This mixed-use development reimagines a vacant, 19th century warehouse on the DUMBO waterfront as a contemporary creative workplace and community hub. The conversion of this 42 000 m2 complex provides Brooklyn’s burgeoning Tech Triangle with much-needed office space, and brings retail, dining, public space, and exhibition galleries to the neighborhood.
The campaign of adaptive re-use celebrates and preserves the building’s monumental presence on the waterfront, while improving circulation between DUMBO’s urban fabric and the Brooklyn Bridge Park. A passageway carved out of the masonry structure creates a pedestrian conduit between Water Street and the waterfront. A four-story, open-air courtyard excavated from within the center of the building serves as an immersive public space for building tenants, community members, and park visitors. Glass curtain walls line the courtyard, blending the contemporary and the historic to make visible the building’s striations: shopping and a public food court at grade, galleries for the Brooklyn Historical Society on the second floor, and multiple floors of open office space above. By adapting the rooftop into a landscaped public terrace accessible from the courtyard, Brooklyn Bridge Park is extended into the building organically.
