Brooklyn Bridge Park Boathouse | New York, New York, USA | 2018

Architects: Architecture Research Office
Client: Brooklyn Bridge Park
General Contractor: PJS Group
Photographers: Elizabeth Felicella

Perched on riprap overlooking the water, a new boathouse anchors the Pier 5 Uplands of Brooklyn Bridge Park. Designed with a new maintenance and operations building on the opposite end of the site, both new buildings were developed concurrently with the landscape design of the Pier 5 Uplands.

The one-and-a-half mile long park by the local landscape architecture firm, has transformed 85 acres of the former industrial waterfront into an exemplar of urban landscape design. Tasked with designing one building with public, administrative, and storage functions, we responded with a site strategy to bookend the Pier 5 Uplands with two new buildings.

While the M&O building anchors the urban edge of Furman Street, the new boathouse extends from the elevated berm into the park. Providing secure, open-air boat storage at grade level, with a multipurpose room and public restrooms safely above floodwaters on the upper floor, the architecture of the 5,000 sf boathouse is purposeful, economical, and resilient.

The upper level of the boathouse appears to float, wrapped with metal grilles that create a dynamic display of light and shadow throughout the day and glow at night when backlit.

Shaded by the grilles, large southwest-facing floor-to-ceiling windows in the multipurpose room provide expansive views of the harbor and lower Manhattan. Robust materials including galvanized steel structure, gray fiber cement panels, anodized aluminum grilles, exposed concrete floor, and plywood interior walls are carefully composed to elevate the quality of this prosaic building. A jewel-like public building, the boathouse punctuates the rhythm of the park experience. A waterfront beacon for the Brooklyn community and visitors alike, the porous structure is an extension of the Pier 5 Uplands, connecting the landscape to the waterfront.

The boathouse adapts to each hour and season, appearing opaque or translucent, rugged or elegant, depending on the time of day. As a threshold that fuses the city with the waterfront, the boathouse fulfills the park’s intent. The project is targeting LEED-Silver certification.