In advance of the expected project completion later this summer, the Brooklyn-based developer Two Trees Management has shared images of its recent installation of the biophilic program inside PAU’s long-awaited Domino Sugar Refinery redevelopment in Williamsburg.

The installation comprises 17 30-foot trees, each weighing more than 10,000 pounds, that make up the core of the project’s indoor vertical garden component, which highlights the 460,000 square feet of new office space being created inside the iconic 19th-century waterfront structure.

Each tree had to first be carefully hoisted above the roofline of the refinery and then “surgically” placed inside via a 12-foot-wide opening between the brick facade and envelope of the 27,000-square-foot all-glass office addition located further within.

The overall $250 million project began in 2014 and includes the James Corner Field Operations-designed Domino Park segment in addition to the office component, which is also designed to be column-free.

SHoP is working with James Corner Field Operations on the project's master plan, which calls for 3,000 new apartments and 600,000 square feet of commercial space to be added overall. The full development will be completed by the end of 2027. 

“There’s a roughly 10- to 12-foot gap between the brick masonry of the building and the new glass interior,” James Corner Field Operations Principal Lisa Switkin told the New York Times in a recent preview. “It creates this unique microclimate. It’s open to light and sky. And we started to think: What if this was a garden? In some ways it operates as a palate cleanser between the old and the new. We were inspired by American woodlands and shade gardens, which have a thick understory of ferns and mosses and ground covers. It’s a living threshold.”

Video courtesy Two Trees Management/Domino Park.