Brooklyn Atlantic Yards, New York, USA

Brooklyn Atlantic Yards is an ambitious new multi-use development in New York City. It features sporting facilities, office towers and diverse residential units that will provide a massive boost for the local community and the city as a whole.

Over the next ten years, New York City will see a new community of residents and businesses springing up in Brooklyn Atlantic Yards, based around a major new sporting arena in the heart of Brooklyn. The network of multipurpose sporting facilities, office towers and residential units are set to give the area a complete facelift and rejuvenate the local economy.

When Bruce C Ratner, president and CEO of developer Forest City Ratner Companies (FCRC), announced in January 2004 that his bid for the Nets basketball franchise had been accepted, it paved the way for the first phase of the Brooklyn Atlantic Yards project, designed by Frank O Gehry of Gehry Partners LLP.

BROOKLYN ATLANTIC YARDS CONCEPT

The project is an ambitious ten-year venture intended to boost the local economy with the creation of diverse, modern facilities for both public and commercial use. It will begin with the construction of a new sports arena to house the Nets, followed by the building of three towers adjacent to the stadium.

These towers will consist of office space, commercial and retail units, and numerous residential units, including affordable and subsidised housing as well as mid-market and luxury dwellings.

The project is currently in the conceptual design phase, but it is hoped that the urban complex, located at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, will comprise 2.1 million square feet of commercial office space, approximately 4,500 units of affordable, middle income and market-rate housing (covering some 4.4 million square feet), and around six acres of parks and recreation areas.

BROOKLYN NETS ARENA

At the centre of the development will be the 800,000ft² Brooklyn Nets Arena, which will include a public park on the roof, ringed by an open-air running track that becomes a skating rink in winter.

As well as providing a home for the Nets, the arena will be available to local youth athletic groups and schools as a sporting venue, and will also be a venue for concerts, community events and family entertainment.

The site for Brooklyn Atlantic Yards is next to the Atlantic Terminal, the third-largest transportation hub in New York City, at the intersection of nine subway lines and the Long Island Railroad. This was one of the key factors in the choice of location, and gives the project the opportunity to generate revenue for the local community.

'The borough of Brooklyn sees it as a jobs generator and an opportunity to have a major sports team after losing the Dodgers baseball franchise 40 years ago,' says Jim Glymph, a partner at Gehry Partners and senior member of the Atlantic Yards design team. 'For Frank, it is an opportunity to build an entire community that will be like a little town in its own right.'

Given the scope of this multifaceted project, and its importance for the surrounding community, the designers have had to focus on the synergy of the different elements right from the conceptual design phase, even though the individual elements will be constructed at different stages.

'The economics are such that we have to look at the project as a whole,' says Glymph. 'We cannot simply look at the individual buildings. The arena is on a block occupied by retail and office space, and it will be open before the other elements are built. So, we have to ensure that the arena looks complete at all stages of the project. We can't say "wait a decade and it will look great". This is one of the things we are struggling with right now.'

KEY PLAYERS

The Brooklyn Atlantic Yards project is led by FCRC, which has been instrumental in the revitalisation of downtown Brooklyn over the last 20 years. It has previously backed the construction of One Pierrepont Plaza, the first new office building in the area since the 1960s, and the MetroTech Center, a US$1bn, seven million square foot office, academic and high-tech development comprising 14 buildings.

Forest City Enterprises, of which FCRC is an affiliate, is a £5.7bn NYSE-listed real-estate company based in Cleveland and specialising in the ownership, development, acquisition and management of commercial and residential real estate in the USA.

FCRC is a vertically integrated, full-service real estate firm that mainly develops for its own portfolio. It has backed projects in all five boroughs of New York City.

Having explored a number of options, FCRC asked Gehry Partners to bring its innovative approach to the Brooklyn Atlantic Yards project. Gehry has a reputation for landmark buildings with a distinctive blend of architectural design and functional planning, and the firm's core skills were thought to be perfectly suited to the challenges of working on a flagship project in a tight urban setting.

A COLLABORATIVE PROJECT

Involving the client in the design process is fundamental to Gehry Partners' approach, and the firm is committed to delivering a truly collaborative project. It uses a design process based on 3D physical modelling on multiple scales, which allows both functional and formal details to be explored in detail.

The technique involves using actual building materials and large-scale mock-ups at a very early stage in the design process to ensure that the project evolves in close harmony with the design and budget goals of each individual brief.

Projects such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles have enjoyed a high media profile, and Gehry Partners has received international acclaim for its unique formal approach to major projects. The backers of the Brooklyn Atlantic Yards project are hoping for a similar result.

The project will represent something of a departure for the firm. 'We have experience of building sports venues,' says Glymph. 'Frank is a major hockey fan, and we have built hockey facilities in Anaheim. But it is new for Gehry Partners to do something on this scale. It is exciting for us, so there is a lot of motivation. In a way, it is an opportunity for us to do a more conventional building after the projects in Barcelona and Bilbao. It also fits in well with the advanced technology that we used on those projects.'

