As major changes and speculation over what’s next hover around the Brooklyn Navy Yard, S9 Architecture’s Dock 72 office tower is nearing completion. The stepped, 16-story building is currently receiving its facade, and co-working company WeWork has already laid claim to 220,000 square feet of office space.
With so much ground-up space to work with, the company (and developers Boston Properties and Rudin Development) has tapped local firm Fogarty Finger to design the amenity spaces for their new digs
Fogarty Finger took cues from residential and hospitality design to impart a softness throughout, which, given their track record in designing high-end office spaces, is why the studio was chosen for the job. From the renderings, it seems the interiors are a step up from WeWork’s typical glass-and-reclaimed-wood look, usually handled by their in-house design team (Bjarke Ingels had no role in the project, either).
Dock 72 is the first ground-up office building to be built in Brooklyn in nearly 30 years, and given the building’s Class A ratings (the highest office standard) and waterfront views, Fogarty Finger was responsible for designing 35,000 square feet of high-end amenities. Two bar-and-lounges, one on the ground floor, the other adjacent to the 16th floor’s conference center, a 600-foot-long, 30-foot-wide lobby that runs the length of the building, a juice bar, spa, gym, café, and a market.
The interiors lean heavily on an industrial aesthetic (concrete floors, black steel columns), with strategic splashes of warm wood paneling along the ceiling and a white oak trim in the furniture. In keeping with the Navy Yard’s effort to bolster New York City’s manufacturing base, local manufacturers from the yard were invited to curate the public areas. As founding partner Robert Finger describes it, Dock 72 is only the latest project to escalate the included amenities as developers try to capture Class A office space tenants; high-value tech employees in this case. Once the next phase of the Navy Yard’s expansion is complete, Dock 72 will link up with a suite of planned waterfront amenities surrounding the office core.
