[NYguy]

http://blog.archpaper.com/wordpress/archives/26767

Meet Williamsburgh Savings Bank’s Lofty New Neighbor


Chad Oppenheim's design for Williamsburghotel. (Courtesy Oppenheim)


November 1, 2011
Branden Klayko

Miami-based Oppenheim Architecture+Design has won an international design competition for a hotel in Brooklyn at the Williamsburg Bridge. The proposed 86,000 square foot, 440-foot-tall tower is comprised of three 16-foot deep vertical slabs and joins a recently announced 40-story rental tower designed by FX Fowle nearby on the waterfront as the latest high-rise planned for the neighborhood.

Oppenheim declined to name the competition sponsor, citing a confidential development team, but the site adjacent to the landmarked, 1870s-era Williamsburgh Savings Bank is currently under renovation by a group intending to build a hotel and event space on the corner of Broadway and Driggs Avenue.

Chad Oppenheim, principal at Oppenheim A+D, was intrigued by the style, soul, and grit of the rapidly transforming Williamsburg neighborhood. Dubbed the Williamsburghotel, the tower mixes height and materiality to form a relationship with the surrounding neighborhood: the lowest slab with the existing area, the middle form with domed bank, and the tallest tower with the bridge. Oppenheim compared the set-backs of the three forms to traditional skyscrapers in New York on “an extreme scale.” The hotel’s crystalline facade is formed by structural diagonal steel designed to resist lateral loading. In addition to green roofs topping the two lower slabs, Oppenheim hopes to achieve LEED Platinum certification with geothermal, wind, and solar power.