Empire Stores / S9 Architecture

Curated by Fernanda Castro

Architects: S9 Architecture
Area: 450 ft²
Year: 2017
Photographs:Patrick Donahue
Manufacturers: Hitachi Air Conditioning
General Contractor: Veracity Partners
Structural Engineer: Robert Silman Associates
Lighting Consultant: Tillotson Design Associates
Landscape Designer: Future Green Studio
MEP Engineer: Mottola Rini Engineers
LEED Consultant: Spiezle Architectural Group

Text description provided by the architects. Empire Stores is emblematic of Brooklyn’s transformation from lapsed industrial powerhouse into a growing creative sector. This award-winning mixed-use development reimagines a vacant, 19th century warehouse on the DUMBO waterfront as a contemporary creative workplace and community hub. The conversion of this 450,000sf complex provides Brooklyn’s burgeoning Tech Triangle with much-needed office space, and brings retail, dining, public space, and exhibition galleries to the neighborhood. The campaign of adaptive re-use celebrates and preserves the building’s monumental presence on the waterfront, while improving circulation between DUMBO’s urban fabric and the 85-acre Brooklyn Bridge Park.