BLDG 92, the new museum and visitors center for the Brooklyn Navy Yard that opened last month, offers the general public an opportunity to look behind a walled-off stretch of the Brooklyn waterfront between Flushing Avenue and Wallabout Bay that has played a pivotal role in US naval and military history since its founding in 1801. The Navy Yard, which was one of the first five shipyards in the United States, saw its peak during World War II when over 70,000 employees were based at the site, a workforce that eventually shrunk to less than 10,000 in the years before its official closing in 1966. [The closing of the Brooklyn Navy Yard was the result of the same cost-cutting measures that led to the decommissioning of the Brooklyn Army Terminal. –Ed.] In 1971, the Yard reopened as a City-owned industrial park, which today has 230 tenants and over 5,000 employees and is in the midst of a rejuvenation and redevelopment effort led by the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation (BNYDC).

BLDG 92 inhabits the 1857 Marine Commandant’s house, originally designed by Thomas Ustick Walter and fully restored with a 20,000-square-foot addition by Beyer Blinder Belle and workshop/apd. The exterior of the addition is impressive, and recalls the building’s shipbuilding history in the image adorning the perforated metal façade. The interior, however, is much simpler, more modest in its approach. The clean white walls and metal detailing clearly delineate it from the wood and brick historic space — although so much of that interior is covered by exhibition material that you can easily forget that the building is 154 years old. As part of the new green building initiative at the Yard, BLDG 92 is aiming for LEED Platinum certification, and the BNYDC is working hard to share that goal with the public. Upon entering the museum, you’re given instructions for a “Sustainability Scavenger Hunt” that leads you around the building and grounds, to eighteen stations that highlight specific sustainability features. It’s an engaging way to introduce green building principles to children, and a large part of the BLDG 92 educational mission seems to cater to a young audience. BNYDC has partnered with the Brooklyn Historical Society to provide curriculum materials for students in all grades, tours are provided for schools during the week, and free learning materials are provided on the BLDG 92 website to compliment these visits.

The inaugural exhibit, Brooklyn Navy Yard: Past, Present and Future, examines the 165-year history of the Yard. On the first floor, you find a chronological overview of the history of Brooklyn, the Navy Yard, and relevant US military activity, along with a section dedicated to how military innovations have influenced mass-market product design. The second floor delves more into the history of naval ship building, and highlights a few of the major vessels constructed at the Navy Yard and elsewhere in Brooklyn. Two mutoscopes on display – which remind me of the classic ‘80s viewfinder toy – allow you to watch a slide show of sorts of a dry-dock in action. The third floor of the museum also houses “Gallery 92,” which will host rotating, temporary shows. Currently on view is an exhibit curated by Christopher Anderson, a Yard tenant and war photojournalist, in memory of his friend Tim Hetherington who was killed in April 2011 while documenting the Libyan revolution. The fourth floor features an outpost of the Cobble Hill cafe Ted & Honey, and a seating area wrapped by a terrace that offers views overlooking the Yard.

The mission of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at BLDG 92 is not limited to education and sustainability. The community center and museum serves as a way for the BNYDC to maintain good will with the surrounding community in the face of contentious debate about the redevelopment of the site — the preservation of Admiral’s Row, a series of historic houses most of which will be razed to make way for a large supermarket, is just one example — and to promote the viability of industry-led development. It will be interesting to see how the future growth and reinvention of the Yard is represented in the museum’s programs. But, from this first look, BLDG 92 has the potential to be an excellent addition to the cultural landscape of Brooklyn and to engage the local community in ways the Navy Yard of years prior was unable to do.

Mutoscopes at BLDG 92 | All photos by Katie Stapleton

Katie Stapleton is a licensed architect currently working at Kliment Halsband Architects. She is particularly interested in the relationship between architecture and [German] politics and interim architectural installations in an urban context. She is a former project associate for Urban Omnibus.

The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Brooklyn Army Terminal | archival images via brooklynarmyterminal.com

One week from Saturday, on September 17th, the Architectural League will be hosting the 2011 Beaux Arts Ball at the Brooklyn Army Terminal. The Ball is a tremendous event with historical chops. Started in the late 19th century by the École des Beaux-Arts, this tradition has since become a staple of architecture schools around the country. The League held its first Ball in 1990, and it now serves as an annual benefit to support the many programs of our beloved institution. Each year, the Ball is held in a different, architecturally-distinct place — including the Seagram Building, the Synod House of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the Old American Can Factory , the American Academy of Arts and Letters — which is transformed for the event by an invited group of emerging architects (click here for photos from recent years).

This year, we’re heading to Sunset Park to party in the central atrium of the Brooklyn Army Terminal (BAT). The BAT has its own compelling history, one that is probably unknown to many of today’s New Yorkers. So, in anticipation of this month’s big event, we bring you a look back at the history of this sprawling waterfront complex. In addition to digging through the archives, we had a chance to sit down with Carmine Giordano, the BAT Facilities Director for the past 23 years and a lifelong resident of Sunset Park, to hear about the facility’s recent life.

