In Brooklyn, Worrel Yeung Architecture has completed the renovation and design of 77 Washington, a former masonry factory building from the 1920’s, as well as a cluster of four other historic buildings adjacent to the property. The adaptive reuse project draws form the neighbourhood’s rich history and the design typologies abundant in early 20th century New York warehouses.
A desire to celebrate the site’s history largely informs the design. Starting in the garden, original yellow wood gates were preserved and exterior brick walls left untouched. With reference to the Brooklyn Navy yard, benches in the garden are three solid oak logs, collected after various storms of the past decade.
This overall strategy of celebrating the site’s history extends of the interiors of the central, six-story factory building, where diamond plate floors, unfinished steel railings and doors, and concrete floors echo the industrial properties (rough, durable, unrefined) inherent in age-old Brooklyn factories. The architects worked with Navy Yard-based woodworker Bien Hecho to salvage and repurpose wood from the existing timber floor joists into a custom conference room table and lobby bench. Textured brick walls with old layers of paint were cleaned, sealed and complemented with clean, uniform concrete floors and white walls.
In the lobby, a large window draws light from the private courtyard accessible by the adjacent one-story buildings. As it does throughout the complex, gridwork appears repeated in the lobby, in the diamond-plate steel floor, glass block elements, and a distinctive plywood lobby wall.
Finally, to creatively approach the bar protection requirements for elevator shaft openings, Worrell Yeung applied the same lattice motif seen throughout the project to the steel grids which cover the shaft windows, creating an elegant reading of the elevator from the building’s exterior, as well as from inside the cab.