Studio Libeskind has inaugurated its new social housing development in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, called The Atrium at Sumner, after a three-year, $132 million construction. The 11-story, 132,418-square-foot development yields 190 total units, with an 8,309-square-foot community space located on the ground floor along Marcus Garvey Boulevard.
The building’s design features a dramatic interplay of opening and solids in a folding form finished in distinct optic white EIFS facade cladding that distinguishes it from the brick buildings on the 66-year-old NYCHA campus. A year-round interior garden gives name to the development, which features a host of amenities included to support aging-in-place alternatives for senior residents of the studio and one-bedroom apartments, 25 of which come fully adapted for those living with disabilities or who are visually or hearing-impaired.
The project came together through a consortium of stakeholders that includes the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), the NYC Housing Development Corporation (HDC), Selfhelp Community Services, RiseBoro, and the Urban Builders Collaborative/Lettire Construction Corp.
Daniel Libeskind said: “Growing up in social housing in the Bronx gave me a unique perspective on the importance of community and high-quality, affordable housing. I took this insight to task when designing the Atrium at Sumner Houses; I wanted to create a place that felt like home to the residents. I hope this project serves as a powerful example of how good design can positively impact society, especially for those in need.”
The design incorporates Passive House standards throughout, resulting in energy reductions between 60 and 70% of the average New York City apartment building. A high-performance envelope, all-electric HVAC system, and in-unit appliances lend an additional sustainability credential to the development.
The Atrium at Sumner Houses was realized six months after a similar senior housing project in Long Island designed by the firm to include 55 units at 42,000 square feet. Both aid in the Albany state government-led $25 billion effort to build or preserve 100,000 new units of social housing in the next five years.
“It is a truly remarkable feeling to have come together to create nearly 200 new affordable housing units on NYCHA property for New Yorkers in need,” NYCHA's Chief Executive Officer Lisa Bova-Hiatt added. “This new, beautiful building will be home to a thriving senior community and provide a new quality of life to formerly unhoused members of the community.”
Studio Libeskind also recently completed a design for the new Maggie's Centre in north London and debuted plans for Pittsburgh's important Tree of Life synagogue shooting memorial in the past year.
30 Comments
How does Daniel Libeskind and his Studio drones manage to be so CONSISTENTLY awful? Intellectually barren and ugly design of this sort is no accident. It takes a lot of deliberate, conscious effort to be able create de-humanizing and meaningless eyesores of this caliber on a regular basis.
Libeskind's design effort begins and ends with the pointless diagonals they put everywhere. Everything else appears to be an afterthought.
I doubt if Libeskind or any of his staff spent a single moment thinking about the comfort and emotional well-being of the users. If they thought about the residents at all, it seems to have been to express their contempt for them.
If Kafka had written a novel called The Atrium, it would be set in a building like this, where seniors while their remaining years in angst and waning desperation, looking up this twisting shaft, its walls, sparsely windowed, closing towards the top, barring thoughts of escape.
Agreed. And if you weren’t mentally disturbed before you entered the atrium, you would certainly be tending towards ‘unhinged’ after spending any amount of time in such joyless and disorientating surroundings.
Best apartment building in this picture...
https://archinect.com/news/gallery/150428972/8/studio-libeskind-s-refreshing-social-housing-development-debuts-at-the-sumner-houses-in-brooklyn
Yeah, I'm not on the same hate train as everyone else here. If these posts were on that other project linked in the article I'd understand.
agreed - a lot of cynicism here through a libeskind bias... i'll take a light filled single loaded breezeway facing a landscaped atrium over a dead-end double loaded corridor with no windows any day.
Libeskind probably has done the nicest building in this particular NYCHA public housing complex, which isn't saying much. I'll grant that the architects probably had to work within heavy budget and programmatic restrictions. The American mindset seems to be that housing for poor people can't be done without a certain banality and brutality that ensures it's not "too nice" for the users.
It’s nicer and more interesting than a lot of market rate housing. In fact, a lot of low income housing is nicer than a lot of market rate apartments. And while I’d agree about the program, I would point out to the criticism of this project, 132m is a lot of money for the unit count, around 700k per unit. Though in my experience these are not always reported correctly, and can be indicative of more than the construction costs, such as land acquisition, etc. If you don’t like the design, that’s fine, but I think it’s pretty nice. I don’t think it’s comparatively banal at all, and only marginally brutal. I certainly don’t think it’s intended to be limited in quality for the user base, nor do I think that is the case with many or any low income housing project s designed by architects. Sterile and monotonous would be good criticism of this project to me, but again… I don’t hate it, so I probably wouldn’t call it that.
The Libeskind Recipe
and it's not padded?
That courtyard looks like a panopticon
This shouldn't surprise anyone. That said, this looks like form follows neurosis.
Libeskind ‘designed’ the irrational rhombus shapes and arbitrary diagonals. The client’s program was brutishly forced into the ugly and awkward residual spaces in between his formal mess. - Daniel Libeskind’s main skill seems to be that he can charge his clients money for creating this crap.
Unfortunately, this kind of thing is all to common, yet Libeskind takes this con job to new heights.