Brooklyn Army Terminal, 2011 | photo by Varick Shute

In April 1918, the US War Department took over what was then the Langley estate on the South Brooklyn waterfront for the purposes of building a military depot and supply base. The architect placed in charge was Cass Gilbert, one of the founding members of the Architectural League, known for such works as New York City’s Woolworth Building, the US Custom House, the New York Life Building and the United States Supreme Court in DC. The utilitarian design of the BAT was an exception in Gilbert’s catalogue of projects in the Beaux-Arts and Neo-Gothic styles. Under Gilbert’s design, the original 97-acre site became home to two warehouses, three multi-story piers (two of which have since been lost to underwater termites), a rail yard and a network of tracks running between the buildings and through the atrium spaces. The central atrium — a massive, four million cubic foot space — is lined with concrete balconies, staggered to allow loading and unloading of goods from rooftop cranes. Covered sky bridges connect the complex’s buildings, and the installation of 96 centrally-controlled, push-button elevators was the largest of its time. “The military used Building B, which is 2.2 million square feet, just for supplies. People were stationed in Building A, which is 1.8 million square feet,” Giordano described. “When I first got here, the City hadn’t renovated Building A yet. There was still a bowling alley, a restaurant, their cots, a post office. It was amazing.”

After just 17 months of construction, at a cost of $30 million, the BAT opened on September 6, 1919. “They broke records,” Giordano noted. “This project was in the Book of World Records for how much concrete was poured and mixed in a day. And this was in 1918. Their equipment was a horse and wagon.”

Beaux Arts Ball 2011 Invitation | Brooklyn Army Terminal as photographed in October 1949 by Andreas Feininger. Courtesy of Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Barely open in time to see soldiers returning from WWI, the BAT would wait another 22 years to see its peak of activity. 56,000 military and civilian personnel were employed at the BAT during WWII, and an additional three million troops and 37 million tons of supplies traveled through. The activity often spilled into the neighborhood’s streets and sidewalks. “My father used to say that, once workers began to go home in the evening, you couldn’t come near this area until 10pm,” Giordano recalled from his childhood. “It took hours for the cars and the people walking to pass through.”

After the war, the facility remained active. Supplies and servicemen again passed through the BAT during the Korean War. In July 1956, survivors of the collision between the ocean liners Andrea Doria and Stockholm were brought to the BAT, as were thousands of Hungarian Revolution refugees in 1957’s “Operation Mercy.” This legacy of the site, providing safe passage to survivors of disaster, was revisited ten years ago when the BAT’s sole remaining pier was opened to help ferry people out of Manhattan on September 11, 2011. “They diverted the Staten Island Ferry to get people here from Pier 11,” Giordano recalled. “People were lost, they didn’t even know they were in Brooklyn. I didn’t go home for seven days.” But what might be the BAT’s most famous entry into the nation’s historical memory came in September 1958, when hordes of fans and photojournalists turned up to see Elvis Presley ship out to Germany.

Brooklyn Army Terminal, November 1947 | Photo by Michael Rougier from the LIFE Magazine Archives. For more photos from this series, click here.

In 1964, the Brooklyn Army Terminal was identified by US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara as one of 95 military bases deemed unnecessary for national defense and thus should be closed to cut costs. By the end of 1966, all cargo and passenger traffic had been diverted to Bayonne, New Jersey.

News of the deactivation of the BAT immediately piqued interest from the City of New York, which announced an intent to acquire the site for maritime development. But it was the federal government that leased much of the space through the 1970s. “It lay unused for most of the 1960s,” Giordano said, “but in the ‘70s it saw some occasional use. There was a big fire at the US Post Office in the city. They used the first floors of BAT as a post office for a couple of years until they could refurbish the damaged space.”

New York City bought the complex from the federal government in 1981, with the intention of finding a developer to refurbish the space for commercial and light industrial use. When that fell through, the City began a phased renovation in 1984 under the management of the New York City Economic Development Corporation. The final phase was completed in 2003, making a total of  2.6 million square feet available for use. Now, the BAT houses over 70 tenants from the arts, sciences, finance and technology. BioBAT, a non-profit partnership between the NYCEDC and the Downstate Medical Center, has taken over 500,000 square feet of Building A for life science research, development and bio-manufacturing space. Last year, the NYCEDC announced a call for proposals for a $10 million smart grid demonstration project that would install a 50,000 square foot photovoltaic panel array on the BAT roof.

