Building upon the city code developed in the previous City of Gowanus project The Gowanus Machine is a multiuse development that brings the issues addressed in the macro view of the city code to the building scale.

New York City’s landmark Zoning Regulation of 1916 reshaped the appearance of the city by instituting light and air requirements that created maximum building envelopes that tapered as they extruded up from the street.  This taper is typically dealt with by creating a “wedding cake” building which sets back at regular intervals to stay inside the required envelope.  This creates small pockets of usable space that are ultimately deleted from the final building.  “The Gowanus Machine” aims to reclaim these spaces and utilize them as a smaller scale element of the entire drainage system employed within the code created by The City of Gowanus.

A screen of louvres follows the lines of the tapering Maximum Building Envelope, while the interior spaces of the building follows the more traditional layered shape, reclaiming the “in-between” space. The louvres drain all rainwater into the building where it is collected in the “in-between” spaces, directed through the building’s public spaces and eventually emptied out into the city’s “rain parks” and canal.