By day, the 2,500-square-foot loft that Chau and Desna share in Queen’s laid-back Ridgewood neighborhood has the verdant airiness of a chic hotel. The kitchen and living room are suffused with light thanks to a floor-to-ceiling expanse of windows on the southern facade, and a monumental living wall adds a lush, resort-inspired feel.

By night, however, the space turns up the sex appeal. A row of colored strip lights transforms the entrance hall into a catwalk, a neon sign flashes on, and projected visuals play above a purring electric fireplace. By the looks of it, the home could be Brooklyn’s buzzy new nightclub—curious passersby are often trying to find a way in. “We see people running back and forth, back and forth, looking for an entrance,” says Chau.

It’s a fitting home for the couple, who are seasoned in traveling and exploring the city’s nightlife. They embarked on renovating the building, a 1938 knitting factory, around the same time that Desna left the real estate business to focus on her burgeoning music career. As a DJ and producer, she makes what she calls “frequency music,” which shares a name with the record label she started. Her propulsive techno tracks are crafted around solfeggio frequencies—tones that reportedly have healing effects for the body and mind.

It was Chau, a mortgage banker, who, in 2012, suggested they buy the building. “I was looking at houses all the time and seeing trash become treasure,” she says. “That’s when I realized this project could be done.” The industrial, three-story building, however, presented a daunting challenge. “I’m someone who has a harder time with change,” says Desna. “I never wanted to make risky moves because I was always taught to be safe with investments. Chau has a different mindset.”

Zhongshan Hangson Lighting Co. Barstools from CB2 line the counter.
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After a protracted process of getting the mixed-use building permitted as a residence, the couple applied for a loan to convert the second and third floors into three separate apartments that they would later rent out, overseeing the work from their Bushwick loft. “The first thing was gutting the place,” says Chau. “All the joists were rotten, so those huge beams took about two months to replace. Then we straightened the house up and did the framing. Everything was raw to the end—talk about bare bones.”

Once the second-floor apartment was ready, Chau and Desna moved in and started work on their ground-floor unit in 2019. Though the pandemic presented its distinct hurdles—there could only be two contractors on site, and six feet apart at that—working from home allowed Chau to supervise and make design decisions on the fly. Having consulted Amoia Cody Architects, she drew the plans for a two-bedroom, two-bath loft with a basement studio for Desna, a gym, a street-facing patio off the living room, and a spacious deck on the second floor. Chau immersed herself in research to source everything from the concrete sinks in the bathrooms to the plants in the green wall, letting Desna make the final call from her top choices.

The couple finally moved into their home last year, and it’s proven to be both an oasis and an entertainer’s dream. We sat down with them to learn more about how the loft was forged with their fast-paced lifestyles in mind—and how it’s ultimately allowed them to slow down.

Dwell: Did you have designated roles during the renovation?

Desna: I don’t think I had a role other than final decision maker. Everything about this house was my decision—except for the kitchen because that was Chau’s dream.

Chau: We hired an architect, but in the end, I did the floor plan the way I wanted. It’s just a good use of space. My work is very stressful, so doing research is my meditation. Visualizing something and picking each piece—like every single plant in the living wall and side yard—was like a high. It’s great to get in the dirt and do things with your hands. Maybe I’m getting older.

Desna: Our life is definitely more balanced now. We were crazy when we were younger.

Chau: You can have both—have a good time with friends, but still have home.

What was it like to move in upstairs while the work was being done?

Chau: That’s the amazing part. I was working from home, and I got to come down everyday and see the tile layout, source the curtain, or play with the placement of lights. Or I would make a decision to move a wall back for an extra three inches of space.

The home is a green oasis during the day and a club space at night. When did you know you wanted that contrast?

Desna: The club space was a surprise from Chau to me. I have a music studio already, and we were not planning on making this an interactive, transformative space. When we were pretty much done with the renovation is when Chau was like, “I have a surprise for you.” I went downstairs and saw lights everywhere. That was a gift to me because my industry had been shut down, and I thought touring wouldn’t come back for a long time. The Buster + Punch light switches were also a surprise.

Chau: She’s my muse. My expensive muse [laughs].

