JUSTIN BANDA

At the edge of Gowanus we developed the transit station at 9th/Smith to support the nearby transit-oriented development just north, while also developing the transit station itself as a high-end commercial center to draw business from Manhattan. The east edge of this area continues the reconstruction of the IBZ by seeding tower residential with high-density industrial, and the southern tip functions as a new campus for the Brooklyn-based Metro Tech university.

The Canal was used in the 20th century as an industrial transportation route and dumping ground, creating an ecological disaster that remains one of the U.S.’s most severely contaminated body of water. In 2010, the EPA declared the Canal a superfund site, and cleanup began just this past September. The community is concerned that developers will purchase decontaminated waterfront property to gentrify industrial areas for residential use.

Here we can see the effect that applying a form-based code has on Gowanus, both in terms of restoring the torn urban fabric and in terms of creating a comprehensive, sustainable walking path centered around six nodes along the canal. We attempted to incorporate all six of Bridging Gowanus’s goals throughout the plan, incorporating a beautiful riverwalk that jumps the canal in several locations.

We created a transit-oriented development in the biggest stretch of under- or non- utilized land in Gowanus that would support a redeveloped transit station, while aiming to meet the
desire for substantially-increased residential density within Gowanus, by mixing types that provide more affordable workplace housing. This node also contains a new library and school to support the residential load.

Use-based zoning has led to the creation of the types shown here. Mandating use and floor- area ratios has led to the huge floor-plate buildings you can see in the IBZ. Gowanus predominantly consists of open-interior buildings, shown in purple, and various residential types, shown in blue. Magenta here represents institutional buildings such as schools and churches.

In 2013 the Gowanus community came together to form an organization called Bridging Gowanus, which outlined six community priorities for the neighborhood’s future which you can see here. These six priorities became the basis for an urban response in three areas: the residential narrative, the transit-oriented development narrative, and the IBZ narrative.

While this gallery originated as a simple architectural tribute to a prominent artist from Chicago, the themes that kept recurring in and around Kanye’s life and work, like racial profiling, police brutality, and the black experience as it relates to the city of Chicago, all burst to the forefront of the project. This led to the 9th and 10th levels being reimagined from museum and gallery spaces into youth outreach and educational spaces, specifically for the Donda Foundation’s use.

The Dr. Donda West Foundation is a Chicago-based nonprofit whose mission is to support young aspiring artists in Chicago, by honoring the educational legacy of Dr. West by implementing arts and literature experiences that transform the lives of inner-city youth. The instruction is not only in arts; after the programs, students who had previously dropped out are ready to re-enroll in school, and are given a blueprint for personal and professional growth beyond school. Giving the foundation a new base of operations inside the West Gallery seemed like a logical next step towards incorporating outreach and inclusive spaces with the architectural mandate.

The way we accomplish this is first and foremost by restoring the broken street grid in strategic locations, and by eliminating the dead-end streets currently scattered around the Canal. Repaired streets are highlighted in magenta on the right. We used 1886 and 1904 Sanborn maps to reconstruct historical routes, while compensating for changes in the canal path and highlighting access to the MTA stops.