The City’s efforts to reactivate light manufacturing and invigorate our working waterfront reach beyond the Brooklyn Army Terminal. Similar plans are in the works for the rest of the Sunset Park Waterfront, as outlined in the NYCEDC 10-year Vision Plan for the area. The Brooklyn Navy Yard has been the focus of an eight-building, 40-acre expansion and refurbishment. The NYC Department of City Planning’s Comprehensive Waterfront Plan, Vision 2020, highlights the support of waterfront industry as a crucial strategy in keeping our city vibrant, from improving regional freight rail to dedicating resources to increasing opportunities in industrial business zones. In pursuit of these goals — to develop and renovate pockets of our city to improve economic growth and revitalize neighborhoods, all while recognizing the value and longevity of well-designed, beautiful spaces — the story of the Brooklyn Army Terminal is one worth telling.

Brooklyn Army Terminal, 2011 | photo by Varick Shute

—Varick Shute

Factories have taken advantage of the efficiencies of verticality for decades. Through her research, Rappaport analyzes the evolution of factory design and the impact of shifting economies and markets on how and where manufacturing spaces are built, and uses that history as a basis for exploration of contemporary trends and next steps, including how recent technological developments in cleaner manufacturing processes might allow for greater integration of all aspects of urban living. By engaging designers and planners in that conversation, she hopes that this will be a first step towards redefining and reinvigorating urban industry. -V.S.

Toni-Molkerei Factory, diagram of system processes, Zurich, 1974-76 | © A.E. Bosshard and H. Widmer

In the future, cleaner and greener production methods could make vertical urban factories the new engines of urban revitalization, encouraging both economic growth and urban vitality as well as offering more sustainable solutions with production systems such as just-in-time manufacturing or increases in recycling. A missing part of the sustainable picture is where and how urban industry can contribute to new self-sufficient urban paradigms. With my ongoing project Vertical Urban Factory, the first phase of which is currently on view at the Skyscraper Museum, I want to provoke conversation about the demise of urban manufacturing and call on planners and architects to redefine and reimagine urban industry and its integration with city life. 

Throughout architectural history, the factory has been a place of design innovation for engineers and architects, a typology that provided freedom to explore new material and spatial organization. Nineteenth century vertical urban factories capitalized on power resources of water and then steam, harnessing energy through mechanized systems and gravity conveyances. The proximity of labor, transportation hubs and entrepreneurial energy in dense urban clusters meant that raw materials could flow directly onto factory floors and assembled products could be distributed to local markets in an integrated, industrial, urban cycle.

Fiat Lingotto, roof test track, Turino, 1913-26 | Courtesy of Archivio e Centro Storico Fiat

As the 19th Century gave way to the 20th, two main types of vertical factories dominated the urban landscape: the integrated and the layered. In the integrated factory, workers run the production flows from top to bottom, or vice versa, as components or raw goods are mixed, sorted or assembled, then carried by automated or gravity-feed conveyors or chutes. Examples include Albert Kahn’s design for Henry Ford’s 1909 Highland Park factory in Detroit and Giacomo Matte-Trucco’s Fiat Lingotto factory, in Turin, Italy.

The layered factory has separate stacked floors, occupied by one or more companies that share common areas and services such as lobbies, elevators and power. While the building is multi-storied, the processing may be on all floors, a single floor or gradually expand to other floors, as in the New York’s Garment District or the Starrett Lehigh Building loft spaces. Usually built as speculative properties, they are a resource for those who have smaller scale operations or less capital.

Ford Factory, Highland Park, Detroit, 1910 | © Albert Kahn Associates

During WWII, demand for larger scale, horizontally-oriented operations increased, and these vertical types began to disappear. Factories were suddenly windowless, hermetically sealed spaces with air conditioning and blackout panels. Eventually, a global system of expansive highway networks, container shipping and standardized digital supply chains turned manufacturing into a widespread series of vast groundscrapers. Companies became sequestered in industrial districts, leaving vacant urban sites behind and taking jobs with them. The idea of the urban factory as a place that participated in the city became marginalized and segregated from popular notions of urban vibrancy. Industries continued to move further from their prime markets, shifting economies and production methods. Today, digital connections between consumers in retail spaces and the factory floor have resulted in mass-customization, transforming the traditional demand-supply circuit.

Large-scale industry, for the most part, has left cities. But, in spite of this spatial and economic shift, significant vertical urban factories have developed in the past ten years, all of which are seeds of ideas that can inspire us for the future. Three types of contemporary manufacturing spaces have emerged: the Spectacle, the Flexible and the Sustainable. The “spectacle” factory is iconic in design, often with the intent to represent a company brand. The VW Gläserne Manufaktur (The Transparent Factory) by Henn Architekten in Dresden (2001), for example, advertises its clean manufacturing processes through the transparency of its walls.

VW Gläserne Manufaktur (The Transparent Factory), Dresden | Courtesy of Henn Architekten

The “flexible” vertical urban factory, often located in existing loft spaces, is easily changeable to fit new machinery and adapt to economic flux. In Los Angeles, for example, American Apparel has reused former eight-story factories for their integrated vertical production line.

