Powerhouse Arts | Brooklyn, New York | 2023

Executive & Preservation Architect: PBDW Architects
Lead Architects: James Seger, Tory Cuddy, Brigitte Cook, and Catherine Zagalis
Partner-in-Charge: James Seger
Project Manager: Tory Cuddy
Preservation Project Manager: Brigitte Cooke
Project Architect: Catherine Zagalis
Design Team: Lawrence Chen, Cornell Chu, Peter Chimicles, Steven Dodds, Heidi Kippenhan, Robert Mintzes, Mike Neglia, and Marshall Sellers.
Design Architect: Herzog & de Meuron
Lead Architects: Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, Ascan Mergenthaler, Philip Schmerbeck, Jack Brough, and Sam Zeif
Project Director: Philip Schmerbeck
Project Manager: Jack Brough
Competition Manager: Raha Talebi
Design Team: Farhad Ahmad, Bruno de Almeida Martins, Iwona Boguslawska, Christopher Cornecelli, Lasse Deichmann, Muriz Djurdjevic, Nazli Ergani, Florian Frank, Fabiola Guzman-Rivera, Josh Helin, Magnus Overby, Pedro Peña Jurado, Martin Jonathan Raub, Rebecca Roberts, Emma Thomas, and Pimchanok Wangveeramit
Original Architect: Thomas E. Murray (1903)
Landscape Architects: Ken Smith Workshop Landscape Architects (Waterfront esplanade)
Construction Manager: Urban Atelier Group
Client: Powerhouse Arts
Photographers: Albert Vecerka/ESTO and Iwan Baan

Powerhouse Arts is a new 170,000SF art fabrication facility in Gowanus, Brooklyn providing workshops for large scale art production in metal, wood, ceramic, textiles, and printmaking. The project also offers flexible performance and exhibition spaces to support the artists and community.

The not-for-profit owner partners with mission-aligned artists and fabricators from the neighborhood and from New York City to create a collaborative arts hub and to support education and employment in the arts.

The project transformed a derelict structure on a contaminated brownfield site along the Gowanus Canal into a vibrant community center for artistic engagement. Built in 1903, the building served as the former Central Power Station of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit System and remains a prominent building on the Gowanus Canal recalling the neighborhood’s industrial origins.

Designed by Thomas E. Murray, the complex comprised a Boiler House (demolished in 1950) and Turbine Hall, the latter of which was decommissioned in the 1970s and progressively deteriorated. In the 2000s, the building became a destination for graffiti artists and was locally nicknamed the “Batcave.”

In 2012 Powerhouse Arts acquired the site and retained Herzog & de Meuron and PBDW Architects to restore the Turbine Hall and design an addition to accommodate the needs of this new arts institution.Following extensive remediation of the EPA Superfund brownfield site on which the structure rests, the project reused the historic foundations to limit excavation. This required a soil load test within the footprint of each structure to confirm the existing mat slab could be reused.

The new complex echoes the original power plant in its massing and site usage, including an addtion to the Turbine Hall that matches the proportions of the original Boiler House and re-establishes the relationship between the two structures. New windows were inset in the original masonry openings, informed by the historic window design.

The historic steel structure of the Turbine Hall and many of its interior surfaces, including the graffiti, were preserved, and featured in the rehabilitated building. The project also involved an extensive exterior restoration campaign to stabilize and repair the brick façade while carefully maintaining and celebratng the now historic graffiti and patina on the building’s exterior and interior, all of which are exposed and celebrated in the final design.

The Boiler House addition is a cast-in-place concrete structure that provides a robust and efficient envelope to house most of the fabrication workshops. The red pigmentation of the exterior wythe of concrete responds to the masonry of the Turbine Hall, and the historic punched window openings carry across to the Boiler House to create a unified building enclosure.

Through the preservation and utilization of the historic elements of the existing building, as well as the relationship of the buildings to the site, the design strengthens the building’s industrial character in an evolving neighborhood context. The Gowanus neighborhood has seen a significant shift in zoning and demographics in recent years, with luxury high-rise residential buildings now flanking the site in every direction. Powerhouse Arts is one of the last historic structures to remain on the canal. Not only is the historic Turbine Hall preserved and the original power plant massing restored, but the facility retains and fosters ongoing manufacturing and industrial activity along Gowanus Canal, which was historically a center of industry in the city.

The Powerhouse Arts facility is intended to keep art making local and provide safe and healthy workshops for arists and fabricators to work and collaborate. The project’s impact will undoubtedly play a critcal role in enriching the cultural, environmental, and recreatonal spaces of the redeveloped Gowanus area.