My INTERIOR series no.36 is published in Jutaku Kenchiku magazine December 2024 issue in October. No.36 is “Feeling of Connection”, introducing Heather Brady and Nate Walker’s living in Frenchtown, NJ. Here’s materials that were collected / used to create the article.
英語用のWordpress theme を使っていて、記事の冒頭部分が英語でないと、本文全てがトップページに表示されてしまうようなので、英文で始まりますが、“Sidenote.” は日本語のサイトです。
10月に発売された『住宅建築』2024年12月号に掲載中のINTEIRIOR 第36回。
コピーライター／アーティストのヘザーと、シンガーソングライター／音楽プロデューサーのネイト。
農家を始めようと、現在住む町の川の向かいに引っ越したのが2010年。2013年に一度ニューヨークに戻り、2015年に再びフレンチタウンへ。それから三度引っ越しをし、現在のアパートに住み始めてから三年。「パーフェクト・マッチの空間を見つけた」と二人。
庭付きの一軒家より、町の真ん中に建つアパートメントを好む理由。家具は、新品より中古。過去から現在、コミュニティ…などなど、二人を取り巻く“つながり”を大切にする生活。
下記、フルインタビューです。
『住宅建築』本誌と一緒にお楽しみください。
Heather: There’s a couple of things that come to my mind. When we came to look at this space, this apartment, we came with Julian (Heather and Nate’s son). He was almost 2. He walked up the stairs, he went right into the room that has carpet, and he was like it was his room. And we saw him and he was so comfortable, so happy. “Okay, I guess that’s his room. I guess this is the place.” And that is where we started. He felt comfortable, and he chose that room instinctively. We said okay, then, we knew the other room was obviously ours.
Nate: We like the space, we like the kitchen.. open kitchen, high ceilings and all the lights.
Heather: Our landlord actually lived in this space for many years, and one of the things her husband now has said was he always saw this space even before we lived in it. He said “what I like about this apartment is that it feels a little bit like a house even though it’s not a house”. I think we were yearning for something that was a little more like a home.
Nate: It felt like more home.
Heather: All of that appealed to us. In terms of making space otherwise, I think, definitely before Julian, we tried to maintain this but we always try to be like stayed kind of minimal, in terms of stuff, so everything that’s in here, we had, I mean Julian’s bed, we got from our neighbor, and any other all come from community members locally, but for the most part, here’s what we have, stuff that we really love, where is that stuff meant to live.
Nate: I feel the same, the space felt like an extension of who we are already, like how we’ve already lived, and the kind of things we already have. So the space, it feels like it could, we could move into very comfortably and don’t have to try that.. bring something new, bring something more different things.
Heather: We didn’t have to find a whole new bedroom set.
Nate: Just works well for, the kind of, the kind stuff we’ve gathered over the years. Heather and I have similar aesthetics in terms of the way we like interior spaces. So and the space felt like it felt natural, it felt good. It has good energy. Even though it’s very old.. the front part of the building is older than the back part of the building. But it’s one of the oldest spaces in town. And even at that, it still feels good and light.
Heather: Felt good to us.
Nate: It felt very natural to us to be able to move what we had and have into the space to make it still feel. It’s not the biggest space ever. You know, but we were able to make it into, keep it spacious enough for the three of us to live here comfortably.
Heather: I think in a way, I think about your question and just hearing us try to answer it, in a way to answer, what we like about this space is we didn’t have to do a lot to make it, to feel like home. It felt like it as it was already felt like a home,
Nate: And it felt like our energy of..
Heather: It felt like our energy, it felt like with the things we already had, essentially make it look and feel like a “Heather and Nate’s” space. The one thing we didn’t have, we had to get was a kitchen table.
Nate: We bought this as we moved in.
Heather: We’ve always lived small. The last space was a studio, no room for a kitchen table, so when we were moving in here it was like we need something. And not always, but most of the time, for me and for us, are always try to find something that’s been used, lived with, loved already. This was the example, not super special, but I found it on Facebook marketplace and it was $40 for the table and six chairs, and we just saw, it was already sort of like marked, it’s been used by a family. We just saw “that looks right”. That little family, we want something that’s been loved, sturdy, we can eat on it. I use it as my art making table, you know like just work for us. A few things required to fill out our home.
