In late 2007, lovable schmuck Zach Braff paid $3.2M for legendary Broadway director Tom O'Horgan's 2,600-square-foot apartment on the edge of Manhattan's Union Square. Well, in the four-plus intervening years, the actor hired NYC-based architect Michael Davis to completely gut the space and transform it into an open-floorplan temple of salvaged woods, brick, and tile. “I had this daydream of a cozy barn in upstate New York, but floating above the city,” says Braff in this week's New York magazine. "Manhattan is so crazy and mayhem-y, and I wanted something peaceful.” Do check out the rest of the Spring Design 2012 issue, whose celebrity-home bent seems less adventurous than issues past: perhaps because New York design editor Wendy Goodman is set to launch a standalone title?

· Zach Braff: “I had this daydream of a cozy barn floating above the city.” [New York]

· Spring Design 2012 [New York]

· New York Magazine Set to Launch Standalone Design Title [Curbed National]