With the September 2025 opening of Artist House at 60 Chalton Street in the Hudson Square neighborhood of New York City, Grammy-nominated songwriter and producer Gregg Wattenberg’s vision for a next-generation music studio has been realized. Conceived through the design leadership of Lawrence Group, the new facility redefines what a creative workspace can be, fusing technical excellence with the kind of emotional and communal energy that sparks artistic collaboration.
Wattenberg, whose credits include multiple Billboard #1 hits with artists like John Legend, Enrique Iglesias, Train, The Goo Goo Dolls, and Phillip Phillips, spent nearly a decade searching for the right space to bring this idea to life. He partnered with Lawrence Group early on in developing the concept, testing real estate options, and shaping a program that would meet the creative, technical, and human demands of the modern music industry.
Lawrence Group’s design team brought deep experience in media and creative environments to the effort, with prior experience designing KUT Public Radio in Austin and Martha Stewart’s New York television studios.
“Although many lease spaces were considered and ultimately dismissed, the process of testing each one refined exactly what a pioneering new studio facility should be, one that elevates the recording experience, fusing state-of-the-art acoustic engineering with a bold approach to collaboration and creative energy,” said Tom Lekometros, Managing Principal of Lawrence Group New York.
The space ultimately selected was part of a 1920s concrete industrial building being repositioned for modern use as an A-class destination. The second floor was selected to be the main floor for the Artist House operation given the 20’ high ceiling height. With nearly 19,000 square feet across two floors, the combined second and fourth floors offered a rare chance to build something both technically ambitious and deeply human.
The arrival moment at Artist House opens onto a grand second-floor space that is designed as a creative concourse, as opposed to a traditional lobby. The main hall is lined with a colonnade of 20-foot-tall, oversized concrete columns. It is filled with daylight throughout the day and covered with a custom ceiling installation of floating, abstracted guitar-pick acoustic reflective panels and programmable colored LED lighting. “It’s not a hallway,” said Lekometros. “It’s an invitation to connect, to collaborate, to create.”
Studios surround this shared space in a mix of formats: private writing rooms, a casual “rap room,” and two full production suites. Studio A maximizes the existing ceiling height with a stage-ready performance space that merges recording, mixing, and small-audience performance into a single environment, a rarity in New York.
State-of-the-art acoustic technologies were implemented from the ground up. Every surface, from its chamfered walls, floating ceiling planes and tuned diffusers – is part of the soundscape.
“As an organic approach to the merger of technology and design, the overall philosophy of Artist House is imbedded in the architecture, not layered on top. We treated acoustics as a design material,” said Lekometros. “It’s as much about feel as it is fidelity.”
The fourth floor, by contrast, functions more like a creative village for Artist House containing the operational offices, additional studios, and collaborative workspaces around a central social hub. Floor to ceiling glass walls connect the administrative team to the day-to-day goings on. The pantry and intern bullpen reinforce the sense of shared momentum through open-air connections to the central space.
Ultimately what ties both levels together is intent: this is a project designed to serve the artist creatively, technically, physically, and emotionally. Every decision, from the softness of the furnishings to the access to daylight, was made to support long hours and deep focus without burning out.
“This isn’t just a new recording studio,” said Lekometros. “It’s a holistic creative and music creation experience.”
Just as Lawrence Group championed communal wholeness in the recording studio’s design, Wattenberg’s business practices follow a similar approach by incentivizing major songwriters to collaborate with his recording artists for a 10 percent cut of the master recording. With songwriters getting crushed financially in the world of streaming music, Wattenberg is committed to improving the livelihoods of songwriters, a critical component of any artists’ success.