East 11th Street/Habitats - A Test Kitchen for Design - NYTimes.com FIELD TRIALS Kimberly Peck, an architect, tries out her ideas at her home in the Cast Iron Building. Among them are the cantilevered stairs with storage underneath and the double-sided bookcases that front the sleeping loft. IN her 15 years as a practicing architect, Kimberly Peck has amassed an eclectic portfolio. Her creations range from a 68th-floor apartment on Central Park South, dressed in jewel-tone colors, to a house in an upstate New York dairy community, population 633, using the frame of a 19th-century barn. And when you poke around the Web, you also discover that as an architecture student at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Ms. Peck wrote her thesis on what she beguilingly describes as the "table landscape." That landscape is populated by such humble objects as salt and pepper shakers, oil and vinegar cruets, and sugar bowls and cream pitchers. As a student she designed and built dozens of these items, using cunningly interlocking bands of polished aluminum and stainless steel. For Ms. Peck, who is 41, the urge to build and tinker runs deep. Her father was an engineer for the defense industry, and as an undergraduate at Boston University, she majored in biomedical engineering, "though I was kind of miserable," she said, "because the subject matter wasn't artistic enough for my taste." At Virginia Polytechnic, she started playing around with industrial design, and became a dab hand at using the lathe, the milling machine and other mechanical equipment. Not long after moving to New York in 1997, Ms. Peck began making a name for herself as a designer of hair salons. She also threw herself into a project that went well beyond crafting dinner table décor: the renovation of her 900-square-foot loft in the fabled Cast Iron Building in Greenwich Village. The seven-story structure at 67 East 11th Street sits across Broadway from Grace Church on the celebrated Ladies" Mile. It was designed in 1868 by John Kellum and began life as the James McCreery Dry Goods Store. A bronze plaque reminds passers-by that the building enjoyed a star turn in Caleb Carr's novel "The Alienist," a psychological thriller set in the late 19th century. Mr. Carr noted its location on "one of the city's busiest shopping strips ... selling everything from dry goods to boots to photographs," along with its "elegant mansard roof and cast-iron arched windows." Sadly, the roof eventually bit the dust. In 1998, when Ms. Peck bought the apartment for about $260,000, it was in dismal shape. The snug galley kitchen had seen little love since the building went co-op in the "70s, and the appliances were so ancient that Ms. Peck wasn't sure the stove worked. "No one really used the kitchen," she said. I think the previous owners just ordered in all the time. What's more, the steep and narrow ship's ladder that led to the sleeping loft was downright treacherous. China, Ms. Peck's beloved shar-pei, was so terrified of descending the steps that her owner had to carry her down the ladder and once tripped with the 45-pound pet in her arms. On the plus side, the loft had terrific bones, starting with the oversize arched windows that faced the street and flooded the space with light. Twin cast-iron columns soared to 14-foot ceilings. Especially tempting for an architect, the apartment offered a canvas on which Ms. Peck could try out ideas she had amassed while renovating other people's homes but never had a chance to implement. "One of the great frustrations of being an architect is that clients don't always love certain things as much as you do," Ms. Peck said. An advantage of having my own place was that I could do everything I've ever dreamed of. My apartment was my architectural laboratory. Freedom sometimes proved paralyzing. "In the beginning," she recalled, "I had so many ideas and sketches that I couldn't make a decision for fear of choosing the wrong one. I'd be so overwhelmed that I'd suffer from a sort of designer's block. Nor was designer's block the only impediment. Midway through the two-year renovation, Ms. Peck came down with a severe case of chicken pox, a disease that can be especially serious for an adult. When her fever spiked to 105 degrees, she ended up in the hospital. She recuperated with the help of friends and room service in a hotel away from the din of construction. E-mail: habitats@nytimes.com