The “sustainable” vertical urban factory can perform multiple functions and integrates ecological building with a variety of manufacturing systems. The current redevelopment of hundreds of acres of the Brooklyn Navy Yard is a prime example of this type of urban industrial redevelopment project.

American Apparel factory | Courtesy of Jessica Varner. Photo by Yan Wang

Cities offer valuable advantages for industrial sustainability. Density allows for shared resources that can support industrial symbiosis — one factory’s heat waste fuels another. Nano and biotech companies, such as those in the Bizkaia eco-industrial park in Bilbao and the new CleanTech corridor along the Los Angeles River, have formed clusters in industrial zones to use proximity to their benefit. Imagine the New York waterfront returning to its manufacturing strength as clusters of vertical factories, linked by water, high-speed elevated rail systems or overhead conveyances, become hubs of production and distribution.

But the benefits of urban factories exist across scale. Today’s urban industry requires a redefinition: to embrace smaller scale shops with highly-skilled labor, the production of niche goods, such as furniture, food, garments or high-tech products, and a collaborative environment where designers (who are often city dwellers) and fabricators work together on high-design items.

With rising costs of oil, manufacturers will need to produce locally to save money, a shift that will also help to limit CO2 emissions. Methods in industrial management, such as lean manufacturing, just-in-time production and cradle-to-cradle recycling, are beginning to reduce production waste. Goods made on demand, without stockpiled materials, allow for smaller, cleaner assembly plants, wherein workers can produce for a more dispersed network. With the advent of open-source manufacturing software, computer numerically-controlled-machines (CNC) and 3D printers, designers can quickly make prototypes and develop a product in small batches.

The vertical urban factory could be reinvented so that supply meets demand for space and is kept flexible for new and future economiesThe viability of vertical urban manufacturing in our postindustrial urban centers is challenged by rising land prices and must be encouraged through financial incentives and zoning adjustments. Neo-cottage industries could be located in new incubator buildings with government support. Local entrepreneurs with shared resources can operate out of existing loft spaces and former factories as a new production market. Industrial zoning should allow for taller, denser, diversified and performative, rather than prescriptive, development. The vertical urban factory could be reinvented so that supply meets demand for space and is kept flexible for new and future economies.

Besides its economic value, a factory has social value and the potential to be a welcome part of a community. It can engage and educate the public about manufacturing. It might circulate information about processes, elevating workers’ social and cultural significance and further influencing interest in local industry and branding, as has been done with various Brooklyn artisanal food companies. In an area such as the Garment District, windows could allow people to see factory production, like in the VW Dresden factory, and entice people to engage with the products being made, thus participating in the inner workings of the city.

Advancements in ecologically-responsible technology mean that clean manufacturing can exist adjacent to residential spaces, and that work and living can be hybridized in new ways. The architectural and urban issues addressing manufacturing in cities present not only an exciting design challenge of integrated systems, new fabrication technologies and emergent materials, but create a demand for new solutions. Vertical urban factories could produce energy rather than just consume it, and workers could recycle goods, rather than spew them out. This in turn would close the loop of making, consuming and recycling as part of a new urban spatial and economic paradigm.

Vertical Urban Factory, developed by Nina Rappaport and exhibited in its first phase in an installation designed by Mike Tower and Mark Kolodziejczak of Studio Tractor and Sarah Gephart of MGMT Design, is on display at the Skyscraper Museum through July 1. Images courtesy of the Skyscraper Museum and Nina Rappaport.

Buckminster Fuller, unbuilt automatic cotton mill, 1952 | Courtesy of North Carolina State University, College of Design. Photo by Ralph Mills.

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Nina Rappaport is an architectural critic, curator, historian and educator. She is the publications director for the Yale School of Architecture, where she edits exhibition catalogs, books and the bi-annual magazine Constructs. She directs and curates the project Vertical Urban Factory, which includes an exhibition series, dialogues and a book with Actar Press. She teaches an urbanism seminar, Alternative Urbanism, in the Syracuse in New York City program and has previously taught at Parsons and Yale. She is author of the book Support and Resist: Structural Engineers and Design Innovation (Monacelli Press, 2007), and has written numerous essays on structural design and architecture, and on industrial architecture and the global industrial landscape for journals such as Acadia, Praxis, Perspecta, Scapes, 306090, Architectural Record, Architecture, Tec21, Metropolis, The Architect’s Newspaper and Deutsche Bauzeitung.

She has curated shows on architecture and photography, including an ongoing exhibition of the work of Ezra Stoller’s architectural and industrial photography at the 1050 K Street Galleries in Washington, D.C; “The Swiss Section,” a 2004 exhibition at the Van Alen Institute focusing on infrastructure; and she co-curated “Saving Corporate Modernism” at the Yale School of Architecture in 2001.

