Brooklyn Firehouse
Fall 2015
During my site analysis, I discovered a creek, known as Bushwick Creek that previously flowed through the project site. It was a wonderful place for the community to enjoy and interact in. Unfortunately, it was heavily polluted and became an eyesore for the community. Therefore, it was filled in to create housing.
As a tribute to Bushwick Creek, I wanted to bring water back into my site. One case study that has done this already is Sherborne Commons in Toronto, Canada. It is a park that includes a water cleaning facility and a man-made creek that distributes stormwater into Lake Ontario.
Similarly, my site includes a water cleaning facility that collects stormwater from surrounding, impervious surfaces, such as roads, rooftops and my public plaza. The water cleaning facility filters this water and stores it in a repurposed water tower. This water tower is located only a couple blocks from our site and use to service the Greenpoint Terminal Market, which was a collection of 19th century warehouses. Unfortunately, a fire destroyed many of the warehouses in 2006, so the water tower was abandoned. Serving as an anchor at the corner of my site, the water tower distributes the filtered water through a man-made creek that runs through my site and ends in the East River.
Along the man-made creek are three major bridges that connect to important programmatic elements. The first bridge connects to a large lawn that acts as a performance space and outdoor movie theater. The second bridge generously opens up to a public plaza that can be used as a seasonal market space, an ice-skating rink, or an assembly space. This space opens up to a sculpture garden and a community garden and allows access to main entrances of the Monitor Museum and Firehouse. Lastly, the third bridge connects a plaza to display fire trucks and teach the community about them.
