Terreform ONE - Brooklyn Navy Yard

Brooklyn-based Terreform ONE is a non-profit architecture and urban planning firm that promotes green design, particularly in downtrodden municipal areas. You may recall the firm’s “Self-Sufficient City” submission for the History Channel’s “City of the Future: New York 2106″ competition several years ago, which won an award for the contest’s best presentation (and proposed the elimination of private cars from Manhattan entirely).

Terreform’s Mitchell Joachim unveiled the “Super Dock” concept in response to Mayor Bloomberg’s announcement last month that the city is seeking proposals for science and engineering campuses at Governors Island, Roosevelt Island, or the Navy Yard. Terreform will not formally submit the concept for the city’s consideration; its proposal is “more academic than practical,” according to Mr. Joachim. “We’ll come out with some very strong opinions after our research is finished. For us, this is the freedom to create and think.”

Super Dock envisions five different docks for the Navy Yard, one of which embraces 3-D printing and would actually manufacture ships. Another dock would capture water, filter it, and distribute it back into Brooklyn. A third would be a testing laboratory for scientists, while a fourth would be a base for clean technology factories to build electric scooters and solar panels. The Brooklyn Daily notes that Terreform’s wave-like architecture mimics Eero Saarinen’s TWA Terminal at JFK International Airport: equally visionary when unveiled in its own time. Terreform presented a 12-foot by 8-foot prototype of its concept. The architecture itself has no walls and strives to be organic: it merges land and water, buildings are topped with mushrooms, and roofs slant down until they become part of the docks.

Though fantastic and futuristic, the Super Dock concept demonstrates the creative energy that is fueling New York City’s green building movement. As Mr. Joachim told the Brooklyn Daily, “[e]veryone loves the Navy Yard and wants it to become something. This will be an essay about what should or shouldn’t happen there.”