The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Man and the Machine | Click on any image to see more of Mallon’s work

Stephen Mallon is a photographer invested in capturing extraordinary moments in the industrial landscape and the surreal beauty of the machines and sites that populate it. But the projects Mallon documents aren’t your everyday construction sites. “Next Stop Atlantic” follows an MTA recycling program that uses retired subway cars, stripped and cleaned, to rebuild underwater reefs along the eastern seabed. “Brace for Impact: The Salvage of Flight 1549″ documents the recovery of the US Airways airbus, piloted by Captain “Sully” Sullenberger, that landed in the Hudson River in 2009 after a collision with a flock of geese resulted in engine failure. In “A Bridge Delivered,” one of his time-lapse projects, Mallon shows us the delivery and installation of the new Willis Avenue Bridge, crossing the Harlem River to connect Manhattan and the Bronx. Most recently, Mallon completed “Volare,” a series of images following the construction of a new roller coaster on Coney Island. We recently had an opportunity to talk to Mallon about his work, the underappreciated beauty of engineering and how photography can provoke contemplation of industry and our natural environment — and their unexpected convergences.

An exhibition of Mallon’s series “Next Stop Atlantic” will be presented at the Look3 Festival of the Photograph in Charlottesville in June 2011, and will also be on display at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey later this summer. In spring 2012, “Brace for Impact: The Salvage of Flight 1549” will be exhibited at Webster University in St. Louis. “A Bridge Delivered” has been selected for inclusion in this summer’s Rooftop Films Summer Series here in New York City.

Volare, Coney Island | Click on any image to see more of Mallon’s work

How do you conceive of or identify your projects? What does it mean to you to be an “industrial photographer,” as you’ve described yourself in the past?

I am attracted to a lot of different subjects in the industrial world. I just finished a project documenting the construction of a new roller coaster for the Wall Street Journal. It’s the first new coaster in Coney Island in over 50 years. A few months ago, I was in Brazil on a commission to photograph on an offshore drilling platform for a series titled “Petrobras.”

I am hoping to be in a number of recycling plants over the coming months. I move from commission to commission, along with continuing my long term project “American Reclamation,” which is a series of images about material and space reuse in the 50 states.

But I am actually getting away from identifying myself as “an industrial photographer.” I realized, after framing my work that way, that people saw me as someone who was shooting only the box on a conveyor belt.

It seems that you have a particular interest in recycling and salvage. How did that interest develop?

I have been shooting industrial landscape work for almost all of my life. I got away from it during university, but in the late ’90s I started finding the antenna and the oil container really appealing again. After a meeting with a book agent to publish a collection of my work, I realized I needed a project to focus on. Recycling was a natural fit!

Next Stop Atlantic | Click on any image to see more of Mallon’s work

Tell us about “Next Stop Atlantic.” This series documents an MTA program that recycles retired subway cars by using them to create artificial reefs — “moments of violent recycling,” as you’ve described it. How did you find out about the project?

I was out scouting a location for a portrait in New Jersey when I recognized a barge loaded with subway cars sitting in a shipyard in Bayonne. The yard was owned by maritime contractor Weeks Marine. I sent them information about my recycling project, and the MTA and Weeks let me follow the subway cars out into the Atlantic Ocean. I spent just shy of three years going out on multiple trips.

The moment the car hits the water there’s this Titanic-esque moment when the water overtakes the car as it sinks. It’s incredibly fast — from the moment it’s picked up and thrown overboard for the fishes. The change from seeing steel lying on a barge out in the Atlantic to watching water rush in as it hits the ocean is quite dramatic.

Brace for Impact: The Salvage of Flight 1549 | Click on any image to see more of Mallon’s work

In a lot of your work, bodies of water play an important role. In your series “Flight 1549,” you document the recovery of the US Airways airbus that famously landed in the Hudson River in 2009 after a collision with a flock of geese caused its engines to fail. Are you particularly attracted to maritime industrial subject matter?

It just keeps calling my name. Similar to shooting objects placed on a white background or against the sky, water isolates the machine.

How did you get interested in creating “A Bridge Delivered,” your time-lapse video of the delivery and installation of the new Willis Avenue Bridge? Did you know immediately that you wanted to document it?

Weeks Marine has a construction division and they gave me a call last summer to see if I would want to come out to shoot it. I knew immediately that I wanted to document it!

A Bridge Delivered from stephen mallon on Vimeo.

Over 30,000 images comprise “A Bridge Delivered,” but in your still photographs the individual moments you capture are very precise. Did you think about these two projects very differently, or did your photographs suggest how best to portray the idea?

Yes, the process of telling a story in motion has been a change for me. I used to look for one or a few images to encapsulate the event. Now I am looking for clips, longer moments in time to keep the viewer engaged and the story running.

Practically speaking, how do you negotiate such immediate access to your subjects? How do you get as close as you do?

Having the existing body of work has made clients and locations much more comfortable. They see that other people have trusted and commissioned me in the past, which boosts their confidence.

