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ALAO | architecture & interior design

@alao_design

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Creating joyful spaces that make people feel rooted to a place.
Seen in @nytimes @dwellmagazine @vogue
─ Led by @ayamaceda @jamescarse
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In 2020 and recently in October 2024, two of our keystone projects have been featured by the New York Times. ALAO’s Brooklyn Loft and Callicoon House are home to principal architect Aya Meceda, her husband Kurt Arnold and their two children. These two residences represent livable case studies into several of ALAO’s key pillars of philosophy; Maaliwalas or the feeling of flow, maximizing material within to expand smaller means, and building space for communal activity & human centered design. by @alao_design

We are grateful to be a part of PIN-UP's 15-year anniversary, with a cover dedicated to NY architects and their emerging firms who are building future legacies with bold moves.

Read the full cover story in @pinupmagazine Spring Summer 2021 issue.

Photographed by @tanyaposternak and @zposternak

#PINUP30 #PINUPLEGACY
#alaodesign #designstories #feature #coverstory by @alao_design

The POP! House is the cover story of @dwellmagazine ’s annual American Design Issue. Our work is rooted in creating joyful architecture that allow people to feel rooted to a place and being a part of what they call “Optimistic American Architecture” is a great honor.

Thank you to our whole @alao_design team and amazing clients and collaborators on this one of a kind project!

Cover Photo by @cedricangeles
Cover Story by @nowlistenmissy

Design team
@jamescarse
@ayamaceda
@emilyturtle
@yukinakayama.art
@kacyco

#moderndesign #modernarchitecture #interiordesign #interiorarchitecture #designideas #designinspiration #furnituredesign #furnituredesigner #furnitureinspiration #studioinspiration #hometour #homeinspiration #modernhouse #modernhome #homedecor #homeideas #architectureideas #architecture #architecturemagazine #homemagazine #interiorsmagazine #interiorinspiration #home by @alao_design

This apartment was designed for a family of three, plus their furry fourth member, in a loft located within a former newspaper printing warehouse. The family wanted to preserve the openness and character of the original loft while maximizing its functionality, creating dedicated spaces for sleeping, working, playing, and storing the many things that come with everyday life. Both parents work in the film and photography industries, which meant accommodating a significant amount of equipment was essential. To address this challenge, @alao_design looked to the traditional Dutch “bedsteden”, built-in bed boxes that combine sleeping quarters with storage and other functions as a precedent. The result is a single, expansive millwork installation that functions like a 3D puzzle, choreographing the family’s diverse needs within one continuous architectural element. Sleeping, working, playing, and storage are carefully integrated into the structure, with each member of the family, and even their dog given a distinct space carved into the box. The design transforms what could have been a series of competing functions into a cohesive, flexible landscape that preserves the openness of the loft while giving every part of family life a place of its own.

Featured @nytimes #livingsmall column.

📸 @visualcaptivity by @alao_design

Hope Floats: Working with
Local Government

Pasig City LGU &
Mayor Vico Sotto

alao had the honor of collaborating with the Pasig Local Government Unit (LGU) and Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto, who have built a reputation on good governance, to envision a connected parkland strategy for their city.

The Pasig LGU set out areas and criteria through extensive data collection and site visits that point to optimal opportunities and challenges to address. Decades of unregulated industrialization, unplanned housing and political neglect transformed the Pasig River, a once lush life-giving artery of Manila, into one the most polluted bodies of water in the world

“Beyond simply creating new parks, the city wants residents to take part in “designing, building, and managing or operating these parks — and not just be mere visitors,”
Mayor Vico Sotto

Prototypes on water and land engaged residents, with Pasig City gathering input to help shape a shared vision for the future.

A barge docked on-site became a living lab—testing the floating park concept and capturing real-time feedback from residents.

The pilot structure demonstrated how the platforms could function as playgrounds, pocket parks, gardens, or multipurpose community spaces.

Designed for People - shaped by Place and Memory

Read more at
www.alao.design by @alao_design

Reorientation of community
back to the waterways

Fieldwork, archival research, and oral histories ground alao’s process—revealing river parks and green space as key solutions across post-industrial waterways from Brooklyn to the Hudson Valley, the Yangtze Delta, and the Mississippi Delta which have
challenges that parallel the Pasig River.

Decades of neglect take a toll beyond public health and economic growth.

Stewardship becomes a catalyst for community
—a bridge to history, culture, and nature, restoring the river and making communities whole.

