Link.
A bit of background info:
For reference, these are original plans, but people have complained about them:
FLEXIBLE CITY
THE GARDEN IN THE MACHINE
VERTICAL LOTS
QUILTED CITY
TEN (10) BLOCKS
A bit of background info:
The Atlantic Yards project is located on 22 acres of Brooklyn, stretching from the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues east to Vanderbilt Avenue, The megaproject, being developed by Forest City Ratner Companies (FCRC) and the New York State Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), includes the Barclays Center arena and 16 residential and commercial towers. With an estimated budget of $5 billion, Atlantic Yards is the largest single-source development in New York City history.
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The Atlantic Yards: Five Proposals exhibit will show five alternative designs for the Phase II portion of the FCRC scheme. Phase II includes the three blocks east of 6th Avenue, and is slated to receive 4,278,000 S.F. of residential space (4,320 units), 156,000 S.F. of retail space, and 1,324 parking spaces. Each of the five schemes incorporates the approved bulk and square footage in order to present a parallel comparison with the FCRC plan.
For reference, these are original plans, but people have complained about them:
FLEXIBLE CITY
In a climate shaped by rapid economic turnover, ubiquitous high-rise, high-density, superblock developments fail to acknowledge change over time: a change in use, a change in infrastructural needs, and a change in built context and environment. This alternative proposal for Atlantic Yards embraces the developers outsized program as a challenge to offer a new model for urban development at this scale - one that is programmatically, infrastructurally, and contextually flexible to the forces that define its long-standing value. Value is defined by both its relevance in the community as well as its resulting profitability. Flexibility is achieved through a complete separation of inhabitable volume and infrastructure.
​Through this separation, each element is allowed to operate at full potential. Various re-use scenarios and contextual relationships can be optimized while also offering new typologies and scales of open space. Volumes move freely across the site and plug into its infrastructural wrapper at core locations. 8 story volumes, constructed as 4 double height floors, can be programmed with housing, commercial, or manufacturing space. Single story plates lie above and below each program volume and double as public indoor / outdoor space and green zones. The potential misalignments between volumes effectively doubles the square footage for both green infrastructure and public space.
THE GARDEN IN THE MACHINE
​​The Atlantic Yards site is defined by a varied context. Prospect Heights to the South is a residential neighborhood of four-story townhouses, Atlantic Avenue to the North is a high volume vehicular thoroughfare with a poorly defined street wall, and The Atlantic Terminal Mall and Barclays Center to the Northwest are places of frequent, high levels of activity. The OPerA scheme reconciles these shifts i​n scale through the use of three definition planes. A ground floor plane varies to create storefront retail spaces, community facilities and public spaces; a second plane slopes gently from the low-rise buildings of Prospect Heights to midrise height at Atlantic Avenue; a third plane slopes from the center of the site to the Northwest Corner where it meets the Barclays Center and Atlantic Terminal Mall to define the roofline of four residential towers. The tops of these planes are public green spaces which are varied to provide areas for different activities. Connecting these planes and the green space to the ground are a series of garden paths which carve along the exterior of the structures. Residential units and common spaces open onto the garden paths to create a porous connective urban fabric.
VERTICAL LOTS
The Atlantic Yards development requires over 4 million square feet of residential apartments. This is a very large scale project. Our idea is to create a set of buildings that despite being quite large fit into their context. The title Vertical Lots is referential to the typical lots that dominate the traditional brownstone townhouse developments that surround the Atlantic Yards. These old buildings were originally developed as one and two family townhomes, each with its own private rear yard, set within a courtyard block. Our project seeks to emulate this prototypical development, but in a vertical arrangement within a courtyard block.
The typical horizontal lot townhouse of 4 stories is comprised of 1, 2, 3 or 4 families + a rear yard. Each floor in these vertical lots has 1, 2, 3 or 4 families + a terrace yard. These terraces are 1, 2, 3 or 4 stories and are carved from the vertical mass reducing bulk and developing a landscape in the sky, the vertical lots. The towers are set on an angle to match the street context of Fort Greene. The base of the courtyard block is on the grid of Prospect Heights. The big scale of Atlantic Avenue permits large scale towers, but small scale Dean Street does not. The buildings along Dean Street are no more than 6 stories matching the tallest buildings along Dean Street. The towers vary in height to a maximum of 50 stories. This height matches the tallest of the buildings now under construction around Barclays. The skewed angle of the tower permits sight lines to continue along the streets in Fort Greene and reduces the bulk when viewing from Prospect Heights.
QUILTED CITY
Quilted City acts to unify the neighborhoods which bound the Atlantic Rail yards with the insertion of layered urban, public space in the center of the site, creating an active, open, and varied environment for the surrounding neighborhoods. This is done by understanding and responding to the size and scale of its immediate context, by creating new green space and breezeways for all residents, and by relocating the Atlantic Terminal for the LIRR and subway to the west end of the site. The buildings of Quilted City are arranged in layers, the first of which defines the edge of the bounding blocks and mirrors the height of the buildings along Pacific and Dean streets. A variety of commercial activities would occur at ground level and extend down to the concourse and tracks below, while the floors above are devoted to residences. As you move into the site, individual residential buildings of larger scales are placed in various locations, helping to mold a series of public spaces within the site. The largest of these public spaces, matching in size with Times Square,aligns itself axially with the Barclays Arena and the proposed location of the Atlantic Terminal. The terminal was relocated to the development in order to animate the internal green space, to give it a constant source of life and movement. People would be constantly coming and going from the site making this space not just a community asset, but also a gateway into Brooklyn and living room for the city. All of these elements together create a city within the city, and act as a nexus for the surrounding neighborhoods that not only adds life to the area, but also preserves views from the existing buildings and retains the scale of the immediate context.
TEN (10) BLOCKS
Atlantic Yards is an opportunity. Rather than impose new structures on the site, we have chosen to make repairs to the city that already surrounds this crossroads. We begin Fort Greene Park to the north and Prospect Park to the south. Both parks have contributed to the distribution of fresh water to the citizens of Brooklyn. A 6.5 Acre linear public space styled as a reservoir is proposed to bond these two solitary hills into a single network. Moving down the slopes from each park, we encounter two distinct brownstone neighborhoods. Fort Greene features blocks with their long axis oriented north-south and primary streets running east-west. In Prospect Heights, the long face of the blocks are oriented loosely east-west with major streets arranged on an approximate north-south axis. To bind the two districts together, their underlying grids are combined, creating a group of nine blocks where previously there were only three. By introducing new buildings on both sides of Atlantic Avenue and refashioning the roadway as a functioning valley, a traffic artery is converted to a parkway. By collecting, filtering and storing storm water, Atlantic Valley aims to provide relief to the overtaxed nearby Gowanus Canal. Finally there is the matter of the program. The brief calls for 4.3 million square feet of new housing (4,300 new units). To avoid overwhelming the adjacent brownstone neighborhoods, project density is redistributed in three ways. First, the average gross square footage is reduced from 1,000 s.f. per apartment to 850 s.f. Second, program is transferred to Block 1, which was originally assigned to phase 1. Third, a series of seven new sites on the north side of Atlantic Avenue are incorporated into the project footprint.
