The young New York architecture firm Worrell Yeung has subjected a former factory complex to a thorough renovation in which the patina of the buildings has been artfully dissected. From an architectural point of view, New York is a city of constant growth and decay. Very unsentimentally, in many cases what has become unprofitable is cleared away to be replaced by […]
The young New York architecture firm Worrell Yeung has subjected a former factory complex to a thorough renovation in which the patina of the buildings has been artfully dissected.
From an architectural point of view, New York is a city of constant growth and decay. In many cases, what has become unprofitable is cleared away very unsentimentally in order to build bigger, higher and more expensive buildings in its place. Every square foot is too precious not to be put to the best possible use out of nostalgia. To a certain extent, the protection of historic buildings and monuments is a constraint – but where it is less about art history and more about cultural history, much disappears under the excavator shovel.
The New York architecture firm Worrell Yeung has just proved that there are exceptions: The two architects Max Worrell and Jejon Yeung, who studied together at Yale and opened their studio together in 2014, recently carefully renovated a conglomerate of historic industrial buildings in Brooklyn, leaving it with its patina. A former factory building from the 1920s forms the core of the old building stock. The six-storey building is aligned with the street and occupies the full depth of the plot. Three single-storey extensions are attached to one side. The architects had the garage originally located on the other side of the main building demolished in order to create a garden here. The employees who work in the building will be able to use it in future. It was designed by the landscape architects from Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, who planted a small grove of lime trees in the open space. The trees grow on planted islands in a gravelled area – an arrangement that evokes both Japanese and Scandinavian associations. Roughly sawn oak trunks, which were collected by a ship’s carpenter after the last heavy storms on the American east coast and were actually intended for use in boat building, serve as seating. The architects left the building wall facing the courtyard in its original state. The silhouette of the former garage extension should thus remain visible.
Worrell Yeung was generally concerned with preserving and conserving traces of history on the former factory building. Inside the main building, the different layers of paint from the decades of use were left visible on the brick walls. The massive wooden pillars and beams that make up the framework of the building have also not been stripped of their signs of ageing, but proudly display the cracks and discoloration that time has inflicted on them. Although the heavy wooden ceilings have been painted white, they have not been given any further cosmetic treatment, so that the naked functionality of the structure remains clearly visible. The large workrooms on the former factory floors now form versatile spaces for a wide variety of uses. Where new fixtures were required, such as for bathrooms, kitchens or elevators, the architects opted for materials that match the typology of the building, such as untreated wood, stainless steel or checker plate for the flooring in the corridor and staircase areas. Worrell Yeung contrasted the checker plate with Japanese-style fixtures made of wood and opaque glass blocks, which create an exciting break from the industrial aesthetic.
The architects transformed the three side extensions to the main building into studios for artists and photographers. In order to let light into these elongated buildings, they restored the original glazed store fronts. They also created a small atrium-like inner courtyard between the main building and the annexes, through which additional daylight enters the rear areas of the studios and the lobby of the main building.