Nate: Julian, since he doesn’t have a brother and sister, he likes to be around us, he’ll mostly play out here (living space). So his room is mostly for sleeping and keeping his toys. Our room, it is a bedroom, we use it as a bedroom, I used it as a music studio space for a short period of time. This entire room, we spend most of our time. Entertainment, hanging out, especially in the evening, we spend a lot of evening time there, food time, talking, being at the table. And Heather works that out of the space.
Heather: Because I work from home, first we had a desk in our bedroom, Nate has been using for his music and he has a studio space in a neighborhood so I was working at the desk for a while, but this was built in that little desk there, have been built in sitting there, I was just collecting stuff all the time. The last six months, I would say, I need to make that space usable little desk work space for me, which I did. Still collects our stuff every day but it works for me as like my little open space even now in the comes home alone, I’m still like focused, I sit there, my laptop work. And in the evening sometime when these guys go to bed, the kitchen table becomes my studio table. I think we try to maximize..
Nate: Very multi functional. Every room serves a number of different ..
Heather: Julian’s .. I think you started, kids bed room, it doesn’t, we don’t expect to do more serve any other purpose, and we like the idea that he will grow into it more,
Nate: He has own private space when he wants it.
Heather: Our bedroom. It’s our bedroom. It has been a work space. It has the couch. So can be like the space for you to take a moment for yourself. When our parents come to visit, that’s where they stay. And we sleep on Julian’s. This space, is like the kind of space we love because it’s fluid, and it’s a living space, that we can do all the day stuff, and still be together, sharing space.
Nate: We use our balcony from time to time, not a lot. But we use it. We go sit down the balcony, have a drink and stare at this guy and..
Heather: I would try to work out there a little bit too. The balcony is also a place, since we don’t have a backyard or anything, it’s a space we can give Julian now a little bit of introduction to growing things. He was proud to show you plants he .. The reason why we live in this area is tied to our first experience growing things in a farm, it’s nice to have some small opportunity to connect him doing that kind of thing.
Nate: You know what’s funny about this place. We lived here for years and years. I had no clue that, I knew there was a space above the candy store, but I never saw this whole back end from the street. And the parking lot is private. So there’s no reason to ever be back there to see. So I had no idea, that space like this existed, so I didn’t know what it look like. And then whenever the owner brought us in and showed us the entry, the door, I thought, it’s gonna be small, it’s gonna feel dark, all the things because this entryway, it’s like this small quiet door, off of the side street, and the car port. And you walk up this narrow old stairs to come into this space and it’s just such a transformation from, like there is no information out front. No information in front of the building to tell you all of this.
Heather: Which we love. We love the little magic.
Nate: And also one thing we love about this space, is that it’s right on the main street but it’s so quiet. Because main street gets very loud in the summer. With motorcycle, with trucks, summer vacation town, it’s a weekend vacation town. The last place we lived, which was right over the brick building, in the front corner, didn’t keep out the whole – it was so loud in there. And it was tough to live in there through the summer because you couldn’t get away from the sound. Anyway, all that said, one of the wonderful things about this space is that it’s so light, feel so good, and at the same time, you don’t even know that the main street is out there. But you are right here anyway so you can walk out the door and you can be right down on the main street but you don’t have to always be hearing it which is great. So about the flow from outside and inside, it’s just you don’t know. It doesn’t give away any information from outside, so you have to come inside to see like what’s all in here. All what it feels like. So yeah it’s interesting.
Heather: Also for us, having lived here before when we farmed, we lived on a farm, we were always kind of surprised that we could be just crossed the river from this town, and feel totally removed. We felt really isolated over there. But we were literally just cross over. We could walk into Frenchtown, and still a lot of our times when we lived there was just like we feel alone. So when we made the choice to move back here it was really important to us even if this very small town, surrounded by lots of farm land and little community, we wanted to live in town and feel it’s connected as possible to energy and activity of the little community.
Nate: We wanna be around activity.
Heather: And you can feel like in the middle of no where, 50 yards, 100 yards away from here right? This is our third apartment in a town. Since we moved back in 2015. And all three apartments have been essentially on this one block. Of this street in town, for whatever reason we wanted more light, two bedrooms, you know we made this moves, every move we felt like we have to stay in this very central space so that we have that flow of, we have home, and we walk out our door and we are, and as much as there is activity in this little town, we are part of it. You know, and the bridge street, the main street becomes, extension of home for us. Some of this has to do with being in a small place but really when we step out of our door, for Julian, within a block of so, still home to him. Coffee shop we walk into, it’s not just that he knows everybody, it’s also that he physically feels comfortable, like in the space. I think all feels connected to him. And that’s really important to us.
