the.com/loft
the open-plan promise that you, too, could live inside a Pinterest board
means A loft is an upper room or open space directly under a roof, or a converted industrial floor turned into one big airy living area.
from From Old Norse 'lopt', meaning sky, air, or an upper room — the same word doing double duty for the heavens above and the attic under the eaves. It drifted into Old English as 'loft' and kept that upward sense: to 'loft' a ball is to send it skyward, and a pigeon's loft sits high. The trendy warehouse-apartment meaning is a much later American twist, when artists started living in the lofty upper floors of old factories.
- factory roots
- Industrial buildings emptied as manufacturing fled cities
- artist invasion
- 1960s painters squatted cheap raw spaces illegally
- exposed brick
- Once a defect, now a rent premium
- word origin
- From Old Norse 'lopt,' meaning air or sky
- no walls
- Privacy sold separately, often as a curtain
soho loft — artist live-work spaces in manhattan's soho neighborhood since the 1960s, now worth millions
cast iron lofts — converted warehouse buildings in brooklyn with exposed beams and high ceilings, characteristic of dumbo since 1980s
loft apartments chicago — repurposed industrial buildings along the chicago river, particularly pilsen and west loop neighborhoods