Their First Apartment Together Launched a Small Business

Just out of NYU, David Zhang and Sarah Kim turned their Bushwick rental into a home-furnishings lab.

- By Wendy Goodman

Sarah Kim and David Zhang met living floors apart in the same dorm at NYU. They went on to share separate apartments with roommates: Kim in the East Village, Zhang in Bed-Stuy. A few months before graduating last year, they decided to move in together. But where? Many of their friends lived in Bushwick, and on visits they would often pass by the brand-new complex the Denizen, with its trusswork façade, which sprawls across two city blocks, contains 900 apartments, and is the sort of place that brags about having a craft brewery, a dog spa, and an arcade room. Kim says they always thought it was “so weird and big. And who would want to live there?”