Nate: And now Julian going to school, Julian is starting school in December, and his school is only 8 blocks from here. Which is huge. We only that far away from school. Bonus of living here, we not living down there.
Heather: It’s a choice, it’s not a requirement, right?
Nate: We are not far away. We are in the middle of most of everything that we need. But we can still shut the doors and shut the windows, feel like we are, if we need some privacy, we have it. Which we didn’t feel like over there. That felt always exposed, always connected to the outside. So this space, a such of, a happy, it’s so different. In such a good way, such a positive way.
Heather: And it’s funny, that’s a three buildings down, so feels like micro universe.
Nate: You wouldn’t think make that much difference but make a such big difference.
Heather: I think this conversation makes me think about how much of our past living in the city, but really in NY, — we are living the life we have here, what I was saying was our past experience living in the city really informs what we prefer here. Which is we still … we wanna be in the thick of the activities. You have your safe space of your apartment, your little cocoon, nest you create, and then you are able to walk out of the door, ideally wherever you are in the city, access your needs pretty quickly, and walk to you know transportation whatever. In a way we are sort of like bringing that style to our lives here.
Nate: Because we prefer to live that way. Again, we don’t prefer to live fully removed.
Heather: And we are not looking for a big house. We love what being out here offers. We have fresh air, we have really nice community, good people, and you know, personal story that anchors us here with the farm, our connection, but in a lot of ways we are still, those folks who feel really comfortable in a small flexible space, then walking around, and all that stuff. That is kind of city-like.
Nate: And even when we get back to the city doesn’t feel foreign when we go back. The city is still, you know, we haven’t had to change too much to be here. This allows us to kind of still be the people that we’ve always been. And I think if we had to change too much, we wouldn’t wanna be living in a space. That didn’t feel that way. And this space allows us the number of things that we can still have, make us comfortable the way we live. What we prefer.
Heather: The flow we feel here..
Nate: I remember sitting here (at the dining table) maybe the first day we were here, loving the fact I could be here and could see out of the window out front (bedroom). Have a direct line from here to the outside. But not feel like the outside was on top of me, over there. I love the feeling of the flow through the space. It just felt like I could breathe through the space. It just felt intuitive to me. Something I was looking for, happy with, comfortable with. Just being able to see the whole way through the space, feeling connected to the length of it.
Nate: We love windows. It’s a happy space because it has so much light. It’s here naturally which is good. We don’t have to supply too much light. No spaces feel too dark. Lovely space. We got lucky we got in here. And we will be here as long as doesn’t feel too.. Julian is gonna keep getting bigger. And he is gonna get older, and he is gonna wanna privacy. And all that. We will see, I mean it’s gonna be three grown people. Sometimes next five to ten years. Three grown people make the space still feel good.
Nate: How low the ceilings are in the bedrooms, but I love about it is that, for bedrooms, low ceilings feels kind of like space to sleep. As you move from the front to the back, this floor to the ceiling, just increases and increases, out into this space, which is
It feels natural wanting to sleep in the bedrooms, and move your way back here, everything opens up. NY apartments don’t have low ceilings. This old northeast colonial buildings famously have low ceilings.
Heather: We keep the wall simple that way because of the cat.
インタビュー後に、emailにて。
Heather: One of the things I’ve enjoyed thinking about in this particular space is creating little moments, vignettes, or stories with items that have become treasures for us over time—whether we’re talking about tiny rocks we’ve picked up here or there, or things that once belonged to Nate’s dad, artworks made by old friends, or even a paper cup lovingly drawn on for Julian by a friend at the coffee shop a couple doors down. While we aren’t big “stuff” people, we definitely like to hold onto and give homes to these sorts of small-but-precious things.
Heather: Also, one of the first things we did to make the space our own after moving in was arrange the small collection of books we had on the shelf above the cabinets in the kitchen. I love going back to that memory, because Julian—who had just turned two—helped carry all the unpacked books from our bedroom into the kitchen. He was just old enough to be involved in creating “home”.
Heather: I think Nate and I each in our own ways are drawn to things with a past. For Nate, this might be things that are more analog—vintage radios and antennas, as example. For me, it could be anything from clothes to household objects. In this apartment, we have a bunch of small and not-so-small pieces that have come to us through neighbors or that we got secondhand.
Heather: I’m always excited to give something that’s had a bit of a life already another home. I like the feeling of connection it brings—especially when I know that it was really loved by its previous owners, being part of its story, and continuing it.
