Choy House

The Choy house reexamines the idea of an American home by combining traditional Chinese notions of extended family with the more typical American focus on the nuclear family.

Our client asked us to build a home for himself, his wife and two small children, his younger brother and his wife, and their mother - the matriarch of the family. He wanted the home to reflect his heritage while at the same time giving his immediate family the privacy he had become accustomed to. Our challenge was to design three homes under one roof, in the Flushing neighborhood Queens, New York, which is defined by single family homes.

We created three distinct dwellings with areas of connection and overlap. The narrow slice at the front creates a triplex for the married couple; the client and his family occupy the rest of the first and second floors. The lower level, which opens up to the sunken terraced garden, is where the grandmother lives. With front doors only a few feet from each other, the brothers live as neighbors, and all of the spaces connect through the lower level; the ground floor family room, the terraced garden, and outdoor pavilion are primary gathering spaces for the whole family.

Some of the elements in the residences are collaborations between our firm and the client, a builder who specializes in residential construction. Together we re-purposed excess materials from other construction projects of his in order to create custom elements; for example, the stair treads are 6x12 engineered wood beams cut in half diagonally, and O’Neill Rose Architects designed the dining room light fixtures in the main house and the apartment from scrap metal pieces.

O’Neill Rose Architects