Continuing the discussion from NEW YORK | Flatbush Ave Corridor (DoBro + BAM + AY):
UNVEILED> ROCKWELL PLACE HOTEL
Nicole Anderson
04.12.2013
As its expansion of the BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn and UrbanGlass complex nears completion, Leeser Architecture is embarking on its next project in the Brooklyn Downtown Cultural District. The Brooklyn-based firm has been tapped to design the new 200-room Rockwell Place Hotel next to The Theater for a New Audience. With the new Barclays Center only a block away and a flood of new arts and cultural venues cropping up in the area, the 30-story hotel will accommodate the growing number of visitors flocking to the borough.
When he conceptualized the design, Thomas Leeser said, he wanted it to be a “marker of how we see Brooklyn.”
For that reason, the building, made of white fritted glass and metal, will feature dramatic asymmetrical fractures in the facade that reinforce a notion of Brooklyn as “multi-faceted” and “modern,” according to Leeser. “It was very important that this building be, on one hand, very ‘contemporary slick,’ but also not perfect,” he said. “Because Brooklyn isn’t perfect.”
The hotel will rise approximately 300 feet and will include a rooftop bar with a small pool, a banquet hall, a ballroom, a performance space on the basement level, and a restaurant on the main floor and mezzanine that looks onto an outdoor arts plaza.
“We wanted to make a statement that Brooklyn is very cutting edge—it is not just the little sister of Manhattan anymore,” said Leeser.
