by oma transforms brooklyn’s industrial waterfront
The latest addition to the brooklyn facing the sea has taken shape with Eagle + West, a pair of stepped towers with architecture of OMA. The two buildings are accompanied by a smaller building that rises seven stories and are surrounded by stunning new waterfront landscaping from James Corner Field Operations. In total, the project introduces 600,000 square feet of accommodation — with 745 total units both at market price and affordable. Additionally, the project creates 30,000 square feet of new public space for the growing neighborhood.
The project marks Greenpoint’s Eagle Street and Dupont Street, which have extended through the site to the East River. This area is now open to the public in the form of a new waterfront plaza and esplanade. The residential towers and street-level interventions together signal the transformation of the neighborhood’s post-industrial edge, extending Brooklyn’s continually open and accessible waterfront. The project had culminated in May 2021; check out previous designboom coverage here.
image © John Cole
eagle + west marks the threshold of brooklyn and queens
Located at the northernmost tip of Brooklyn at the junction of an angled shoreline of the East River, the primary grid of Greenpoint, and the secondary grid that runs perpendicular to Newton Creek, Eagle + West activates a new articulation point between Brooklyn and Queens, with a panoramic orientation to the Manhattan skyline.
‘Eagle + West reflects the collective ambition, with Brookfield, Park Tower Group and design-build teams, to create a platform for living that connects past and future, indoors and outdoors, urban and coastal living.,’ said Jason Long, partner at OMA. ‘Complementary sisters, the two towers create an ever-changing presence that engages both the neighborhood and the waterfront. It will be exciting to see the project grow as people start to make it their home..’
image © Jason O’Rear
the two towers in dialogue
OMA Architects strategically shape Brooklyn’s two Eagle + West towers by expanding and contracting the forms to achieve maximum efficiency within each. They lean in and out of each other. The forty-story tower widens as it rises, maximizing views and creating a dramatic face of the neighborhood. The thirty-story oar flares toward the ground to face the waterfront esplanade. Moving terraces and overhangs emphatically unite the two, a distinct pair intimately connected by the void between them.
The staggering divides the towers into blocks of seven to eight stories that echo the scale of neighboring buildings. The façade reinforces this subdivision, borrowing the language of tile siding common to Greenpoint townhouses. A grid of precast concrete panels is carved by angled planes that alternate their orientation block by block, a dynamic relief that reacts to the movement of the sun.
image © Ossip van Duivenbode
42,000 square feet of services are distributed to form a loop at the heart of the complex. Two levels of open-air terraces mimic the shifting forms of the towers, sloping to cut into the courtyard and open onto the promenade. Above them, a service bridge with views of the Manhattan skyline links the two towers.
image © Jason O’Rear 
image © Ossip van Duivenbode
