Domino Square Opens At Historic Domino Sugar Factory Site, Offers New Programmable Public Plaza
Domino Square is a building unlike any other, suitable for a site whose uniqueness is elevated by the design of architecture firm Studio Cadena in collaboration with landscape architect Field Operations. A blended, hybrid structure, part park, part retail arcade, and part civic infrastructure, the building serves as the final piece of public space to complete on the larger Domino campus, which includes the acclaimed Domino Park, to which this project connects.
The one-acre site is bordered by the landmark Refinery building to the north, bustling Kent Avenue to the east, the Selldorf Architects-designed One Domino Square towers to the south, and the larger expanse of Domino Park to the west, looking on to the East River and Manhattan skyline. The building shapes the topography of the site, creating a public square that sits above shops, all of which covers a water treatment facility in the basement that serves the surrounding community.
On the ground level, the building defines a porous street wall which reinforces an active street life. The project’s combined 320 feet of street frontage along Kent Avenue, South 3rd, and South 4th Streets was a crucial element to the design. A series of cast-in-place concrete piers, intentionally varied in size, line the street perimeter on these three sides, creating loggia with retail spaces and entry points for the park. It adds an unmistakable new urban figure recognizable to visitors and neighbors as the initial approach to the Domino campus.
The design invites people to engage with the retail fronts with peaked roofs, a result of Studio Cadena’s interest in scale related to the Domino Square site. The building can be seen as a response to its context, offering a counterpoint to the larger towers of the surrounding campus and an engagement on a smaller, human scale. On the retail facade, Studio Cadena designed intentionally low, domestic-scaled entry points which then rise to a peak, evoking something more grand.
Inspiration for this came from Studio Cadena founder Benjamin Cadena’s experience growing up in his native Colombia and the Andes Mountains. “The streetside form of Domino Square has a similar effect that the topography of mountains has on the body—a capacity to relate your size, your scale in a terrain, back to something geological or beyond time as we know it,” Cadena shared. “It is something innate to what I grew up with in the Andes, living along and within mountains. It also plays against the perceived flatness of New York's grid and its relentless verticality. The building introduces an uncommon scale to New York's street life.”
Material choices are purposefully rugged and utilitarian, reflecting the building’s placement near the East River and the need for storm resilience. The concrete piers, which vary in width from three to five feet, are sandblasted to reveal the limestone aggregate and add tone and texture to the facade. Rather than hiding smokestacks from the water treatment facility below, instead these tubular ducts penetrate the building and prominently appear above the landscaped roof, continuing a narrative throughline of the Domino site as a formerly industrial, adaptive reuse project.
The public space, which slopes down from the roof of the retail spaces, creates a large, outdoor “urban room” for New York City and is a space which can host events like farmers' markets, community gatherings, summer movie nights, arts and cultural performances and seasonal ice-skating. Landscape architect Field Operations smartly shaped this space to champion the site's ability to host gatherings large and small and, of course, take advantage of the amazing views. The tiered seating in the Square is surrounded by a mixture of conifer and deciduous trees within sculptural planting beds enclosed by Corten steel, providing shade and a sense of enclosure for events throughout all seasons.
A more passive park-like setting in the southwest corner includes intimate seating nooks and places for respite, shaped by a series of raised planting beds that create a lush and shaded environment. These further insulate the interior of the Square and create a buffer for the adjacent residential tower. A new seating overlook at the southwest corner faces out towards Domino Park and the Williamsburg Bridge.
Team:
Architects: Studio Cadena
Photographer: Michael Vahrenwald
