Void House is a renovation of a narrow Brooklyn townhouse by Light + Air, the studio led by Shane Neufeld. The building is 15 feet wide, a common constraint in the New York townhouse typology, which typically produces linear, floor-by-floor spaces with limited natural light penetrating beyond the front and rear facades. The project addresses this by removing material from the center of the plan rather than adding to it.

The defining move is the rotation of the main stair 90 degrees from the conventional linear arrangement, creating a switchback configuration. The repositioned stair opens a central void running vertically through the house. Canted skylights at the top of the void direct daylight downward, and the light passes through open risers and transparent guardrails as it descends through each floor. The stair is built in steel and white oak. Its open construction makes it the primary light distribution mechanism for the interior: the void it occupies is a vertical atrium that connects all floors both physically and visually.

The project's central idea is that the void itself is the architectural element. The space carved out of the existing building becomes the social and spatial core of the house, organizing circulation and distributing light simultaneously through a single move. For a building of this width, it is a more efficient solution than any amount of added glazing on the perimeter could provide.