DESIGN STUDIO 4.1 -
FORT DÉFIER
Red Hook’s once booming littoral industry supported both its stance in the American Revolution and development of the neighbourhood during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Now, as New York City is thrown into a perilous future with flooding and rising sea levels increasing, the water that once supported the area now threatens it with extinction. Fort Défier aims to counter this by proposing a new form of biotechnological manufacturing, directly confronting the environmental crisis by remitting carbon-heavy conventional production techniques and promoting a sustainable conscience amongst the public.
Combined with education and community facilities that compliment the manufacturing centre, the proposal projects three buildings from a re-landscaped, biodiverse public park out over the Upper Bay, directly enlightening the public on both flooding and wider sustainable issues. A psychological journey of Shock, Hope and Action guides visitors through the three buildings and across the water, blurring the threshold between environmental innovation and continual discovery.
Each building’s form and materiality embodies both the progression from land to water and the programme hosted within, with brick facades that reflect on the surrounding brick-shed vernacular turning from charred timber to patinated zinc cladding that abstracts and ornaments the building forms cast at sea. The tectonics of each material has been expressed at 0.9m heights to represent the subsequent water rise from 0.5°c of global warming, tying the scheme together externally and using the building fabric to subconsciously educate on impending rises.
A structural combination of demountable glulam frames and angled CLT panels sit on elevated foundations, lifted just above the flood plain level to allow the building services to use the water beneath to assist the heating/cooling, ventilation, and water demand for the buildings. The timber structures specified not only sequest tonnes of embodied carbon in their construction but can be collapsed and re-assembled for another site further inland via a managed retreat strategy.
With the client demonstrating a desire to support and advocate natural wildlife in the urban metropolis, the site’s existing parkland has been restored and expanded with new biodiversity ranges, educating the public on urban vegetation via multiple exploratory trails. In strong contrast with the hard industrial context, the proposal’s natural embedment into the landscape aims to embrace the water’s peril and use it to reinvigorate the spirit of the neighbourhood.