Designed by Dattner Architects, The Manhattan Districts 1/2/5 Garage, overlooking the Hudson River at the corner of Spring Street and West Street, houses three district garages for the NYC Department of Sanitation. The new multi-story building accommodates over 150 sanitation vehicles including trucks, front-end loaders, salt spreaders, heavy-equipment wreckers, and personal vehicles; separate vehicle wash and personnel facilities for each district; and centralized fueling and repair facilities. The double-skin façade wraps the curtain wall with 2,600 custom, perforated, metal fins, vertically articulating and lighting the building?s massing. Operable for the occupied spaces, the fins reduce solar heat gain and glare, create an ethereal wrapper to obscure mechanical louvers and shield the view of headlights from neighbors. An extensive 1.5-acre green roof softens views from neighboring buildings, protects the roof membrane, and enhances stormwater retention and thermal performance. Photography: Field Condition
A benchmarking project for NYC?s Active Design program, the garage has achieved LEED Gold certification. As the first LEED-rated Department of Sanitation facility, an interactive and iterative design process was critical to establishing project goals. The team worked closely with DSNY and a Community Board approvals process, through a series of workshops to develop the program requirements for a vertically organized multi-district garage. Through this process, opport...