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"&amp;quot;This was supposed to be the fortress of solitude,&amp;quot; artist Vik Muniz jokingly says of his Brooklyn home. &amp;quot;I had just come out of a long relationship, and I said, &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;ll do this place as the ultimate bachelor pad.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; The only glitch was that seven years ago\u2014having just approved the plans that Brenda Bello of Basil Walter Architects had drawn up to convert Muniz&amp;#039;s 6,000-square-foot garage in the Clinton Hill neighborhood into a free-flowing live-work extravaganza\u2014he bumped into artist Janaina Tsch\u00E4pe at a dinner hosted by the S\u00E3o Paulo gallery that represents them both. And he fell in love.   In spite of the romance that followed, the bachelorworthy reconstruction proceeded as planned. Work, dining, and lounging were gathered into one massive space, peppered with Castiglioni lamps and Norman Cherner chairs. The more private library was (and still is) given over to science and art books, along with some of the works that the Brazil-born Muniz collects. Here are paintings by Tiepolo and Courbet (&amp;quot;probably the only one in Brooklyn&amp;quot;); Man Ray sculptures; photographs by Eadweard Muybridge, Imogen Cunningham, and Andy Warhol; magic lanterns; daguerreotypes; finely carved ivory; animal skeletons; and Chinese scholar&amp;#039;s rocks. The density of the treasures, not to mention their curiosity factor, recalls Muniz&amp;#039;s own creations: photographs of a dizzying variety of materials\u2014dust, wire, diamonds, Gummi Bears, sugar\u2014meticulously configured into images that have art-historical, pop-cultural, or political resonance or are just strangely beautiful. (His portrait of art consultant Brooke de Ocampo is made of melted chocolate.) It&amp;#039;s a workload that requires the daily support of several assistants\u2014on a recent day at Muniz&amp;#039;s home, one acolyte was patiently sucking up hair-gel bubbles with a doctor&amp;#039;s syringe for a work in progress. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s going to look real good when it&amp;#039;s finished,&amp;quot; the artist explains, his green eyes flashing with humor. As for the masses of empty Burgundy bottles that sit on the dining table, he says, &amp;quot;These are for a project with Daniel Boulud. He comes at night, we drink the wine, we talk, and I make stains on napkins. I&amp;#039;m creating a sort of museological inventory of stains for his new wine bar.&amp;quot;  The rear third of the building was transformed into a private terrace contained within the garage&amp;#039;s original fa\u00E7ade, and the architect installed a glass exterior wall to flood the live-work area with light. Bello also created a recessed second floor designed to contain the private aspects of Muniz&amp;#039;s bachelor world such as his bedroom and fiction library.  What&amp;#039;s the line about the best-laid plans? In short order, Tsch\u00E4pe, a German-Brazilian artist renowned for striking performative photography and videos and lush oil paintings, became girlfriend, wife, and mother (the couple&amp;#039;s daughter, Mina, is two years old). As for the single-guy space that Muniz had so carefully planned, it wasn&amp;#039;t exactly to her taste or her growing family&amp;#039;s requirements. &amp;quot;At the beginning, I was shy of saying anything because it was Vik&amp;#039;s house, and we didn&amp;#039;t know where we were going as a couple,&amp;quot; Tsch\u00E4pe recalls. &amp;quot;Then we got married, and after some time I got involved. Of course, you always want to keep a big space open, but when you have a family and you work together, walls make a lot of sense.&amp;quot; A second architect, Matthias Neumann, was brought in to renovate the renovation. He built a wall to separate Muniz&amp;#039;s studio from the dining and living area and set high into it frosted windows that let in more sunlight. The kitchen, lined with walnut plywood cabinets, displays Seydou Ke\u00EFta photographs. The second-floor bachelor sanctuary was carved up into an office and library for Tsch\u00E4pe, an editing room, a closet for changing film, a bedroom for Mina, and two more bathrooms. Neumann also added skylights to Tsch\u00E4pe&amp;#039;s painting studio, a shed at the back of the garden that was created for her by artist Gerben Mulder. The studio is a silent place, devoid of phones and shielded by a dense grove of feathery bamboo. Whether one is an artist or a significant other, Tsch\u00E4pe says, &amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s important to have your own dream space.&amp;quot;  Despite these alterations, there is one feature of Bello&amp;#039;s original plan that has changed very little\u2014the master bath\u2014and for good reason. It may be the most beautiful and serene part of the house. Newly paved with shimmering blue-glass tiles, the room is dominated by a majestic tub that is bathed in light pouring through a floor-to-ceiling glass wall that separates the area from the walled garden. &amp;quot;Light is a very precious thing in New York. Privacy, too,&amp;quot; Muniz says. Luckily for him and Tsch\u00E4pe, their well-blended home has plenty of both. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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