A complex of two buildings, a garage and a warehouse, located on the banks of the Hudson River; The path to the World Trade Center passes by, and the entrances to the Soho and Tribeca districts are close by. In addition to an important urban planning location, this communal facility is adjacent to existing and expensive housing under construction. Such a neighborhood almost cost the project its life: the rich and influential residents strongly opposed the construction, and they managed to slow down the process, so almost 10 years passed from conception to implementation. Given the notable "location" and criticism from the citizens, the customers, the New York City Department of Sanitation and the New York City Department of Design and Construction, as well as the Public Design Commission, sought to give these utilitarian high-quality architecture objects.
The garage is designed for 150 cars, for which a refueling, washing and repair department are provided; there are also offices, a changing room and a canteen for over 200 employees. It serves three of Manhattan's counties - 1st, 2nd and 5th. The area of almost 40 thousand m2 is distributed over 5 floors: the "growth" of the new building is equal to the warehouses in the neighborhood. The city dwellers are protected from the noise and sight of cars by a facade with double glazing and an external screen of 2,600 aluminum lamellas. This screen also saves the interior from the heat and light of the sun, and in the "inhabited" parts of the building, in particular the south-facing areas for personnel and repair shops, the position of the slats can be changed depending on the current angle of incidence of sunlight.
Outside, the mass of the garage is concealed by the vertical lines of an aluminum screen; the human scale is set by the brick-built first floor, slightly moved away from the red line of the street in comparison with the rest of the building. In the dark, when the interior is lit, you can see that the floors inside are painted in different colors - depending on the area served. The top of the garage is covered with a 6,000 m2 green roof planted with 25 types of drought-resistant plants: it helps collect rainwater, which is then used for washing cars and other technical needs. This and other environmental components have earned the project a LEED Gold certification.
Nearby there is a warehouse for 5,000 tons of road salt - a concrete structure with a height of 21 m, reminiscent of an abstract sculpture or a salt crystal.
Due to delays in the implementation and adjustments of the project at the request of residents and the requirements of the city authorities, its budget turned out to be very significant: the garage cost $ 250 million, and the warehouse - $ 21 million, according to the New York Times architectural critic Michael Kimmelman, who devoted an entire article to these buildings. … However, in such a prominent place, cheap hangars would hardly look good; in addition, the current buildings are much better than what they have replaced: a smaller utility garage for utility vehicles, where they often did not fit and therefore parked right on the street, and UPS truck parking. As for property prices on the adjacent streets, which were predicted to collapse due to the "unfortunate neighborhood", they even managed to rise.
