![]() ![]() A key feature of the renovated building will be the reworked Domino signage on the roofline. The building will stand 235 feet tall and feature a new barrel-vaulted glass dome, fully rebuilt interiors, and landscaping. Today, construction is still ongoing on the Refinery, which is being transformed into a 460,000 square-foot Class A office space to house a new age of workers. Responding to the plant’s historic interior, Walker’s 35-foot tall sugar sphinx interrogated the legacy of sugarcane production in transatlantic slavery. The last time the refinery was open to the public was during the 2014 exhibition of Kara Walker’s A Subtlety, a site-specific installation underwritten by the real estate developer Two Trees and using sugar donated by Domino. Dennis described it as a perfectly preserved marvel of historic engineering, with the shell of the building holding together filters and ovens three to four stories tall. Since its closure, the refinery building has been off-limits to the public while undergoing renovation. He pointed out that when the six-acre waterside Domino Park was proposed, much of the Williamsburg and Greenpoint industrial waterfront had not been publicly accessible until 20 years prior. Ward Dennis, who chaired a land use committee reviewing proposals for a community board, thought the redevelopment of the site as a public park would be significant for the local community. Filter, Pan, and Finishing House was preserved. The factory’s ancillary structures were demolished, despite their historical significance. ![]() The incongruence of the two systems heightens perceptions of old versus new and everyday real versus the unknown.After the plant’s closure in 2003, the site was cleared to make way for new development. With apertures of similar scale and density, the punched windows resonate with the neighboring Domino Sugar Factory, while the glass curtain wall feels unfamiliar in terms of scale and orientation due to its suppression of minor joints in favor of superjoints. This patchy skin becomes two distinct facade types: a matte black anodized aluminum façade with punched windows, and a glass curtain wall with a pattern of large-scale joints. Because these figures run across mass edges and drift, They read as an independent third object rather than as a system of articulation. These shadows are reified into a patchy building skin with massive dark figures that are as strong as the figures of the towers themselves. Rather than reflecting the local context, the two towers cast shadows on one another. For example, when a cutting plane slices across both towers and the Skydeck, this produces a sense of continuity where there is none. At the same time, when several of these parts are glance cut together, their membership in the same overall composition is reinforced. The project is broken up into several discrete, interlocking parts separated by deep gaps and joints that undermine the reading of the combined object as a unity. This pair of mixed-use towers features 440 residential units atop five levels of commercial and retail space with a Skydeck spanning between. ![]()
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