Gansevoort Marine Transfer Station

The positioning of this marine transfer station looks to the existing pile field as a generative basis for organizing and structuring the building. Through a process of gridding and filtering, the column field extends its effects to a programmatic understanding as well as to the exterior envelope. The sectional change between points of program also re-orients the viewer where the nested public volumes have the potential to carry a degree of functional autonomy within the building. The enclosure then acts as a responsive wrapper, where differentiated fins allow for natural lighting and ventilation but also look to reconcile a reading of a singular volume in the landscape. Where the complexity of the relationship between the station and public program is then only understood on entry, the building acts as an urban gesture and remark on its response to the city.

Christopher Chown