Friday, August 26, 2011
News Science-Fiction Plans for the Brooklyn Navy Yard of the Future
Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 1:26 PM
Though much of the construction work happening at the Brooklyn Navy Yard these days suggests a certain disregard towards history, we wouldn't exactly call it futuristic. But Flatbush Avenue-based architecture and urban design firm Planetary One has some straight-up sci-fi ideas for the former shipbuilding yard.
Planetary One members Mitchell Joachim, Maria Aiolova and Nurhan Gokturk collaborated on "Super Dock" (pictured below), a model for a futuristic makeover of the historic navy yard's waterfront facilities. "There are no walls," Joachim told the Brooklyn Paper. "We’re merging architecture and land into the water. The entire area becomes a ballast for Brooklyn, so it can absorb water, clean it and filter it back into New York."
The "Super Dock" plans, which would transform the Navy Yard's five dry docks, would use one to accommodate a giant 3D printing system to create ships from computer models. Another would be flooded several times a day for marine biologists and other scientists studying New York's waterways. Converted into a high-tech manufacturing plant, another dock would produce solar panels and other green goods. The Planetary One team envisions covering much of the Navy Yards with an undulating organic roof system coated in fungi.
Their project is strictly a thought experiment—they didn't submit to a city competition to design an engineering campus at the Navy Yards, which could begin construction next year.
(Archinect)
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