Gallery

Seward Park, New York, NY
Architect, Proposed Design: COOKFOX Architects

Image Credit: (C)COOKFOX Architects

Rendering by Miha Brezavscek, COOKFOX
Background Photo by Rob Cleary, COOKFOX

COOKFOX Architects was part of Forest City Ratner Companies’ team for the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, a 6-acre mixed-used development on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The SPURA site is a design challenge of great complexity and scale, yet requiring a nuanced and personal touch in order to capture the unique identity of the Lower East Side.

The proposal’s key principles arise from the commitment to sustain, strengthen, and enhance the Lower East Side’s existing character, and is inspired by the people who have made and those who will make the LES their home. Seward Park thus focuses on neighborhood partnerships, economic empowerment, connectivity, contextual public places, and innovation that creates fundamental, sustainable changes in how we build, live, and work.

COOKFOX’s contribution to the design spans four sites throughout SPURA. Parcel 2, at the corner of Essex and Delancey, is home to both the Essex Street Market and a co-working space, and the design creates an environment with no distinct separation between the small-scale retail of the market and the small-scale start-up workspace above.

Parcel 3 extends the energy of the Essex Street Market to the east with a ground plane of passageways, public courtyards, and storefronts. Parcel 4 continues the ground plane connections of Parcels 2 and 3 with a similar market and retail strategies. Specific program elements on this site, including a fitness center and movie theater, provide social gathering places and event-oriented activities that build the community. The design connects to the network of pedestrian pathways, while establishing a connection to the Clinton Street corridor north of Delancey.

The design for Parcel 6 reflects a modern, integrated and holistic approach that integrates senior housing, natural spaces, maximal daylighting and community spaces. The building’s program also reaches out to residents north of Delancey and east to the river, thereby knitting the project into its larger neighborhood context.