Brooklyn, New York, USA

The Domino Sugar Refinery will soon return to life as the nerve center of a new working waterfront with an adaptive reuse design by Practice for Architecture and Urbanism and interiors by Dencity Works Architecture and a new landscaping plan by James Corner Field Operations.

An urban industrial landmark constructed by Henry Havemeyer in 1882, the building, now undergoing reconstruction by developers Two Trees Management Company, had long dominated both Brooklyn’s skyline and the borough’s economy and will soon be a crystalline barrel-vaulted structure as a nod to the American Round Arch Style.

The project won a recent 2020 American Architecture Award from The Chicago Athenaeum.

The structure was built to consolidate three functions inside three conjoined buildings’—the filtering, panning, and finishing of sugar’—that required the use of enormous equipment housed in multistory spaces obscured by the repetitive punched arch windows in the masonry. Although these windows were misaligned across the four facades, together they give the entire structure a singular, monumental appearance, crowned by the muscular smokestack on the west elevation built out of radial brick.

In 2017, PAU started the design for an adaptive-reuse of the Refinery building, intended to be the crown jewel of the new mixed-use neighborhood, complete with an activated mix of creative office space, market-rate and affordable housing, neighborhood retail, and community facilities.

The design was implemented with the full integration of all departments of the company in the record time of nine months using a powerhouse concept developed by Volkswagen especially for this purpose. A total of 19 internal teams and 17 external agencies were involved in the project. PAU was tasked with creating open architecture that seamlessly connects the existing neighborhood to the recaptured waterfront a quarter-mile long. The result is a state-of-the-art, 425,000-sq ft. workspace housed within a beautiful, idiosyncratic urban artifact that is unique to post-industrial Williamsburg, offering a unique experience for its inhabitants and the larger community alike.

Rather than navigating the misaligned floors and window sills across the combined masonry shell, PAU adopted a different approach: nesting a brand-new building into the existing envelope, with a 10- to 12-foot gap between the new and the old.

By pulling back from the original walls, ideal and standardized floor heights can be achieved, creating best-in-class office space that is designed to meet the needs of new tenants.

The array of historic windows, uninterrupted by interior partitions, reveal expansive views of Manhattan while allowing the extant structure to be appreciated in an unobstructed form.

The light and airy perimeter provides a unique experience and enhances natural light penetration into the core.

Rising above and in celebration of the historic structure will be a new glass barrel vault, echoing the American Round Arch Style and singular muscular form in which the original Refinery was rendered.

“The proposed new plan is better for everyone. It honors and highlights the landmark; it provides a flexible, modern and totally unique office experience; and it welcomes the public to enjoy this great piece of New York’s history,” said David Lombino, the managing director of Two Trees Management.

“By proposing a building within a building that allows light and air to circulate around the historic structure, and by celebrating the landmark’s origins with a new crystalline barrel-vaulted roof, we hope to help usher the Domino Sugar Refinery into the ongoing renaissance of Brooklyn’s working waterfront” said Vishaan Chakrabarti, the founder of PAU.

Architect: Practice for Architecture and Urbanism
Interior Architects of Record: Dencity Works Architecture
Original Architects: Theodore A. Havemeyer, Thomas Winslow and J. E. James (1882)
Client: Two Trees Management Company
Landscape Architects: James Corner Field Operations
Photographers: AETHER Images