American Reclamation | Click on any image to see more of Mallon’s work

How would like your photography to affect or inform the way your viewing public sees or considers the city and its infrastructure?

Some people are horrified about the artificial reef program, but I think it’s because they don’t know the details about how it is designed to help the environment. I am fortunate that I have been able to photograph these historical projects that are all tied to New York — my interest is in making unique images of historical moments. The response to these projects has been amazing and I am truly grateful.

What types of projects are you working on now?

I’m designing a remote camera that will let me shoot hi-res time-lapse footage from any location for an extended period of time — I’ll have more details soon! I am also conceptualizing my own proposal for an artificial reef. But that is going to take some time!

Man and the Machine | Click on any image to see more of Mallon’s work

All photos courtesy of and copyright Stephen Mallon

Most people look at work sites and machinery and see nothing more than concrete and steel. Stephen Mallon looks at them and sees both a surreal beauty and the wonder of their engineering. His work has been exhibited widely and featured on numerous websites, in print and on TV and radio, including National Public Radio, Flavorwire, The Atlantic, Fast Company, the Wall Street Journal, GQ, Wired, New York Magazine, NBC, Vanity Fair and CBS News. Stephen has traveled everywhere from Africa to Brazil, searching out artificial landscapes and industrial footprints. He has also been commissioned by a wide range of clients, including the Sunday London Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Publicis, Sudler & Hennessey, and MAYTAG. Mallon’s photos have been honored by Communication Arts 2008 and 2009, the New York Photo Festival 2009 and the Lucie Awards 2009. Since 2002, he has been a board member of the New York chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers and served as president from 2006 to 2009. He lives in New York with his wife and their young daughter.

Click on the image above to launch a slideshow of photographs from “The Quiet City.”

I started photographing in Industrial Business Zones (IBZs) after moving to Brooklyn in 2006.  I was intrigued by the transformation, from industrial to residential use, of areas like Williamsburg and DUMBO. Visits to Sunset Park, Gowanus, Greenpoint, Long Island City, and East Williamsburg followed. The industrial pockets of New York City are often unseen by many residents unless they work or live nearby. I began to photograph the IBZs when most industrial businesses were closed, on Sunday afternoons. Most of the work is void of people. There is a surreal and at times eerie quietness that is rare in New York City.

“The Quiet City” is an ongoing personal project and does not purport to reveal absolute truths or confront issues of zoning or gentrification. There are historic aspects to the work but ultimately all of my work ties back to one subject matter: beauty. Beauty the way I see it, often vernacular, utilitarian and graphic. The aesthetics of the scenes are most important to me, relating to formalism and classic landscape painting. I am fueled by an interest in architecture, infrastructure and a love for lines, texture, materials and color.

Chances are, these areas will look very different ten years from now. Many of the IBZs are located on prime waterfront property or adjacent to expanding, already gentrified neighborhoods. My intuitive work process brings me back to these places on a regular basis to see what is new and what I will find. If I am able to secure funding I hope to expand the scope of the project to include all New York City IBZs and ultimately publish the complete body of work as a book.

Douglas Ljungkvist is a Brooklyn based photographer originally from Sweden. His focus is on travel, architectural photography, and personal projects. His work has been published in Condé Nast Traveler, Tate ETC UK, Focus Magazine, and National Geographic Traveler, among others. He is the recipient of accolades from the IPA, The Color Awards, Px3, and was runner-up in the 2009 Travel Photographer of the Year contest, New Talent category. He has exhibited at the Bridge Art Fair during Art Basel in Miami and at Michael Mazzeo Gallery in Chelsea.

The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Screengrab of madeinmidtown.org

Earlier this month the Design Trust for Public Space and the Council of Fashion Designers of America released an initial study of New York’s Garment District called “Made in Midtown.” The study dispelled the myth that the district exists only in name, proving that—despite the area’s faltering manufacturing dominance—designers still rely on the Garment District as a hub for research and development and an integral launching pad for young designers and new labels.

To illustrate the study’s findings a website was created; and it’s definitely worth a visit. (Fair warning: You can lose a serious chunk of your day playing—there’s even something like a comic book!) It’s extremely visual — look for a series of charts, diagrams, and interactive features illustrating various facts and figures falling under one of three easy-breezy categories. They are: (1) What is the Garment District? (2) Why does the District Matter to Fashion? (3) Why Does Fashion Matter to NYC?

You’ll see how New York measures up to Paris and Milan (don’t worry, we kind of win); learn more about the process of fashion and why the neighborhood and other Creative Districts are an important part of the fabric (get it?) of any city; and delve into the minds of some of New York’s most New Yorkiest designers including Jason Wu, Nanette Lepore, Shelly Steffee, and Anna Sui.

