Native structure studio Apply for Structure and Urbanism has put in a glass workplace constructing with a vaulted roof contained in the shell of the Nineteenth-century Domino Sugar Refinery on the waterfront in Brooklyn.
Referred to as the Refinery, the 12-storey constructing is the conversion of an industrial manufacturing facility into a recent workplace, reflecting how the borough’s architectural wants have shifted.
The construction is the centrepiece of the redevelopment of the Domino Sugar Refinery web site, developed by Two Timber Administration with a grasp plan by SHoP Architects and Discipline Operations.
For the Refinery, Apply for Structure and Urbanism (PAU) wished to create a functioning workplace area that stored the facade of the Romanesque Revival construction.
“We’re not shortchanging as we speak for some nostalgia,” PAU principal Ruchika Modi informed Dezeen.
“What was actually essential was this concept of palimpsest and embracing what was on the location with out changing into slavish to historical past.”
Due to the ground configuration, the unique constructing couldn’t merely be tailored.
The floorplan was industrial with giant cavernous areas inside, so the studio opted for maintaining the historic constructing’s facade intact whereas placing a complete new constructing inside it.
“It is not a standard adaptive reuse challenge within the sense of going right into a warehouse constructing and adapting it,” Modi continued.
“There was no constructing to adapt. And if we have been to only go in and fill within the lacking flooring, it will result in a very bizarre, idiosyncratic, utterly weird, you already know, inside configuration.”
As a substitute, the brand new glass constructing sits again from the preexisting masonry and is anchored to it with metallic beams that hook up with the brand new constructing’s curtain partitions.
This hole permits for gentle to filter in by way of the home windows and creates area for a “vertical backyard” between the brick wall and the curtain partitions.
Architectural particulars similar to a big smokestack from the unique construction have been preserved on the facade.
The studio additionally used a number of the authentic structural detailing to information the brand new construction, similar to a cantilevered glass overlook that juts out from the hole within the facade the place an industrial chute as soon as sat and has views of the Discipline Operations-designed parks on the location.
The brand new construction consists of 460,000 sq. toes (42,735 sq. metres) of places of work with ground plans that differ relying on wants and an enormous penthouse that sits straight beneath the glazed vaulted roof.
From the places of work, inhabitants can catch views of the Manhattan skyline throughout the East River or of the city setting of the Williamsburg neighbourhood in Brooklyn.
In line with the studio, the constructing additionally runs on all-electric energy.
On the bottom ground is a triple-height atrium foyer with facilities areas and retail. A reproduction LED signal displaying the Domino Sugar brand model was hung from the river-facing facade.
The construction sits between two bigger constructions, a pair of linked skyscrapers by CookFox Architects and two in-progress skyscrapers clad in porcelain by Selldorf Architects.
The Refinery had been in operation for 120 years when it closed in 2004. The positioning was purchased by Two Timber Administration in 2012.
A six-acre park by Discipline Operations holds the area between the developments and the East River and has turn out to be a preferred park for the native public.
Since being commissioned for the Refinery, PAU has landed a fee, together with HOK, to redevelop the beleaguered Penn Station in Manhattan.
The pictures is by Max Touhey.
