oma transforms brooklyn’s industrial waterfront
The latest addition to the Brooklyn waterfront has taken shape with Eagle + West, a pair of stepping towers with architecture by OMA. The two buildings are accompanied by a smaller building which rises seven-stories, and are surrounded by an impressive new waterfront landscaping by James Corner Field Operations. In total, the project introduces 600,000 square-feet of housing — with 745 total units both market-rate and affordable. What’s more, the project creates 30,000 square-feet of new public space for the growing neighborhood.
The project punctuates Greenpoint’s Eagle Street and Dupont Street, which have been extended through the site to the East River. This area is now open to the public in the form of a new plaza and waterfront esplanade. The residential towers and street-level interventions together signal the transformation of the neighborhood’s post-industrial edge, extending the continually open and accessible waterfront of Brooklyn. The project had topped out in May 2021 — see designboom’s previous coverage here.
image © John Cole | @johncolephoto
eagle + west marks the threshold of brooklyn and queens
OMA‘s Eagle + West complex is perched along the northern most-tip of the Brooklyn waterfront to activate a new hinge point between Brooklyn and Queens. This unique position allows residents to access the lively and growing neighborhood of Greenpoint while taking in a never-before-seen perspective across the length of the Manhattan skyline along with the rooftops of Brooklyn.
‘Eagle + West reflects the collective ambition—with Brookfield, Park Tower Group, and the design and construction teams—to create a platform for living connecting past and future, indoor and outdoor, urban life and waterfront,’said Jason Long, OMA Partner.‘The two towers—complementary siblings—create an ever-shifting presence that engages both the neighborhood and the waterfront. It will be exciting to see how the project grows as people begin to make it their home.’
image © Jason O’Rear | @jasonorear
the two towers in dialogue
The architects at OMA strategically shape the two towers of Brooklyn’s Eagle + West expanding and contracting the forms for maximum efficiency within each. They lean into and away from one another. The forty-story tower widens as it rises, maximizing views and creating a dramatic face to the neighborhood. The thirty-story rower widens toward the ground to face the waterfront esplanade. Shifting terraces and overhangs emphatically link the two together — a distinct pair intimately connected by the void in between them.
The stepping divides the towers in to seven- to eight-story blocks echoing the scale of the neighboring buildings. The façade reinforces this subdivision, borrowing the language of the shingled cladding common to Greenpoint’s townhouses. A grid of precast concrete panels is carved by angled planes alternating in orientation block-by-block — a dynamic relief that reacts to the sun’s movement.
image © Ossip van Duivenbode | @ossipvanduivenbode
42,000 square-feet of amenities are distributed to form a loop at the heart of the complex. Two levels of outdoor terraces imitate the towers’shifting forms, angled to cut in towards the courtyard and open to the waterfront. Above them, an amenity bridge looking over the Manhattan skyline links the two towers.
image © Jason O’Rear
image © Ossip van Duivenbode
image © Ossip van Duivenbode
project info:
project title: Eagle + West | @eagleandwestgpl
lead design architect: OMA New York | @omanewyork
location: Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York
executive architect, unit interior designer: Beyer Blinder Belle Architects | @beyerblinderbelle
amenities interior designer, building landscape architect: Marmol Radziner | @marmolradziner
waterfront landscape architect: James Corner Field Operations | @fieldoperations
photography: © John Cole, Jason O’Rear, Ossip van Duivenbode
partner-in-charge: Jason Long
project architects: Yusef Ali Dennis, Christine Yoon
team: Remy Bertin, Jingyi Bi, Sam Biroscak, Titouan Chapouly, Ken Chongsuwat, Marie-Claude Fares, Yashar Ghasemkhani, Anders Grinde, Wesley LeForce, Chong Ying Pai, Nathan Petty, Andres Rabano, Laylee Salek, Alan Song, Wo Hong Wu, Soojung Yoo, Steven Young, Juan Pablo Zepeda
structure: DeSimone Consulting Engineers
MEP, LEED: Cosentini Associates
façade: Thornton Tomasetti
lighting: Focus Lighting
acoustics: Cerami Associates
civil: Langan Engineering
wayfinding, signage: MTWTF
marine engineering: McLaren Engineering Group
