Why the Floors Don’t Line Up at 420 Kent
On Brooklyn’s waterfront, three glass towers turn a simple apartment perk into an architectural puzzle: how do you give more people a corner?
At 420 Kent Avenue, the glass boxes seem to have slipped out of place. One projects beyond its neighbor; another retreats. Follow an edge upward and it disappears beneath an overhang, then reappears somewhere else. The buildings look restless, as though their apartments are rearranging themselves to get a better view.
That impression gets surprisingly close to the architectural idea. On this stretch of Brooklyn’s East River waterfront, ODA designed three residential towers around a question: could the corner apartment become the ordinary apartment? According to the firm, about 80 percent of the development’s 857 homes qualify as corner units. The irregular silhouette is the outward expression of that ambition. ODA’s project description
Where it is
420 Kent Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, on the South Williamsburg waterfront, south of the Williamsburg Bridge.
The address belongs to a larger waterfront transformation. This was the former Kedem winery site, where residential construction replaced an industrial use. By June 2017, Brownstoner was documenting the towers rising, with glass installation underway on the northern building. Spitzer Enterprises developed the complex, and Eran Chen’s ODA supplied its distinctive arrangement of projecting volumes. Brownstoner’s construction report
The problem with four corners
Imagine a rectangular apartment tower sliced horizontally. Its outline has four outside corners. Apartments occupying those positions can have windows facing two directions, while homes along the straight sides generally face outward in one direction.
Repeat that plan vertically and the same advantage repeats with it. A stack of corner apartments rises above each corner of the footprint. The architecture has established a hierarchy before anyone chooses finishes or furnishes a room.
A corner matters because it changes how a home meets the outside world. Two window orientations offer different sightlines and different relationships to daylight. They do not automatically guarantee an unobstructed panorama, but they give a room more than one direction to look.
On a waterfront site, that distinction becomes especially compelling. Here, the East River, Manhattan skyline and Williamsburg Bridge give the perimeter something worth turning toward. Brownstoner’s construction coverage explicitly connected the broken-up massing to the goal of increasing the number of apartments with corner windows. Brownstoner
The design problem is therefore easy to state and harder to solve: a rectangle has only four corners, so change the rectangle.
Making the perimeter work harder
The video’s explanation begins with a useful mental exercise. Divide the apartment arrangement into two sides. Push a group of homes beyond its neighbors, then mirror and offset the arrangement. Every step in the outline introduces another opportunity for an exposed corner.
Picture a straight row of boxes on a table. Slide one forward. Its side, previously hidden beside another box, becomes exposed. Slide another backward and the outline becomes more articulated. In an apartment plan, those exposed returns can become places for windows.
The vertical arrangement adds another layer. If every projection continued uninterrupted to the roof, the building would simply acquire a more complicated but consistent footprint. Changing the arrangement between levels lets projecting and recessed volumes exchange positions as the tower rises.
ODA describes its organizing method as two standard floor plans mirrored around a central axis. That is the discipline behind the apparent disorder: a limited architectural vocabulary produces a much more varied exterior. ODA
A recess can also create an outdoor opportunity. Where the enclosed volume above pulls back, the roof below can become a terrace. In a 2020 interview, Chen told The Architect’s Newspaper that the stacked configurations produced terraces for roughly 30 percent of the apartments. The publication also reported cantilevers reaching 15 feet. The Architect’s Newspaper
The result still needs a qualification: most apartments have corners, rather than every apartment. And having a corner window describes a spatial condition, not a promise that every home receives the same view.
Someone has to hold up the boxes
A projecting apartment cannot be treated like a drawer pulled out of a cabinet. Its weight must travel back into the structure, even where the facade below steps away.
McLaren Engineering Group, the project’s engineer, describes diagonal struts and hanging columns supporting the cantilevered bays. The struts transfer the projecting loads back into the building. Changing floor plans also complicated the placement of columns and the effort to keep floor slabs shallow. Transfer girders and walking columns helped accommodate those shifts, while the central concrete core provided lateral restraint. McLaren’s engineering account
The glass enclosure had its own challenges. The Architect’s Newspaper reported that higher wind loads at corners required internal reinforcement in some vertical mullions. The many transitions between projecting and recessed areas also demanded air and water testing. More corners meant more demanding junctions to resolve. The Architect’s Newspaper
The waterfront beneath the view
The river shapes the project below ground, too. McLaren describes a pressure slab beneath the parking basement designed to resist hydrostatic forces during storm surge, supported by steel pipe piles extending to competent rock. Its work also included the bulkhead and a 40-foot-wide waterfront walkway. The setting that supplies the views brings structural and shoreline obligations with it. McLaren
The former industrial property also required environmental work. Langan provided Brownfield Cleanup Program services, including investigations and remediation, and designed two systems beneath the building slabs to mitigate vapor intrusion. That less visible work is another part of converting a waterfront industrial site into housing. Langan’s project account
Seen from outside, 420 Kent is an arrangement of reflections, ledges and deep cuts. Its most legible architectural move begins inside, with the relationship between an apartment and its windows. Trace those misaligned edges again and the silhouette becomes easier to read: each shift is another attempt to give a home a second direction to face.
Sources
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