Navy Dock

Architectural project
Location _New York | USA
Concept _A free floating information hub
Award winning Finalist

The opportunity offered in implementing the terreform ONE Lab into the existing building of the Brooklyn Navy Yard is the transformation of the building from an industrial production facility to a postindustrial think tank. There where ships used to be assembled will prospectively be a place for developing a postindustrial and ecologically oriented society interdisciplinarily. The most important resource in this process is the information and its unrestricted availability as possible.

Our concept is based on a free-floating bridge platform, which is available to all users of the Smart Dock as an informal communication center. A translucent construction, topologically defined as a hybrid of tube and globe, forms the center of this bridge. In the iconography of the globe it is clear that the most pressing problems facing humanity such as resource scarcity, environmental protection, informational self-determination, financial markets, etc., can only be solved if the political and planning managers act globally and networked (see Buckminster Fuller‘s global village idea). From the tubes, i.e., the linear time-space, a conceptual time axis becomes explicit, to which all future planning and action relates. In this spatial hybrid of Time Tunnel and Globe, the latest information will be collected, exchanged and compacted.

This efficacious space generator focuses on ideas, concepts and visions of a sustainable and resource-conscious future of the planet. On the bridge platform, overlooking the East River and the skyline of New York, these concepts are then presented for discussion. Directly connected to the bridge platform is a three-storey workspace with a vertical hall in front. Here, new and unsecured scenarios and projects are conceived, designed and tested. This is the internal terreform ONE Lab. In the connection of the vertical, semipublic ONE Lab with the horizontal public bridge platform emerges a powerful series of spaces that can always be reprogrammed and configured again. It ensures maximum permeability and resonance for all explicit or latent ideas and visions of the Smart Dock researchers.