Thursday, February 28, 2008

Day 208 - The Brooklyn Navy Yard, Then & Now


I was treated to a tour of my friend Deb Johnson's new workspace in Building 280 at the venerable and still exceedingly relevant Brooklyn Navy Yard. Deb is a professor of industrial design that the Pratt Institute where she also started the affiliated Pratt Design Incubator. She's taking a break from teaching to head up Pratt's various sustainability initiatives.

And in her spare time (ha!) she's also getting a personal project rolling: the Brooklyn Design Co-op. A section of the 5th floor in Building 280 houses a shared work space that she is currently filling with like-minded designers focused on creating sustainable solutions to myriad world challenges.

Cool in its own right, of course. But on this crisp winter day, I was utterly smitten with the views--both from her building's roof and of the industrial relics surrounding her, including Building 128, whose days are numbered. The hulking steel behemoth, built in 1899, used to be where huge steam boilers were assembled. Now, falling apart, it's slated for demolition and redevelopment to provide affordable space for modern light industrial uses.

I'm looking forward to learning some more about the history of these buildings. So is BNY. So much so that they hired an archivist recently and launched the BNY Historical Center. Enjoy some decent pics of amazing views!

1 comment:

Teaneck T said...

Cool cover shot of the chains. Also somewhere in the video is a photo of 2 pulleys. Like that very much, too.