Made in Midtown | Full Panel, June 8, 2010 | Photo by Giles Ashford

To get the word out and discuss exactly what to do next with the data, the Municipal Art Society of New York along with the Design Trust held two panel discussions at the School of Visual Arts Theater. The first such event was moderated by the always charming Tim Gunn and introduced by Deborah Marton, the executive director of the Design Trust. Additionally, it featured Sarah Crean from the New York Industrial Retention Network; Eric Gural, executive managing director at Newmark Knight Frank; Michael Meola, attorney and development consultant; fashion designer Yeohlee Teng; and Madelyn Wils of the Planning, Development and Maritime division of the New York City Economic Development Corporation.

The second, held a week later, was moderated by Marton (who traded the Louboutins she rocked the previous week for a pair of turbo-fierce Lucite disco pumps) and included Sarah Williams, a co-director of Columbia University’s Spatial Information Design Lab and Made in Midtown Project Fellow; Simon Collins of Parsons School of Fashion; Fred Dust of IDEO (who talked mainly about Los Angeles…); Harvey Molotch, a sociology and metropolitan studies expert at NYU; and Andrew Oshrin, president and CEO of Milly (his wife, Milly designer Michelle Smith, was in the audience).

Everyone agreed that the Garment District isn’t dead. A “hub for research and development,” and central to smaller-batch and higher-end production, it also provides the opportunity for a young label, like Jason Wu’s, to go from raw sketches to showroom wholesaling without the massive capital investment or high-volume production required to bring talent in-house or inexpensively produce overseas. The process, next to impossible in cities like Paris or Milan, makes New York “the fashion start-up capital of the world.”

Furthermore, panelists agreed that zoning mandates created in 1987 to stave off real estate pressures and preserve manufacturing space were not working; and that recent controversial proposals for rezoning and/or consolidating the district’s businesses were not the answer. Zoning aside, most panelists also agreed that part of keeping the Garment District vital means improving life on the streets with interactive events and exhibits, beautification, pedestrian friendly features, and increased retail opportunity—improvements aiming to attract designers as well as tourists and residents who don’t necessarily have ties to the industry. Essentially, the area needed to become friendlier, more viable, “cool.”

Crean suggested a system calling for newly installed retail lessees and other higher-margin tenants subsidizing the rents of artisan and production tenants upstairs. Meanwhile, Gural envisioned a strange Colonial Williamsburg version of the Garment District in which tourists could watch newly-ordered clothing being made. Crean’s idea was better received than Gural’s.

Made in Midtown | Full Panel, June 15, 2010 | Photo by Giles Ashford

Collins—whose ties to Parsons and experience in the industry lends him a working rather than scholarly relationship to the area—balked at the notion that increased traffic was part of the solution. “Cool,” he said, creates foot traffic, higher rents, unnecessary retail and espresso bars and sidewalk beautification. Too much cool and the Garment District becomes SoHo—an area so removed from it’s artistic past it’s almost comical. That said, he supports another kind of “cool.” The kind of cool created by a buzzy upstart like Jason Wu basing himself in the area and paving the way for additional buzzy upstarts. And perhaps more importantly, the kind of cool that—through marketing and branding and special hang tags (and, more importantly, tax incentives)—makes producing clothing in the District cool. Using Ralph Lauren as his example, he commented that even if the label decided to produce a tiny percentage in New York (“maybe that tee shirt they make with the stars and stripes on it”) and publicize it, and make it cool, other labels would follow suit. Tradespeople, he said, “don’t need studies, they need orders.” Gee, how does he really feel?

Molotch—awakened by Collins’ frankness, or maybe just going for a laugh—agreed, saying the best way to ease real estate pressures on the area—or keep out the cool—is to stay seedy and reject any and all infrastructure improvements. In other words, “embrace porn.”

Teng, too, can do without the homogeneity cool generally creates. Her nightmare New York is a city of “bankers and brokers;” a place too expensive for upstarts or creative clusters brought up at the second panel. Additionally, and quite practically, she brought up a growing dearth of skilled craftspeople—pattern-makers, pleating experts, textile producers, fabric cutters—that could cripple the industry sooner than condos or Qdobas could. Training programs, she said, need to be created to ensure that designers have access to specific skill sets before an entire industrial sector dies with so many aging immigrant artisans.

Nonetheless, as Collins declared, the Garment District remains “absolutely bloody vital.” His Garment District is the perfect unofficial post-graduate environment for his Parsons students. He noted the relatively recent (and ongoing) successes of womenswear label Proenza Schouler. Founded by Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough, two Parsons graduates, the pair simply returned to the businesses they came in contact with as interns to have their lauded initial collections produced. Eight years later the duo is at the helm of American fashion with dresses hanging in Barneys and grazing the backs Chloë Sevigny and Julianne Moore.

