Home

Powerhouse Arts Competition

Brooklyn, NY
Concept Design, 2016
Type: Civic / Arts / Adaptive Reuse
Theme: Transforming Old Buildings

This invited competition reimagined a more than 100-year-old subway power station as a multidisciplinary art and making center. Set along an industrial waterway, the Gowanus Canal, the complex will revitalize the cultural and industrial life of the neighborhood.

Our design retained the grit and character of the existing power station and adds a new glass and steel addition in a rugged but refined architectural language. Within the existing building, the great hall is conceived of as a vast public multidisciplinary event space for the making, performing, and presenting of art. In the addition, studios, workshops, and maker spaces are created for a variety of artistic and craft disciplines, including metalworking, woodworking, ceramics, printmaking, and digital media. The complex would also include galleries, a café, and extensive back of house spaces to accommodate the heavy use of art making and fabrication.

Once a vital transportation artery, and more recently a polluted superfund site, the canal now connects dozens of residential development sites. As part of an effort to preserve Brooklyn’s industrial manufacturing past, our design proposed a canal-side work yard that could be programmed for public events.

Read More

Key People

Maitland Jones

Noah Biklen
Design Lead

Christopher Yost
Project Lead

Tianwei Ye
Design Team

Kate Warren
Design Team

Collaborators

TenBerke
Architect, Interior Design

Scape
Landscape Architect

Robert Silman Associates
Structural Engineer

Altieri Sebor Wieber
MEP Engineer

Atelier Ten
Sustainability

Related Work

NXTHVN
122 Community Arts Center
University of Akron, Polsky Building