Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation has unveiled plans for an Adjaye Associates-designed Restoration Innovation Campus in Brooklyn. A re-imagination of the milestone corporation’s longtime Fulton Street home, the 840,000-square-foot campus will be dedicated to closing Brooklyn’s racial wealth gap.

The project will include a significant expansion of Bed-Stuy’s cultural center and the Billie Holiday Theater, new public open space, and two commercial buildings serving private, nonprofit, and government partners focused on addressing the racial wealth gap. 600,000 square feet of office space will be offered in the new hub alongside 190,000 square feet of retail, while a publicly-accessible rooftop will accommodate cultural programming and events.

Since its opening in 1972, the center has served as “a beloved town square for one of the country’s largest African American communities.” Once a milk bottling plant, the center now attracts more than 1.5 million visits annually across the arts, education, community engagement, nonprofit services, and commerce.

Recognizing the center’s original mission of propagating economic and cultural change in a neighborhood plagued by disinvestment, Adjaye conducted a community visioning process in 2019 to identify the guiding principles for the campus’ development. The resulting priorities were: increasing the visibility of the arts programs; expanding job and educational opportunities; improving the open space; and bringing in mission-aligned retail.

“The design of Innovation Campus taps into Bed-Stuy’s vibrant culture to create a place-based model to disrupt the racial wealth gap,” said Adjaye. “Based on extensive community engagement sessions, the design scheme prioritizes the public realm and ensures dedicated space for collaboration between mission-aligned partners. We look forward to seeing the campus become a reality and model for others as Restoration moves the transformative plan forward.”

News of the scheme comes weeks after a revived Toronto Quayside master plan was progressed, with Adjaye Associates being one of several high-profile firms involved. Also in February, it emerged that Adjaye Associates were one of several notable practices contributing to NEOM’s ‘The Line’ scheme in Saudi Arabia.