OPEN SPACES AND PUBLIC AREAS

The sports arena, commercial office space and residential units designed by Gehry will be complemented by a number of open spaces and public areas designed by Laurie Olin of the Olin Partnership.

Olin is a practice professor of landscape architecture and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania and is a former chair of the Landscape Architecture Department at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.

The Olin Partnership is an internationally acclaimed, award-winning landscape architecture and urban design firm with a reputation for creating artistic environments that are sensitive to the site and its surroundings. It has previously worked on projects such as Bryant Park in New York City and Canary Wharf in London.

Olin's designs are characterised by powerful, imaginative concepts, fine craftsmanship and the use of handsome, lasting materials to create beautiful, useful and meaningful outdoor spaces. Part of its brief will be to turn Atlantic Avenue into a tree-lined boulevard that runs past the arena and the office towers.

FINDING A BALANCE

The brief for the Brooklyn Atlantic Yards project is complex, given the multipurpose nature of the development and the limitations of the site. The design team recognises the importance of framing new thinking around traditional concepts – for example, the plan to incorporate professional sports facilities with business premises and amenities for the local community, such as the public park on the roof of the arena, is a significant departure from the norm.

Sports arenas typically shut themselves off from the surrounding area, and are usually surrounded by open spaces with extensive parking facilities. This will not be the case at Atlantic Yards, where the arena will open directly onto busy urban streets. The designers will therefore need to bring the building to life, even when it is not hosting a game.

Gehry has designed the stadium facades in glass, so that the inner concourses are visible from the outside and patrons inside the arena can look out on the city around them. The interior will also be flooded with natural light during the day, giving a sense of vibrancy and life.

'With the exterior, we are playing with the idea of transparency,' says Glymph. 'The arena must not appear dead when it is not in use, so we must provide functions at street level. This will require a different kind of architecture.'

'The arena is very structural,' continues Glymph, 'so there are fewer architectural elements, but it is on a landmark scale. Also, it is not the kind of arena that you typically find in the USA, most of which are surrounded by open space. This will have three towers touching it as well as direct access to the street. It is a very tight setting.'

INTERIOR SPACE

The interior, a space largely defined by its function, poses similar problems. The viewing of sport requires certain key criteria to be met, which to a certain extent limits the designers in what they can do with the internal space. The goal is to create viewing areas with excellent sightlines onto the action.

A key design parameter is to maintain the intensity of the viewing experience, despite the need to accommodate luxury suites - a prerequisite of modern sporting facilities. Luxury suites can detract from the intensity of the viewing experience, but for any venue in the USA looking to support a professional sports team they are crucially important in driving the revenue stream.

The arena will have a capacity of 19,000 seats, including 2,000 club seats and 125 luxury suites. The seating bowl can also change from a rectangular shape for basketball and hockey to an oval shape, pushing the sides up and bringing the corner seats closer to the action.

'There is room for architectural expression within the arena, and we are exploring a unique approach to arena design,' says Glymph. 'Luxury boxes dissipate the intensity of the space and of the experience. They take up space and make things more laid back. No-one has managed to have their cake and eat it with luxury boxes so far, so we are doing lots of 3D studies to see if there is anything that people have overlooked.'

Finding a solution to this problem within the functional limitations of the venue is one of the key challenges in designing the interior. It will take a truly innovative design solution to offer improved sightlines and create intimacy without sacrificing the luxury suites. 'We will try to create the reality – or the illusion – of a shared community experience,' says Glymph. 'I expect Frank will come up with something exciting.'

IMMEDIATE CHALLENGES

The site itself also poses a number of problems for the design team. It is an awkward shape - a rectangle that tapers to a single point at one end - and it is also very close to the surrounding infrastructure. 'The development is on a major swath of undeveloped land in the middle of a relatively mature community,' says Glymph. 'It represents a major change to the neighbourhood, and the main challenge is to maintain the community by minimising the project's negative impact and maximising its positive impact. The existing site conditions present several difficulties, although they are in the process of being resolved.'

First of all, the team must decide, in conjunction with railroad operators and mass transit operators, whether to build over, preserve or relocate the rail yard that already occupies the site. It must also address the local community's concerns about the disruption to their everyday lives during the construction phase. Some people will have to be displaced, and sensitivity to the needs of the community is one of the first challenges that will have to be tackled if the project is to move forward.

'The community involvement is there, but it is not yet complete,' observes Glymph. 'The city sees the project as an opportunity for growth without displacing many businesses or families, and is giving it plenty of support.'

Another challenge will be designing the office space in the towers adjoining the arena. Their use will not be clearly defined at the time of construction; they could be used either as impressive corporate headquarters or back office facilities, each of which will require a different approach.

'The towers need tenants to define their function,' says Glymph. 'We must try to get the right composition without knowing what the exact investment in these buildings will be. There are a few more unknowns than we are generally used to, but we will find solutions to these problems as the project evolves.'