SHoP’s Zany Domino Redevelopment Plan To Be The Face Of The “New Brooklyn”

Architizer News

SHoP’s Zany Domino Redevelopment Plan To Be The Face Of The “New Brooklyn”

March 4, 2013

All renderings: Courtesy SHoP Architects and James Corner Field Operations

Earlier today, our buddies over at Curbed dropped new renderings of SHoP’s proposal to transform the Domino Sugar Factory development site into a funky mixed-use office park that tries a little too hard. The conceptual plan consists of several “donut” structures sprinkled liberally throughout the 11-acre site. The towers, the tallest of which rises 598 feet, are configured into large would-be urban letters, with the buildings hollowed out by cavernous voids; together they form an unintelligible script, perhaps one whose message will only be decipherable in the future, when the Manhattanization of the Brooklyn waterfront is complete. Click through for more.

After purchasing the site and scrapping a miserably humdrum plan by Rafael Vinoly that was attached to it, Two Trees, the developers behind the new Brooklyn, tapped SHoP to reboot the project. SHoP developed a more “porous” plan, upping up the open space by 60% and adding a 1/4 mile long park along the water designed to accommodate all kinds of activities. The main refinery structure will be preserved and re-programmed at a cost of $50 million, while pieces of the factory grounds will be salvaged and converted into a kind of “artificial walk,” what the architects call “Wiliamsburg’s version of the High Line.”

And about the exuberant, why not-design of the tower clusters: they incorporate monumental voids so as to preserve river views to the neighborhood behind them. It’s important to note that only two of the buildings will be designed by SHoP, who will select firms to flesh out the rest of the plan.