Desna, what inspired you to pivot from selling real estate to making music?

Desna: I quit real estate in 2019 because music, which was originally a hobby, was getting big for me. I knew that this would be my one chance at it, and we both agreed, “Hey, just go for it and see what happens in the next five years. If it doesn’t work out, at least we gave it our all.” Then the pandemic happened, which was hard because it was a tipping point in my career, but then I got really strong management. That’s when I came up with the brand Frequency Music.

How did that come about?

Desna: At the time, a doctor who was giving my stepfather chemotherapy for his cancer said, “We’re learning that sound frequencies are eradicating cancer cells.” I got obsessed. I was doing all this research and found that Harvard had done adequate studies on it, Einstein had talked about it—there’s so much literature on it that’s getting rebirthed right now. I found no one was doing it in electronic music, so I went down the rabbit hole.

How does frequency music work?

Desna: Different sound frequencies do different things to your cells. There are negative frequencies, and there are positive ones. For instance, 285 hertz repairs tissue, so if you have an injury and listen to that for an hour to 90 minutes, it can help you heal faster. And that sounds bogus! At first I was skeptical, but music does make us feel a certain way—we don’t know why we like what we might like because of different tones.

The Beatles worked with 528 hertz [which reduces anxiety]. A few artists have worked with that specific hertz because it’s really powerful. It changes your DNA on a cellular level if you listen to it long enough; it regenerates your whole body. I find it so fascinating, though people usually don’t consciously create with a specific hertz. It’s challenging because the frequency is a very prominent part of the track, and I create the music around it now. I’m working with specifically solfeggio frequencies because they’re very potent and address different ailments in the body, emotional and physical.

How did the concept of healing guide the design of the house?

Desna: It’s the same with color therapy. When you immerse yourself in a specific color, it can heal different parts of your body, or create passion and drive, or help with anxiety. I’m a hyperemotional person and sensitive to energy, so I don’t like sunlight. It overstimulates me! I’m comfortable with darkness and color immersion. Chau comes home and is like, “Can I get a light on?” I have visuals of frequencies running through the house, so it really reflects who I am.

Does that mean you always have the curtains drawn in the living room?

Desna: I do love that open. When it’s golden hour, which starts around six because this faces south, it’s like God came in here. The golden light comes through the whole house, and prisms are everywhere. It’s magical.

Chau: The church across the street glows at seven o’clock in the morning. You see weddings, funerals, baptisms. When there’s a funeral and you wake up and see the hearse, it does make you stand up and reflect on your life. When it’s a wedding or baptism, you get happy.

Desna: You see life and death. There are cemeteries in the back of the house, so it’s like a weird circle—a portal.

Y’all were leading an energetic lifestyle of playing shows, traveling, and going out. Did that guide decisions about how the loft would look and function?

Desna: When we travel, we love things to look a certain way. The Rosewood Hotel, the 1 Hotel, they have amazing design concepts that go from the lobby to the rooms. We love Tulum, nature, and that vibe, and we were thinking of that, but we wanted to break it up with modern, clean lines and a bit of flair.

Chau: The main space takes inspiration from hotel lobbies. The desk and DJ booth is like a registration desk.

Desna: Even the smell—the scent is from the 1 Hotel and the W Hotel.

Chau: We’ve traveled so much that now we love being home.

Desna: The budget for the renovation changed during the pandemic. Because we couldn’t go anywhere, it was like, “This is our life now; let’s put everything into it and make it inspired from traveling.” The steam shower and bathtub in the main bedroom—we decided to go that crazy because of the pandemic. You couldn’t go to a spa or sauna. I loved hot yoga and boot camp workouts, but they were taken from us, so we built the gym. We incorporated everything we were doing in our regular routine.

Chau: On weekends, people come over, and we make drinks, maybe go to Rolo’s for dinner.

Desna: The long bar in the kitchen is inspired by hosting. My friends run clubs, too, so we go out a lot, and we can walk pretty much everywhere. The home is conducive to our lifestyle.

Chau: It’s fun to be home now. The first time we moved in and were able to walk out to see the space, it was major. We’re so lucky to have it, for sure.

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Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Amoia Cody Architects