Brooklyn Health Center

The designers were asked to deliver a new, distinctive health centre. They delivered a four-storey health centre as the beating heart of an innovative glass-faced eleven-storey mixed-use building. Upon reviewing the site, they immediately understood that they could dramatically expand the square footage by using a privately owned public space (a 2,000-square-foot park, built for public use and maintained by the owner of the building), which would allow for leasable spaces to defray the cost of the building over time. Asked not to allow the health centre to become lost in the building, the senior designer conceived of it as a red object encased in glass—the building’s beating heart. Its teardrop-like form was designed to complement the vibrancy and ingenuity of downtown Brooklyn. Its external design takes advantage of the unusually shaped site to create a lively façade that reflects the eclecticism of this culturally diverse neighbourhood.