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The design is quite beautiful albeit different from the 'norm' which seems to be what most people posting are reacting to. Use pithy phrases like 'disregard for context' or just empty adjectives like 'awful', but this is impressive work for someone to accomplish whether it's 'awful' or not.
I would have imagined and architect's/designer's commentary to have more substance than what I'm seeing here.
I'm not sure what kind of substance you're looking for. As an architect in the public realm, it's important to take the public's opinion into account, however informed or uninformed it might be.
Your description of the project as “quite beautiful” and merely “different” is hardly the apogee of insightful architectural criticism as you seem to think is warranted to counteract the other readers’ opinions you don’t agree with. Perhaps you can share a more detailed comment that justifies your basis for liking what most agree is a capricious and formally shallow solution. And I’d note that being ‘different’ is easy. Being good is quite something else. Libeskind is ‘different’ in the way that a chef adding cat shit to a Caesar salad would be ‘different’. But few would say that either a Libeskind design or a feces-laden salad would be ‘good’.
Your description of the project as “quite beautiful” and merely “different” is hardly the apogee of insightful architectural criticism as you seem to think is warranted to counteract the other readers’ opinions you don’t agree with. Perhaps you can share a more detailed comment that justifies your basis for liking what most agree is a capricious and formally shallow solution. And I’d note that being ‘different’ is easy. Being good is quite something else. Libeskind is ‘different’ in the way that a chef adding cat shirt to a Caesar salad would be ‘different’. But few would say that either a Libeskind design or a feces-laden salad would be ‘good’.
The arguments here apply to a lot we see now elsewhere. Heaven help us if we agreed on everything.
I wanted to create a place that felt like home to the residents. I hope this project serves as a powerful example of how good design can positively impact society, especially for those in need.
One way to approach The Atrium is to imagine straightening all the lines and setting windows in regular patterns, which wouldn't be hard at all to do. Already a point in that: he's merely playing around with something quite simple. We'd get a very ordinary box of a sort we're well familiar with. Then decide what is gained by all the twists and angles.
The best I can come up with, if I try to see it in a favorable light, is that it is only a somewhat "interesting" design, and nothing more. There are no compelling reasons for the transformations. They suggest nothing and take us nowhere. It is just odd and pointless, which to me is damning, especially in a place that could use a lift.
It makes no statement about the type or structure that might engage thought. It does nothing to suggest larger meanings of social housing, for residents or those outside who look on. Nor does it bear much relationship to use, inside or out, or do anything to enhance the daily rituals of retirement living. It's still just another box to hold old people.
Context is not a trivial nicety. There's not much to work with in the area, but there's something. It does nothing to refer to the other buildings or elevate them, by juxtaposition, with superior expression. White and odd shaped, it only stands out without making any larger, any kind of statement about place and community. It calls attention to itself for no reason.
The only thing the building reminds me of is another Libeskind.
The sloping walls do mean a smaller atrium. I'd think it should be as large as possible to let in more light for residents and the plants. I don't know the layout, but it seems there should be larger interior windows looking on, again for light and some kind of view, although there might be privacy issues. As it is, from inside the units there isn't much to look at. They're not going to add balconies or open corridors and stairs. Maybe window boxes for planting? At the bottom, there is only a crosswalk and benches. Does this do anything worthwhile to encourage meaningful use? Maybe divide the area up with tables for small gatherings?
do the math: this building costs almost $1000/sq ft, and the units came in at almost $700,000 per unit for the 190. Imagine how many more folks could have been housed if that money had been spent on housing rather than "architecture."
just sayin.
Strange how when BIG does a similar project it’s genius.
As for cost, having worked with the governmental groups involved in this project there was no way that an “open checkbook” budget was allowed. These would have been an RFP process and budget restrictions.
it's getting pretty good reviews from the public, which is all you need to know about the babble from the arch community above..
Please share links to the “pretty good reviews” you claim to know about.
well the general public isn't know for formally recording their takes online, so you'll have to do your own homework. but the responses above are the typical contrived opinions from disgruntled architects, disconnected from reality as usual.
So…. you have no substantive basis for asserting that there are “pretty good reviews” from the public. I thought as much. If I had to bet, I’d say you just made that up …. kind of like the way Libeskind just pulls some half-baked BS out of nowhere to justify his contrived architectural solutions.
i'm based in nyc and familiar with the project, probably more than you are. judging from your comment history, you have a strange obsession with libeskind. the majority of your few comments are about his projects. hard to find any substance there, just a personal beef of some sort... i def don't love most of his work, but the reactions here seem way overblown because of his past projects. it's very toned down for his usual work, and a pretty nice building.
the comment wasn't meant to imply an "open checkbook" but just to raise the issue about where our priorities lie in cases like this. I don't think anyone would argue that what the images show is evidence of the the money that WAS available being spent on things other than a straightforward supply of decent housing, which should be the mandate in the emergency situation we are facing re: housing. I also don't think that those images show a project that is other than the designer's self aggrandizing disregard for the probable interests of the likely user group, who will at best be mystified by the design and at worst alienated. It was designed to be admired by other architects, not to be inhabited by lay folk.
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