Winners have been recently announced for the Lavender Lake art factory competition sponsored by suckerPUNCH. This competition proposed a new artists factory for the “public space” site of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, New York.
The proposals were designed to both foster creative production and attract visitors to the factory and neighborhood. The factory will contain private/shared art studios, a storefront gallery/bar, analog/digital shops, and live/work spaces for rotating artists in residence.
Pablo Esteban Zamorano and Marcos Cárdenas from Santiago, Chile won the competition with their proposal “Water Fields”. See the winners and honorable mentions after the break.
1st Place / Pablo Esteban Zamorano + Marcos Cárdenas:
An art factory, an open public space, a beach, a picnic field, a crop garden, a space for the community and for culture, a land open to the water, the city and the arts. The border condition (water-land) of this site made us think about how these limits could react with each other to create something new. An hybrid space product of a simple movement: the inundation of the site, the analysis of a close up view of the canal and the projection of that into the site as a geometry, to translate what used to be water into land but now as a construction of the memory of the canal. The Gowanus Canal is now a new public space for the city that brings the canal back to the people.
2nd Place / David Jaubert:
Given the disparate relationship between the factory typology and public place exemplified by the surrounding context, the project seeks to explore the tension between the two as an impetus for a potential hybrid type. By shifting the ground plane on the site, the project’s parti allows for the multiplicity of the datum rather than it’s displacement, resulting in a site condition that aims to extend the synthesis between the public and private domain.
3rd Place / Chiara Gambassi + Jan Kudlicka:
Typical rude ambience of Brooklyn, train bridge on one side and the river on the other side. The urbanistic juxtaposition of the industry in the east and the living area in the west. Missing of the green places. So we tried to make a project which has got some similar story with the surroundings but with using new materials. Create the place with the symbiosis between the park/building.
Honorable Mention / Cesare Griffa + Davide Guerra + Federico Rizzo (r&d Architecture):
The Gowanus site is A toxic body in which the degeneration of the space is a direct consequence of the industrial and criminal activities that took place here over time. The environmental clean up is a necessity. There is an hygienic problem that needs to be addressed, and social potential that need to be unveiled. A mere sterilization of the site is not enough, there is a need of oxygen to sustain life. The appearance of a gowanus social movement can be the engine of renovation. Such a movement requires a specific space that embed also the dark and degenerated aspects of the area within an hygienic project.
Honorable Mention / Vanessa Keith (studioteka design):
Our project emphasizes public space for the community, a YMCA with a twist: art spaces + community spaces + research spaces. The main building, located to the north along fifth street, combines space for art with an environmental research and remediation program, including offices and research labs, which makes the project economically sustainable. We were intrigued by the concept of industrial symbiosis and the notion that the site’s industrial legacy could be transformed into an amenity for local residents. By incorporating site remediation within the program and structure, the project serves as a demonstration of a new locally focused strategy.
1st Place / Pablo Esteban Zamorano + Marcos Cárdenas:
An exceptional winner for the competition, fresh and insightful it speaks to the reclamation and revitalization of the site and integrates it into a hybrid organic environment. Half building have environment. Simply: Build it!
2nd Place / David Jaubert:
An award for plagiarism? Seems they have been looking too hard at the Delugan Meissel’s Porsche Museum.
3rd Place / Chiara Gambassi + Jan Kudlicka:
Again emulating Hadid’s Wolfsburg Science Center is not deserving of a prize.
Honorable Mention / Cesare Griffa + Davide Guerra + Federico Rizzo (r&d Architecture):
Huh? The scheme possesses about as much Zeitgeist as an oil slick. So much for Architecture as an uplifting and inspiring expression. The scheme is worse than the ecological travesty that was done to the site over the centuries.
Who are you, Mike? Your comments are terrible. I checked out the new Porsche museum and Hadid’s Fhaeno science center at Wolfsburg although I remember looking at them before to fully understand what you are saying. Your comparison of the projects above and the 2nd and 3rd winners’ is absolutely unrelated. God! Do you even finish your school yet?
Very beautiful project done by the competition winner.
voronoi is so hot right now.
regardless, winning design is thoughtful. nice
I live in Gowanus and I don’t like ANY of these concepts. Public Place was designated as recreation grounds for the community – it is still designated as such. Why don’t you people design things for your own communities? The drawing I saw for public space that was made when the land was designated as space for the community had a beautiful baseball field.
It deserves the 1 place, nice job. need more work like this.
I don’t know.. I don’t see any amazing interesting spaces by the first award winner.
By the looks of these, architecture seems to have become ALL about form and nothing about joints,detail,construction or even beautiful, intricate spaces. The studioteka seems like the most developed and realistic design, yet something complete different (Zaha-like) was put in this honourable mention too. I don’t know what it is these days. I really don’t. Difficult to tell what the winning projects should be..
And seriously.. If I presented the plan or the section of the winner to my professor at university, I would have been given a C if not worse.
“art factory, an open public space, a beach, a picnic field, a crop garden, a space for the community and for culture, a land open to the water, the city and the arts” isn’t this a bit too much to work with. Have one or two great ideas and go with it. This is why I think the project lacks success in my eyes.
Thank you Dariusz!
I thought I was going crazy. I am also still in Uni but I know that if I would submit a similair project i couldn’t expect more thana C. One dimensional with a few roofs turned up on an angle with “green” painted on. Empty space with no value or direction. Very poetic concept but in my opinion it will end up becoming a corner to pee in.
sorry for being so direct.
I don’t know what all of this talk about getting a C is all about. You are expected to do so much work in school that if you turned in one page at the end you would fail. This competition on the other hand looks like they required on page only. So you get what you ask for.
That being said, I think the winning project is the strongest with the 3d drawing pretty clearly illustrating what could potentially be a very good and usable public space. Exactly what it is used for is a bit unclear, as is the relationship of the factory to the public. This could have been helped by improving the other 3d drawings.
I also think that all of the projects could have investigated what makes “public space” good. As Gowanee pointed out, a baseball field was better than all of these projects. Maybe their projects could have been better if they realized that this area was being used for a sport and a few trees did not make up for the loss of that space.
I would challenge everyone to disregard the images and focus only on the text. I find it infinitely hilarious how architects represent their ideas in prose. “The project’s parti allows for the multiplicity of the datum rather than it’s displacement?”
I happen to like the winner both for the simplicity of their idea and the clarity of their text.
haha I love it! Does anyone know of an existing collection of the best examples architect talk? If not, I am starting one right now!
That’s a great idea! I often wonder if the people writing the text even know what they’re talking about.
more talkitecture than architecture
It’s nice and all, but it’s not right for the area. It won’t fit in with the horrible train station, Lowes’ and projects near by. I vote NO.
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