have no wish to complain about how difficult the transport is because I think it feels like this little city,” said Kahn. “It feels like pulling out of the city, but as always to live in Brooklyn.”