With a livelihood that’s both vintage and contemporary, Harold Kyle and Debbie Urbanski tend to approach home projects with a similarly open mind. The couple, who run Boxcar Press—one of the largest letterpress print and prepress shops in the country—continue the tradition of letterpress craft using equipment that dates back to the early 1900s, along with modern digital techniques. So when they decided to renovate the musty attic of their Colonial-style clapboard house in Syracuse, New York, they wanted to translate the crisp, clean design of graphic arts into a writing studio and guest bedroom.

Sustainability and contemporary design were at the top of their priority list, so the couple needed an architect. On a whim, Urbanski contacted Syracuse University’s School of Architecture looking for a designer with fresh ideas for their small space. Faculty member Jonathan Lott, a partner in the firm PARA-Project with Brian Price, jumped on the opportunity. “There were certainly limits,” Lott explains, “but because Harold and Debbie were really open-minded, we were able to do it.”

Lott and Price carved out 450 square feet of usable space under the house’s pitched roof. The limited ceiling height meant that circulation had to run down the center of the room, while everything low—guest bed, old claw-foot tub, and writing desk—had to be tucked under the slope. By adding a large window at the rear of the house and big skylights, the architects flooded the space with light. Strikingly repurposed industrial paper tubes line the walls, creating a billowing, fabric-like texture across the surface.

In searching for a material to use in the attic that would both serve acoustic purposes and help thermally, Lott remembered hearing about a nearby factory that was sending nonrecyclable cardboard tubes to the landfill by the truckload. “I thought, ‘The strangeness of this undulating wall will emphasize the diagram of the space, help with sound and heat, and keep tubes out of the landfill,’ ” Lott says. 

Though the tubes were free, labor was intensive. Over two weeks, PARA-Project interns helped stack, glue, and install the tubes in order to finish the space before Kyle and Urbanski’s second baby was born. All the effort was worth it, and the reused paper room is ideal for the print-minded couple. “It’s calm and peaceful like a sanctuary, like being in a tree house,” Kyle says. “Because they are paper, the tubes shrink and expand depending on the humidity—it’s a living, breathing wall.”

To find out how to make your own cardboard tube wall, click here.