Nano Nest: A Box-Within-a-Box Home for Three Generations in Brooklyn

What happens when you remove the front door of a townhouse? In Brooklyn, the Nano Nest answers that question by opening its ground floor patio directly to the street, dissolving the threshold between domestic life and neighborhood. It is a provocation dressed in red brick: a home that refuses to treat privacy and community as opposites, instead layering them vertically through a compact, skylit volume designed for six people across three generations.

Designed by MATERIAS estaleiro and Cat Faisco, and published on UNI, the Nano Nest was conceived for a specific household: Alice Woo (32) and Paul Skine (33), both actors with irregular schedules; their twin daughters; and grandparents Woo (62) and Skine (64), who provide daily childcare. The family's rhythms, where working hours shift and caregiving responsibilities overlap, drove every spatial decision. The result is a narrow multi-story house in Brooklyn that treats density not as a constraint but as an opportunity for intimacy, light, and social exchange.

Stacking Rooms Vertically to Give Each Generation Its Own Floor

The exploded axonometric reveals the building's core logic: a tight vertical stack where each floor serves a distinct function. The ground level is communal and permeable, middle floors hold private bedrooms for parents, children, and grandparents, and the rooftop opens into a bright retreat crowned by a large skylight. The "box within a box" concept is visible here: interior volumes nest inside the outer brick shell, creating gaps that channel daylight and cross ventilation down through the section. It is a compact anatomy that makes every cubic meter accountable.

Rather than isolating each generation behind closed corridors, the stacking creates a vertical gradient from public to private. The grandparents, who spend the most time at home caring for the twins, occupy floors positioned for easy access to both the children's rooms and the communal ground floor. The parents, whose actor schedules pull them in and out at odd hours, can move through the house without disrupting sleep above or below.

Red Brick Vaults and Plywood Joinery as a Material Language

The dining area sits beneath an exposed red brick vaulted ceiling, with plywood cabinetry lining the walls and a view through to a green courtyard. Red brick, iron, glass, and oak were all sourced locally to reduce cost and environmental impact. The material palette does double duty: it roots the house in Brooklyn's brick vernacular while keeping construction simple enough for potential factory pre-production. The plywood is left honest, its warm grain contrasting with the rough texture of masonry.

The children's bedroom distills this material logic into a single room. A built-in plywood bunk bed and desk are set against a red brick wall, giving the twins a compact world that feels crafted rather than cramped. There is an Asian-inspired restraint in the detailing: no ornament, no excess, just the meeting of two materials at clean joints. This simplicity is deliberate. The designers aimed for construction that is easy to assemble, low-maintenance, and adaptable, a practical stance for affordable urban housing.

An Interior Courtyard That Breathes Light Into the Core

Floor-to-ceiling glazed doors enclose a small interior courtyard bounded by red brick walls. A seated figure occupies the space, giving scale to what is essentially a vertical light well. Cross ventilation passes through these openings, ensuring natural cooling and better air quality throughout the year without mechanical systems. The courtyard also operates as a social hinge: visible from multiple floors, it connects the household visually even when members are on different levels. It is the kind of space that makes a narrow townhouse feel larger than its footprint.

Shared Thresholds Where Family Life Overlaps

The multi-level interior view captures the Nano Nest's social ambition most clearly. Residents gather around a green play mat on the ground floor while plywood doors and red brick walls frame the scene. The projected balconies with metallic grills and ceiling-height glazed doorways are not just architectural gestures; they are instruments of overlap. The grandparents can watch the twins from one level up, the parents can call down from the landing. No one is truly alone, and no one is without refuge. The open ground floor patio, pointedly designed without a main door, extends this overlap to the neighborhood itself, inviting passersby into casual contact with the household.

Why This Project Matters

The Nano Nest takes a common brief, multi-generational housing in a dense city, and treats it as a design opportunity rather than a problem to solve. By removing the front door and stacking private rooms above communal ones, the designers challenge the assumption that urban homes must choose between openness and security. The result is a house that breathes through its section, welcomes neighbors at its base, and gives each generation a room of its own without severing the ties between them.

Its real contribution lies in the argument that affordability and spatial richness are not mutually exclusive. Local red brick, factory-ready plywood joinery, and a construction logic simple enough for pre-production keep costs grounded. Meanwhile, the interior courtyard, skylit rooftop, and vaulted ceilings create experiences that feel generous. For Brooklyn and cities like it, where space is scarce and families are complex, the Nano Nest offers a credible prototype: compact, buildable, and tuned to the way people actually live together.

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About the Designers

Designers: MATERIAS estaleiro, Cat Faisco, UNI

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Project credits: Skine Woo's Nano Nest by MATERIAS estaleiro, Cat Faisco, UNI.