Text description provided by the architects. The Manhattan Districts 1/2/5 Garage, overlooking the Hudson River at the corner of Spring Street and West Street, houses three district garages for the NYC Department of Sanitation. The new multi-story building accommodates over 150 sanitation vehicles including trucks, front-end loaders, salt spreaders, heavy-equipment wreckers, and personnel vehicles; separate vehicle wash and personnel facilities for each district; and centralized fueling and repair facilities. The double-skin facade wraps the curtain wall with 2,600 custom, perforated, metal fins, vertically articulating and lighting the building’s massing. Operable for the occupied spaces, the fins reduce solar heat gain and glare, create an ethereal wrapper to obscure mechanical louvers, and shield the view of headlights from neighbors. An extensive 1.5 acre green roof softens views from neighboring buildings, protects the roof membrane, and enhances storm water retention and thermal performance.

Ground floor plan

A benchmark project for NYC’s Active Design program, the garage has achieved LEED Gold certification. As the first LEED rated Department of Sanitation facility, an interactive and iterative design process was critical to establishing project goals. The team worked closely with DSNY and a Community Board approvals process, through a series of workshops to develop the program requirements for a vertically organized multi-district garage. Through this process, opportunities were identified for combining shared spaces, reducing floor to floor heights, and optimizing circulation efficiency.

Section

Directly across Spring Street to the north, the Salt Shed’s crystalline, faceted planes enliven this highly visible structure, acting as a counterpoint to the diaphanous, scrim-like facade of the Garage. The cast-in-place concrete structure tapers toward the bottom—creating more pedestrian space—and rises from a glazed moat that will be illuminated at night. Rising nearly 70 feet, the shed houses 5,000 tons of salt and create an iconic landmark at this important intersection. Within the year of opening, the Manhattan Districts 1/2/5 Garage & Salt Shed have become a source of neighborhood pride.

© Pavel Bendov

• Architects

  Dattner Architects

• Location

  New York, NY, United States

• Category

  Buildings

• Associated Architects

  WXY Architecture + Urban Design.

• Lighting Design

  Domingo Gonzalez Associates

• Landscape

  Abel Bainnson Butz

• Area

  431300.0 ft2

• Project Year

  2015

• Photographs

  Albert Vecerka/ESTO, Field Condition, Michael Anton, Pavel Bendov