Maker Park
Urban Design
Maker Park is a vision that resists the disappearance of Brooklyn’s history and industrial waterfront--reimagining what a 21st century public park should be.
Not yet built, our team is working rapidly to make this design a reality. The community fought for ten years for their park promised in a major re-zoning. New York City finally acquired the remaining site this year. But during that time the neighborhood changed, from an industrial waterfront to one of the most creative communities in the United States: Williamsburg, Brooklyn today is home to remarkable urban culture comprising tech startups, innovative restaurants, craftsmen and artists, and a dynamic residential neighborhood housed within the former industrial waterfront.
Now that history and with its waterfront architecture and industrial artifacts are being wiped away by generic new buildings. The community needs more open space. How can we maintain the authenticity and express the history that made this neighborhood great, pay homage to the working culture of the waterfront, and reflect the creative ethos of contemporary Brooklyn?
A collaborative pro-bono team including Architects, Landscape Architects, Scientists, Environmental Attorneys, Financial Analysts, Remediation Specialists, Lighting Designers, and Graphic Designers has created a new kind of design for a waterfront park.
The team is working with community groups and city agencies to help make the vision a reality, paying homage to the area’s long legacy of manufacturing, and preserving the neighborhood’s culture of collaboration and making that is so central to its 21st century character.
Empire Stores
Architecture - Commercial - Constructed
“Fortress Brooklyn” was the name for the continuous warehouses that originally enclosed Brooklyn in the 19th century, cutting off the community from the dangerous working waterfront. Today, the waterfront has been reclaimed and reinvented as one of New York City’s most beautiful public spaces, Brooklyn Bridge Park, and DUMBO is one of the its most dynamic neighborhoods. But the remaining historic coffee warehouses facing the park had decayed and remained empty after half a century.
A design competition was held to determine how to save and restore these remarkable structures, and use their revenue to support the park. This recently completed design for the Empire Stores is the result of this competition, and creates a face for the new Brooklyn skyline facing Manhattan. The design for these seven warehouses, with significant contemporary additions, a dramatic public courtyard, and a rooftop public park brings together the best of the old and new Brooklyn.
The design combines all the amazing qualities that Brooklyn is known for. History, authenticity and creativity are reflected in the radical approach to design and program. Cultural museums, and cutting edge tech and creative firms fit side by side with inventive restaurants and retail surrounded by gardens and green spaces. Inventive new public spaces reconnect the community to the waterfront, including the vertical creative commons courtyard slicing through the building leading to a roof top public park overlooking the Manhattan skyline make the Empire Stores a diverse cultural hub of innovation for Brooklyn.