Using play to reclaim our cultural identity

Read more at
www.alao.design by @alao_design

Pasig River Park
Update 2026
Winning Bloomberg Mayor Challenge Grant

Pasig City has been selected as one of 24 winning cities—chosen from 630 global applicants across 20 countries. The city will receive $1 million, along with operational support and funding for dedicated staff to help scale proven innovations that improve essential services for its citizens.

alao, in collaboration with Pasig City and shaped by community input, is reimagining flood-prone waterways as floating parks—reconnecting people back to their waterfront and history, expanding green space, and strengthening community ties.

As world cities get more dense and accessible land becomes a premium, Pasig City River Park is a case study in how urbanization can reinvent itself for the benefit of its citizens while realigning itself toward nature; no matter the scale.

Read more at
www.alao.design by @alao_design

Addressing the housing crisis in New York City:

Approximately fifteen percent of all homeless Americans are concentrated in New York City where the US Department of Housing and Development estimates that each night nearly 83,000 men, women, and children find themselves on the streets, in shelters, or other city-funded non-permanent housing.

Statistics illustrate that as many as 130,000 school age children in NYC experienced homelessness at some point during 2018-2019. This number constitutes more than 1 in every 10 children in the city and these children made up nearly 40% of the city’s shelter population. The city’s policy of “a right to shelter”, the reluctant result of consent decrees reached between 1979 and 2008, has created a patchwork system of vouchers, Hotels, Privately-Owned Residential Buildings, and State Certified Shelters that have largely removed the visual presence of homelessness from the streets.

This network, however, while making homelessness perhaps more humane has not proven successful at creating long-term affordable and stable housing solutions.

Acknowledging that affordability is the primary obstacle to stable housing in NYC, the city has explored alternative housing models including SROs, Co-Living Apartments, and Microhousing – each interesting in their own right but providing no significant impact to rising housing costs and none of which serve families. Simultaneously, State-wide development incentives and city-wide voucher programs have found limited success over short terms or only found success with very specific demographic groups in need.

However, the city and state do have a legacy to look back on that could potentially serve as a blueprint for creating affordable housing at proven scale. The Mitchell-Lama Program encouraged the creation of limited equity cooperatives – a development type that prioritized housing stability and affordability. Today, the remnants of this dormant program, remain some of few bastions of affordability within the city.

Read more at www.alao.design by @alao_design

Addressing the housing crisis in New York City:

The Mitchell-Lama Program encouraged the creation of limited equity cooperatives – a development type that prioritized housing stability and affordability.

Co-op City and Twin Parks, each in the Bronx, have remained bastions of affordability in the city.

By taking the cost of shelter out of the equation, co-op residents can focus on building community, earning an education, developing careers, and
saving toward retirement—all factors that can help keep them from entering or reentering homelessness in the future.

Together, these policy mechanisms could offer a pathway to expanding affordable housing across the city through preservation, conversion, and development.

The question, then, becomes: What role do planning, urban design, and architecture play in supporting these initiatives?

It is time we look back to the ambitions and successes of the Mitchell-Lama program to build a framework of housing with proven long-term affordability.

Read more at www.alao.design by @alao_design

Addressing the housing crisis in New York City:

Although not exclusively, homelessness is an urban
problem. One of the main topics when thinking about the relationship between the housed and the unhoused in cities has to do with how visible this reality is and how invisible it can become.

The scale of New York City’s homelessness crisis is vast but, despite a homeless population the size of a small American city, those experiencing homelessness are largely hidden from view.

Read more at www.alao.design by @alao_design

@artbuiltnyc A 50,000 square foot affordable arts and art business production space located
in the Brooklyn Army Terminal turns 10 years old.

ArtBuilt Brooklyn aggregates production space for small producers, building long-term stability for NYC’s creative economy, and security for the creative workforce that makes NYC a global cultural capital.

The ArtBuilt Brooklyn spaces provide affordable long-term leases to around 50 tenants, including individual artists, artisans and set design teams, whose differing needs are accommodated.

Photos by @nicolascalcott

Artists are the life blood New York City, let’s keep it that way!

Learn more at www.alao.design by @alao_design

@artbuiltnyc A 50,000 square foot affordable arts and art business production space located
in the Brooklyn Army Terminal turns 10 years old.

ArtBuilt Brooklyn aggregates production space for small producers, building long-term stability for NYC’s creative economy, and security for the creative workforce that makes NYC a global cultural capital.

The ArtBuilt Brooklyn spaces provide affordable long-term leases to around 50 tenants, including individual artists, artisans and set design teams, whose differing needs are accommodated.

Photos by @nicolascalcott

It’s time for new Ideas that address affordability in NY. This issue has been a pillar for ALAO since the studio’s inception. We have always advocated for the everyday citizens of New York. Our city must be accessible to the best among us. We see a bright future with an administration which put our shared concerns at its center.

Learn more at www.alao.design by @alao_design