Dock 72 is a 16-story, 650,000 sf mixed-use office building designed in response to the way people work today, and sited in the heart of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a 300-acre former shipyard and industrial park, reimagined as an anchor of Brooklyn’s Tech Triangle. A locus of creativity, entrepreneurship, and modern industry in New York, the Brooklyn Navy Yard is home to over 300 local businesses generating more than $2B of revenue annually. More than a vanguard office building, Dock 72 is an inspiring workplace environment and incubator at the center of the emerging industries that are defining New York’s future. 

S9 Architecture envisioned Dock 72 as a modern office building that venerates the legacy of labor forged at Brooklyn’s historic Navy Yard, while looking ahead to foster the tech, manufacturing, and creative sectors that have rebirthed 21st century industry in Brooklyn. Innovation and collaboration continue to drive the explosive growth of these industries worldwide. Dock 72 is designed to harness the power of these forces by organically facilitating cross-pollination, networking, and idea sharing through serendipitous encounters between the diverse community of startups, creatives, and small businesses who share workspace there. Floorplates are devised for scalable, open office plans, and social amenities that include 18,000 sf of outdoor terrace space for work and leisure, numerous lounges, a fitness facility, and a food hall encourage the mingling and interaction between WeWork members and other Dock 72 tenants, as well as the larger community at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. 

The building’s form is inspired by the large ships once built in the Navy Yard and serviced at the dry dock on which it is now sited. S9 Architecture redefines the conventional rectilinear office building by lifting it 20’ above the flood zone on V-shaped structural columns, and sculpting its mass with terraced, green setbacks that step the building toward bay and inland sides at either end. The exterior façade emphasizes its insistent concrete grid to maintain a visual contiguity with the architecture and fenestration of the masonry industrial structures that surround. Windows employ a gradient glass pattern that corresponds to the programmatic use of the floors within: more opaque in the building’s lower industrial zones and along its inland edge, and less so as it rises to the WeWork office spaces on the upper floors and as it tapers toward the water. A striking feature of the façade is its distinctive, translucent glazing at key points of congress–such as stairwells and social spaces–that provide an ant farm-like view of the building’s inner workings and the movements of its inhabitants, an expressive manifestation of WeWork’s philosophy of openness and transparency.