On The Waterfront

A new Brooklyn development makes peace with the East River.

- Heather Corcoran

In a once-industrial stretch of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, along the East River, a new neighborhood stands apart from many of New York’s other riverfront properties. Handel Architects, which designed the master plan for the 22-acre mixed-income development, hopes the area will grow in concert with the changing waterfront—including the attendant flood risk and the challenges of remediating a former industrial site.

When complete, Greenpoint Landing will include approximately 5,500 rental units and 2,200 linear feet of resilient green space that links two city parks along a terraced esplanade designed by James Corner Field Operations (JCFO). So far, Handel has completed three affordable residential buildings there, along with the market-rate One Blue Slip, a 30-story tower developed by Park Tower Group and Brookfield Properties, that set the broader development’s visual tone when it opened in August. (Two more towers, designed by OMA, are expected to break ground this summer.)

The goal was to create a neighborhood marker that would reference its surroundings while being instantly recognizable across the river in Manhattan. “Honoring the context of Greenpoint was critical, and it’s hard to do that at a tower scale in a way that doesn’t become a pastiche or cliché,” says Gary Handel, Handel Architects’ founder and managing partner. So his team looked to the nearby warehouses and art studios that saturate the area, selecting Roman brick and installing generously proportioned divided-light windows.