Location: Brooklyn, NY Square Footage: 56,000 Type: Mixed Use Year: 2013 | Southside Gardens, a proposal for a 60 unit affordable housing building is situated on a challenging and prominently visible site in the South Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn at the edge of the Williamsburg Bridge. Our design, in collaboration with landscape designers Future Green Studio, activates the street with a dynamic, variegated façade and a streetscape that engages the public through the interplay of geometry, materiality, and landscape. Window surrounds made of extruded aluminum protrude from the multi-toned brick facade, shading the glazed surface from the sun while casting raked shadows on the masonry, adding depth to the building. The brick façade cants away from the street at a large scale, and smaller panels of brick tilt away at individual rooms to create moving shadows and additional perceived depth on this large street wall, which remains solid and substantial in dialogue with the loft building to the East. | |