During a junior year studio course I was tasked with designing a food based project on a site next to the Gowanus canal in Brooklyn, NYC. My design is based around food production and community outreach. The site/buildings offers space for food truck owners to grow, prepare, and serve food directly to the local community in an adjacent public plaza that I designed and integrated onto the site. The canal has a strong spatial presence around the neighborhood, so being that the NW side of the site borders the canal, I wanted to provide uninterrupted public access to the water side while also maintaining the general program of urban food production and service. The studio also prioritized sustainability so my design is adapted to meet sustainable standards suitable for the course. Using designPH and PassivHaus standards I was able to achieve an efficient energy output. From my design narrative:
PROGRAM: Street Vendor Commissary/ Community Plaza
Space is provided for vendors to grow prepare and serve food. The community gardens and industrial kitchen allow vendors to serve food that is sourced locally on site and they also have the option to serve food on site. The act of storing carts and preparing food is made more convenient for city vendors. Space is also provided for the public with public access to the Gowanus canal and the vending spaces allow the public to buy food from the vendors.
Space is provided for vendors to grow prepare and serve food. The community gardens and industrial kitchen allow vendors to serve food that is sourced locally on site and they also have the option to serve food on site. The act of storing carts and preparing food is made more convenient for city vendors. Space is also provided for the public with public access to the Gowanus canal and the vending spaces allow the public to buy food from the vendors.
My building surprisingly complied with the passive house standards, I managed to get my building down to a 14.80 kwh/m2a specific annual heat demand. Which meets the high performance standard of 15 kwh/m2a. I didn’t have to do much besides modify the insulation techniques for some of my walls. A big portion of my building (most of the lower ground level) isn’t designed to be enclosed spaces that would need to be heated or cooled. For example, I figured the commissary storing the street vendor carts wouldn’t need to be stored under any fixed climate since it’s just the carts, so that space has perforated brick which opens it to air flow from the outside climate.
The building mass (shown above) is adapted to public spaces that simultaneously happen in and around the building. The remaining mass is used programmatically to give appropriate space to the user.
The middle portion of the building is used generally as the food truck commissary with storage space for storing vendor carts on the ground level and communal kitchens directly above it. On the two outside portions classroom/multipurpose spaces are open to the community on the second level. Below that, on the ground level, there are public bathrooms and a utility space. The utility space is designed to house a water collection cistern tank and other equipment used to collect rain water from all 3 of the roofs to provide water to the communal gardens that are also on the roof level.
