BBP Boathouse

Two new structures, a boathouse and maintenance and operations building, celebrate Brooklyn Bridge Park’s public setting with accessible programming for the community. Brooklyn Bridge Park (BBP) is a 1.5-mile-long park by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates that has transformed Brooklyn’s industrial waterfront into a place for the entire city to play, learn, and relax. Located in the Pier 5 Uplands, the architecture of each building is purposeful, economical and resilient, in response to their different uses and the character of the Park. Poised on riprap overlooking the water, the new boathouse mediates the waterfront and the Pier 5 Uplands. Providing secure open-air boat storage at grade level, with a multipurpose room and public restrooms on the upper floor, the architecture of the 5,000 SF boathouse is purposeful, economical and resilient. A beacon in the park, the upper level is wrapped with metal grilles that are backlit and glow at night. As with all of our projects, our work for BBP emphasizes environmentally responsible practices in design, construction, and systems operation—which is also fundamental to the Park’s mission. Ribbed metal siding, fiber cement panels and aluminum grilles on the exterior, together with interior exposed steel, plywood walls and concrete floors, are carefully composed to elevate the quality of these prosaic structures.