Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

The UK architecture publication CLAD (Community of Leisure Architects Designers, according to the URL, but also aimed at investment and development), on 4/1/20 offered Rick Cook on the need for sustainability, wellness and resiliency in design . The interview with the co-founder of  COOKFOX Architects  includes: Today, COOKFOX's work ranges in scope from small "jewel" projects and single-family homes to complex urban transformations and large institutional and commercial spaces. All, however, are built on the firm's underlying principles. ...The mixed-use 550 Vanderbilt development in Brooklyn was designed to integrate nature for the health and wellbeing of its residents, with natural materials like wood and stone used to create an inviting, tactile experience that transitions residents from the street to their homes. Well, it is a handsome building, especially compared to the less costly, and less invested-in other Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park towers. But ...

From the real estate web site 6sqft, 7/31/17,  INTERVIEW: Architect Rick Cook on the legacy of COOKFOX’s sustainable design in NYC Q: You’ve been working on 535 Carlton and 550 Vanderbilt , part of the greater Atlantic Yards redevelopment. It’s a project with a lot of history, and will soon be a whole new neighborhood in Brooklyn . What’s that project been like? Rick: We didn’t have an intention of being involved with the project formerly known as Atlantic Yards [now Pacific Park ], but we liked the key people we worked with at Forest City Ratner [the developer] on a proposal for Seward Park. I saw how important the sites of 535 Carlton and 550 Vanderbilt would be to the project… they could speak a language that could transition into, and be a part of, the adjoining neighborhood. Not something separate, not a new neighborhood, but an extension to the existent [sic] neighborhood. (Emphases added) OK, so the official line is that the project "will soon be a whole new n...

Let's take another look at these videos produced to promote Pacific Park and the 550 Vanderbilt condo tower. I'll put the narration  in italics ,   then interpolate comments. Consider the first video , which is about two years old. "The New York we love is a place that largely happened by accident. But what if it happened on purpose?" And what if it didn't? The Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park project has gone through one name change, multiple schedule changes, and multiple changes in program, with more to come. If you could build an ideal New York neighborhood from scratch, what would you do? Remember how original architect Frank Gehry embraced the opportunity "to build a neighborhood practically from scratch" (misquoted in the Times without "practically"), and how that raised hackles. You would build it in New York's best borough, commission a master plan by America's most celebrated living architect, place it next to Broo...

The 550 Vanderbilt condo tower, aka B11, is definitely emerging, as anyone passing by the corner of Dean Street can see: the structure of the third floor is visible. That emerging structure, as shown in the GIF at right and the photos below, differs considerably from the self-serving, deceptively modest rendering produced by the firm CookFox and distributed by the developer, Greenland Forest City Partners. Last October, I contrasted the rendering with a photo of a similar slice of Vanderbilt Avenue at Dean Street, contending that the rendering was skewed to diminish the size of the tower. The evidence today seems even more clear. Indeed, note how the third floor of 550 Vanderbilt extends to nearly the top of the second floor of the brick building across the street, but the rendering packs in nearly four floors. The rendering, larger version The photo, larger version

In 2005, some two years after the Atlantic Yards project was announced, the celebrity architect, Frank Gehry, said more than once said he didn't want to design the entire project, an arena and 16 towers. “How do you make a complex that doesn’t look like a project even though one architect’s doing it?” he asked rhetorically at one event. "Normally I would’ve brought in five other architects, but one of the requirements of this client is that I do it," Gehry declared at another event. Developer Forest City Ratner claimed one firm would be more efficient, but surely Gehry's stature--and the presumed higher prices it would reap--drove that decision/claim. In February 2007, the original landscape architect, Laurie Olin,  predicted  to the New York Observer 's Matthew Schuerman that Gehry wouldn’t design every building. Forest City executive Jim Stuckey responded that Gehry “will be the architect on every one of them.” A changing project Well, Stuckey fam...

New York YIMBY has the first renderings for CookFox's  550 Vanderbilt Avenue, 17-Story Pacific Park Brooklyn Condo Tower  at the corner of Vanderbilt Avenue and Dean Street. Stephen Smith writes: The façade will be a mix of masonry and precast concrete, for a more traditional look than the Gehry and SHoP designs. It should fit in nicely with the brownstones of Prospect Heights, offering a gradual aesthetic transition towards the more modernist SHoP towers of the western end of the site and in downtown Brooklyn proper. From a design perspective, yes, both 550 Vanderbilt and the previously revealed 535 Carlton indicate more of an effort to transition toward neighborhood. "It’s actually quite attractive," writes Ryan Hutchins of Capital New York. But the aesthetic transition is coupled with a selective perspective on the rendering, which minimizes the scale transition between low-rise buildings on Vanderbilt and this 202-foot tall, 17-story, 275-unit tower.  ...

Follow arrow: from fourth floor (right) to the seventh The history of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park includes much deception and misdirection regarding the scale of the project. Part of that has been a policy of not showing the scale at all--remember the brochures that depicted towers as smudges from the sky? Another element has been distortion--remember how the Williamsburgh Savings Bank (now known as One Hanson) was depicted as looming over the proposed Miss Brooklyn office tower, though the latter would be three times its bulk? Well, the developers of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park--now, Greenland Forest City Partners--are still at it. Consider the very strategic release of renderings by CookFox (first, on 8/4/14, to  Curbed ) of B14, the 18-story, 184-foot tower also known as 535 Carlton, at the corner of Carlton Avenue and Dean Street. The construction plan should be part of the discussion at the Atlantic Yards Quality of Life meeting on Thursday, Sept. 4. It's quit...