Which begs the question: Could Proenza Schouler—or any upstart for that matter—have happened without the support and the resources available to newbies within the loose confines of New York’s Garment District? Possibly, in some form or another, but why fix what’s working so well? Losing or moving the Garment District could endanger New York’s greatest fashion asset: fresh talent, start-ups, The Next Big Thing. We don’t have Burberrys or Guccis or Louis Vuittons, and we don’t have couture (just don’t tell Ralph Rucci that). But, New York’s apparel ecosystem introduced the world to Marc Jacobs and the slew of emerging talents (Alexander Wang, Phillip Lim, Richard Chai, the list goes on and on) who are in line to be the next Marc Jacobs. To that we can pretty safely say: In your face, Milan.

Photographs by Giles Ashford, courtesy of The Municipal Art Society of New York. As with all review and opinion pieces posted on Urban Omnibus, the views expressed are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Frank Gargione is a freelance graphic designer working within the fashion and publishing industries while studying textile and surface design at FIT. A lover of all things fashion, he is a frequent contributor for Racked.com. He lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Alright, we know that many among you are journalists, filmmakers, urban designers or (if you’re like us) you fit somewhere in between. Well, our dear friends and fellow public space partisans the Design Trust just might have an opportunity for you, a fellowship on their new project Made in Midtown.

Two weeks ago we heard from Adam Friedman and learned about the need to maintain a robust manufacturing economy in New York. What better place to delve in deeper to some of these issues than Midtown Manhattan? With the threat of continued losses in the garment sector becoming real, one proposal popular in City Hall is to consolidate remaining garment workers into one building and designate the rest of the Garment District a commercial zone. According to the Design Trust, “New York remains a global fashion leader, but few outside the industry understand the vast networks and ecologies that establish both its competitive edge and the unique character of its physical spaces. Synthesizing findings about the fashion industry’s specific strengths and challenges, and its evolving role in the Garment District, Made in Midtown will make recommendations that respect and support New York City’s industrial identity, while balancing the many competing interests of Midtown’s stakeholders. The resulting study will help guide policies for light manufacturing industries citywide.”

The Design Trust, you recall, are the good people who brought us the Reinventing Grand Army Plaza Ideas Competition and got all pot-lucky with us along the Grand Concourse. If you respect their work as much as we do, and want to try your hand at applying your skills to this project, get involved. Here’s the deal:

Call for Fellows
Deadline to apply: Friday, October 30, 2009 by 5:00pm

The Design Trust seeks Project Fellows for Made in Midtown, a study of New York’s fashion industry and the Garment District, created in partnership with the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Phase I of this project will culminate in an interactive website and booklet which will illustrate the complex and interdependent connections between the physical spaces of Midtown, its businesses and its workers. The anticipated timeframe for Phase I is three months, beginning December 1.

For this phase, the Design Trust will select 3 fellows in the fields of journalism, film and video, and urban planning/design. All of the fellows will work closely with each other, and with Design Trust staff, who will manage the project.

Complete fellowship descriptions can be found here.

If, like me, you work elsewhere during weekdays, these factories can seem subdued or even dead. It’s hard to tell which ones have been converted into condos and which still house makers. When I have time, maybe I’ll go back and take pictures during the day of these great old buildings.

The site-specific aspect of the installation was great—it brought both arts-followers and passers-by together on street corners with the artist to watch what had been previously hidden.

One stop was ACME Smoked Fish. Their trucks and logo are familiar, but I had never really paid the factory much attention. Piles of coral-colored salmon made the video compelling and I could have watched all night.

Next was Royal Engraving, and its 250-year-old engraving machines. That’s history for you. That video was a little less striking at first—so much paper—but the subtle, rhythmic moves of the press and the workers responding to them became hypnotic. The satisfying thud of a stack of thick paper being tapped into alignment and the frighteningly efficient swish of a guillotine chopping the stack made for a great sound track. This video, like the ACME video, had only the sounds of work being done, no interviews or voiceovers, just feeling like a spy with x-ray vision.

The last stop was Dobbin Mill, where Robbin Silverberg makes fine art papers. Although this was also a view of fabrication, it didn’t fit in with the other two. Not only was the process less mechanical (though there was a brief view of an awesome paper press), Robbin Silverberg explained what she was doing as she worked, which made the video feel more like a PBS video and less like the vouyeristic view through the wall the other videos achieved. I understand that Sarah Nelson Wright was looking to connect craft and factory fabrication, but I think the three together would have been stronger if they had been more of a type.

That’s just quibbling, though—this was an amazing installation that changed forever the way I see those particular street corners. I can’t wait to see what project Sarah Nelson Wright dreams up next.


As with all review and opinion pieces posted on Urban Omnibus, the views expressed are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

All images by Kirsten Hively. Text adapted from an article originally published on Hively’s blog Catasterist.

Kirsten Hively received her MArch in 2007 from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Together with journalist Paul Lukas, she recently co-produced a show at the City Reliquary on the ersatz Candela Structures in Queens, and when not architecting she can often be found photographing or writing about New York City, where she lives and works.