WeWork is celebrating the opening of its Dock 72 office complex at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York. A collaboration with local firm S9 Architecture, the 675,000-square-foot structure has 16 floors looking out to Brooklyn and Manhattan, and situated 42 feet above the floodplane. With 20 V-shaped columns that allow water to flow under the building in the case of a flood, the space also features a 13,000-square-foot food hall, a 13,000-square-foot fitness center, and flexible workspaces and lounges. “Our design for Dock 72 tapped into the legacy of labor at the Brooklyn Navy Yard,” said S9 principal John Clifford in a press release. “The plan, with spacious open common areas linked on multiple levels, supports the 21st century model of collaborative work while drawing on the site’s history of manufacturing. The stepped massing and gridded, glazed façade maximizes the water views and complements the context of existing loft buildings.” [S9 Architecture]
The American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) has partnered with the International WELL Building Institute to host the first-ever WELL Conference. Slated for April 2020, the event will be open to designers, real estate developers, and corporate stakeholders. "Design professionals ensure interior environments protect those who inhabit the spaces where we live, work, and play; now it’s incumbent upon us to encourage greater levels of health and well-being interventions," said ASID CEO Randy Fiser in a press release. "The WELL Conference will help us take that message forward further and faster.” [WELL Conference]
Though lighting controls have been around for decades, they have recently evolved to become more sophisticated and complex. Networked lighting controls, in particular, have the potential to reduce energy usage as much as the switch from conventional sources to LEDs. [ARCHITECT]
Researchers from MIT have created robot prototypes that can assemble small structures individually or collaborate to construction larger assemblies. Unlike conventional robots that are either one-off and expensive or mass-produced modules with minimal performance capabilities, this new system offers the best of both worlds—a relatively inexpensive robot that can complete complex tasks. The team envisions applications in everything from airplane manufacturing to space settlement development. "“For a space station or a lunar habitat, these robots would live on the structure, continuously maintaining and repairing it,” said graduate student and project lead Benjamin Jenett in a press release. [MIT]
Lighting manufacturer Signify, formerly known has Philips Lighting, has reached agreement with Dublin-based Eaton to acquire Cooper Lighting Solutions for $1.4 billion. [ARCHITECT]
In his third post analyzing project delivery, former Autodesk executive Phil Bernstein discusses its inefficiences and the unrealized potential of BIM. [ARCHITECT]
