Dare to be dull
Marvel Architects, 2015-2017
Sometimes simplicity wins outs. At first it might seem like there isn’t much to One Clinton, that without any glitz and glam, it’s little more than a background building. Perhaps. Daring to be dull has its risks.
Our challenge was to allow instances where a simple logic might give way to generous urban gestures, human-scaled details, and intimate moments. To such ends, the diagrams at right show how we inflected a plain grid with multiple rhythms to break down the tower’s scale, lent an air of permanence and tactility to the project with a limestone facade, and incorporated a public library and community facilities into the ground floor for neighborhood use.
Sweating the details
I cut my teeth as an architect developing these facade details for One Clinton. Fresh out of Yale, I was a skilled designer but had only a basic knowledge of the technical aspects of architecture. Over the course of a year, I picked it up by acknowledging what I didn’t know, raising my hand often, and seeking out mentors. I learned two things, how to put a building together and how to be a beginner.
Understated elegance
For One Clinton, we created a buttoned-down, calm aesthetic for a blue-blooded neighborhood.
Faced in limestone and accented in bronze, One Clinton’s primary facade acknowledges the historic character of Brooklyn Heights and the stately civic buildings across Cadman Plaza. Clear regulating lines paired with recessed spandrels emphasize the tower’s height and elegant proportion, as shown in the elevation at right. At the same time, intermittent horizontal bands of limestone breakdown the building’s scale into smaller groups of floors.
Sweating the details, cont’d
Making One Clinton look clean and classic required both hard work and a bit of magic. The art, I learned, was equal parts ingenuity and sleight of hand.
To save on cost, the facade is veneer limestone. To gain a floor area bonus, the building complies with stringent sustainability targets. To bring these ambitions together at a good price required tireless collaboration with engineers, contractors, and consultants. Together we achieved an elegant yet plain skin that tick, tocks, and hums beneath like well designed Swiss watch.
Building as book
If One Clinton can be understood as a slightly open book standing on end, the limestone facades are its dust-jacketed cover and this—the south facade—its open pages. Accordingly, this facade stands in contrast to the other two. Made entirely of bronze, the tower’s vertical lines are emphasized to read almost like the edges of pages. The result is a building with a clear front and back, and a reading that speaks to the branch library at its base.