East River Housing

Last night I attended a presentation and panel discussion on New Waterfront Housing in Brooklyn and Queens. Three of the four* recent and ongoing projects presented are located on the East River, on former industrial sites.

:: Queens West by Arquitectonica
:: River East by Studio V
:: Northside Piers by FXFowle

And not presented last night, but discussed here is
:: Silvercup West by Richard Rogers

(*The fourth project presented was Averne by the Sea by EEK Architects.)

Moderator Bonnie Harken raised some important issues, ones not adequately addressed in the presentations or the later discussion. These include the allotment and design of public spaces in private developments, access to the waterfront, affordable housing, and issues of sustainability. I'll try to address these issues relative to each, though I'm more interested in the overall effect of these developments, on the city, the waterfront, and the environment.


Location plan

As can be seen in the aerial above, three of the four developments along the East River occur in a tight clump in Long Island City, across from Midtown Manhattan and Roosevelt Island. Only Northside Piers is located in Brooklyn, in the Williamsburg neighborhood. The projects are presented below south to north.


Northside Piers: Aerial view and west-facing facade of tower one

Northside Piers is a three-tower condo development with townhouses and enclosed parking. Phase one, now under construction, includes the easternmost tower and its podium. Daniel Kaplan from FXFowle primarily talked about the design's attempt to be contextual to both the neighborhood and the water, the former grounded by gravity and the latter floating or levitating.


Queens West Stage II: Aerial rendering from the west

Arquitectonica's portion of the huge Queens West development is six residential towers atop or attached to podiums with low-rise housing and parking, the last pushed to the eastern edges of the site, away from the valuable real estate by the water. Bernardo Fort-Brescia spoke of the East River's potential as being a space about which the city is oriented, like Paris or London, unlike New York's past which has turned its back on the water.


River East: Two aerial renderings from the west, from QueensWest.com

Small by comparison to the previous two developments, River East is a two-tower residential development with townhouses concealing parking on a podium base to the east of the towers. The site plan creates a street that ends at a plaza near the water. Jay Valgora of Studio V spoke of their attempt to incorporate some of the qualities of Long Island City's traditional architecture and urban scale into the project (townhouses, "green" billboards), while using a contemporary language throughout.


Silvercup West: Rendering looking northeast

As mentioned already, Silvercup West was not part of last night's presentation, though along with River East and Queens West it is part of a string of developments that will create a wall of sorts along the East River in Long Island City. Unlike the other developments, Silvercup West incorporates office space in one of its towers, the northern one closest to the Queensborough Bridge.

The three projects discussed last night have numerous similarities, most likely dictated by the fact they are all developer, market-rate projects located on the water: glassy towers with balconies; low-scale podiums with townhouses (or similar residential), parking, and retail (in some cases); and open (public) space along the waterfront. In each case the architects used unique concepts and approaches to describe their projects, though ultimately they all arrived at basically the same thing.

The tower on a podium idea can be found in Chicago, Vancouver, and many other North American cities, as a means to be contextual while creating a profit for the developer and capturing views. In the process the towers quickly transform the skyline, while the podiums -- if not treated carefully by the architect and the developer/owner -- become blank walls or decorative fronts that lead to dead streets at odds with the city's context. It's hard to find fault with the architects' approaches, as they all appear to embrace the city's street life and attempt to extend it towards the water, though in the case of these waterfront developments the water must be enough of a draw to bring people that far east, meaning a continuous network of parks and open space is required, not just patches part of each development. FXFowle briefly presented their open space study (PDF linke) for the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront, though with a tight budget and private money to be made in the rezoning of the waterfront, these towers look like they'll outpace the city's attempts at creating parkland on the East River.

Returning to Silvercup West, the main reason I include it here is for contrast. In terms of program, Silvercup West is admirable not only for its incorporation of office space but for its namesake sound studios that will occupy some of the base. These moves ensure two things: an active 24-hour development full of workers and residents, and the extension of a semi-industrial use on the water. What the other developments ignore is what they're replacing, and as the waterfront is eaten up more and more by middle-upper class housing, the industrial uses are pushed further out along with their employees. Granted the city is preserving certain industrial zones, I'm guessing this waterfront is just too valuable for something like Silvercup West to be replicated down the shore. This issue is related to affordable housing, something the architects presented as being part of their projects (approx. 20% in each), though how this affordable mix relates to the context was absent, as context was discussed formally rather than socially.

Architecturally, Silvercup West is an obvious contrast to the other three. Where those are basically variations on the same glass box and brick podium, Rogers conceals the residences behind a steel frame that recalls the adjacent bridge but also gives it a distinct presence on the skyline. As more and more is built (and more and more will be built) along the water in Queens and Brooklyn, architects and developers need to strive for distinction in their buildings, not just their marketing campaigns.

Lastly, a couple issues barely addressed last night were access and sustainability. Some of these areas, particularly the northern stretches of Long Island City and Astoria, are removed from the subway. This creates the need for parking garages and can lead to a relatively dead street life. The city needs to step in and find ways to address this gap, perhaps creating a north-south spine (an elevated on Vernon Boulevard!) that connects the waterfront to the trains connecting Long Island to Manhattan. Issues of sustainability seemed to arise in terms of green space on the waterfront and the preservation of corridors for birds, though I don't recall any discussion of it relative to the architecture, something that needs to be remedied in future developments.