A collaboration with a public-private client partnership of Sims Metal Management and the City of New York, the Sunset Park Materials Recycling Facility is planned for the 30th Street Pier in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park. The site is in Gowanus Bay, near the entrance to the Gowanus Canal and is bound on three sides by water and on the fourth side by the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal.
The eleven acre facility is conceived as a naturally vegetated peninsula with space carved out for the buildings and waterfront operations which total 125,500 sf. The program includes a visitors’ center and administration building; an enclosed barge unloading facility; and a materials-handling building for processing all of New York City’s metal, glass and plastic recyclables. The visitors’ center and administration building includes an exhibition space, classrooms, cafeteria, offices and locker rooms, and is linked to observation areas in the recycling building via a pedestrian bridge.
Working within the constraints of a pre-engineered building, one of the design challenges was to find ways to articulate the program and give an overall expression to the facility that would distinguish it from the ordinary big box construction. The tipping building where materials arrive via barge or truck, has a fully exposed main frame structure made from galvanized steel to withstand the elements. The adjacent processing and bale storage buildings are clad in corrugated metal which also wraps around the tipping building at the upper level. All the buildings sit on a unifying concrete plinth.
The facility will make a major environmental contribution to New York City by allowing recycles to be delivered by barge; a strategy which minimizes the distance collection trucks must travel and is expected to eliminate 260,000 miles of vehicle travel from City roadways. Other environmentally-conscious design strategies include solar panels, stormwater collection, bioswales and a wind-turbine generating electrical power.
