Bush Terminal, Brooklyn, New York, USA

Located in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, Bush Terminal is a historic revitalized garment and manufacturing district, backdropped by phenomenal views of lower Manhattan. Here, new hub for film and tv production would draw industry focus back to the city and embrace the surrounding community in a site plan rich with layered landscapes, pedestrian and bicycle paths, informal gathering areas, and neighborhood event spaces.

Film production is usually cloaked in huge, anonymous and secretive boxes. We partially unveil the mechanism of making make-believe in order to send the normally mute into dynamic play with the community. The idea of the soundstage is reinvented as a new typology of an industrial workspace that no longer turns its back to the city.

Reminiscent of the sawtooth industrial structures that were designed to provide daylighting to workspaces, the shaped roof profile gives expression to the long span structures inside needed to produce 120’ long clear span studio space. The roof profile arches its back to conceal the substantial mechanical roof penthouse needed to ventilate and cool the enormous stages below while shielding the noisy equipment from the surrounding campus and pedestrian areas.

Soundstages are washed with northern clerestory skylights and views of the life and city that surround it. Tall strips of glazing along the sidewalk tucked between the facade’s folds begin to reveal the unusual sets and lighting being built and rigged inside. Set construction shops, wardrobe, and support spaces for other functions that do not require sound and light isolation present the building’s busy inner life to the street. The activity of producing a film or television show is no longer behind the scenes but becomes the animator of the facade.

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