About BAAO Architects
Barker Associates Architecture Office – BAAO Architects (previously BFDO Architects) is a multidisciplinary architecture and design firm led by Alexandra Barker, AIA, LEED AP. The firm employs material research, fabrication technologies and system integration strategies as generative tools in the design process to develop multivalent spatial solutions for public and private clients and to produce speculative research proposals.
BAAO has worked in the public and private sector on a range of projects that include ground-up private residences, interiors, and institutional and retail projects in the New York area, regionally, and internationally. The firm has engaged with a range of private and corporate clients including The Hudson Companies and Trinity Real Estate as well as developers for residential units in Inner Mongolia, China.
Alexandra Barker is an associate professor with CCE (Certificate of Continuing Education) and the coordinator of the Masters in Architecture program in the Graduate Architecture and Urban Design Department in the School of Architecture at Pratt Institute, where she has taught since 2001. She has previously taught in the graduate architecture department at the University of Pennsylvania and in the undergraduate architecture department at Princeton University. At Pratt, she has been the recipient of national grants to integrate practice and education and sustainable principles into Pratt’s graduate architecture curriculum.
Alexandra Barker received her MARCH from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, where she received the Templeton Kelly Prize and the Clifford Wong Housing Prize for her thesis work. Her undergraduate work in Visual and Environmental Studies was completed at Harvard College, where she graduated magna cum laude.
LOCATION: Brooklyn, New York
LEARN MORE: baaostudio.com
This apartment had a beautiful view of Prospect Park but the room configuration failed to take advantage of its location. The apartment was reconfigured to collect shared spaces together and to provide for flexible uses.
In this Crown Heights brownstone, spaces are defined by built-in graphic millwork compositions and vivid three-dimensional color treatments punctuated by skylights, fireplaces and bold lighting choices sourced from Innermost Lighting
The private spaces of the Park Slope Duplex apartment are organized along a long wall painted a deep blue-gray. A new bath was added off the master bedroom, with both finished in shades of light blue and gray.
This Chelsea apartment occupies the top floor of one of a series of brick rowhouses that were joined together to create a larger building. In the existing layout, the street frontage of the unit is split between the living and dining spaces on one side and one large bedroom on the other.
This 20-foot-wide wood frame townhouse, located at the end of a row along a narrow side yard, had existing front and rear extensions. The building volume was selectively manipulated—in some cases through addition, in others through subtraction—to improve room sizes, sequences and adjacencies.
A 1950s ranch house failed to make the most of its 17-acre site overlooking two converging creeks. The owners wanted to enlarge the house and take advantage of the sweeping vistas and light reflected off the water.
Access to the Oceanside house is provided in two places. A stair leading from the beach lands on a deck that spans the width of the house (and has become a prime party location). The west side of the house abuts a pedestrian pathway.
The layout was configured as an open, airy twenty by fifty foot by ten foot tall primary living space on the parlor floor lined on one side by a full-length bookshelf, art wall, and cat circulation and lounge space. This is a stunning light-filled home renovation project in Brooklyn.
