THE GARAGE | INDUSTRY CITY

Industrial Edge Meets High-Tech Precision in The Garage’s New Studio.

Year: 2021

Location: Industry City, Brooklyn, New York

Project Team: AE Superlab | Studio BEDA | JTC Associates

The Garage - Industry City is a 15,000 sq.ft. studio and video production facility for The Garage Inc., a world-renowned Visual Engineering/Tabletop Production Studio.

Central to the operations of the studio are a growing stable of industrial scale high-speed, high-precision robotic arms. For their new studio and production space in Brooklyn’s Industry City, the design team drew inspiration from the industrial character of the existing building as well as the precision engineering of the robotic technology utilized by The Garage. The design embraces the raw utilitarianism of the warehouse structure while introducing precisely articulated glass and steel functional volumes and interventions. Working within a well-defined budget, the design team chose to focus much of the available resources on a number of key, high impact zones while carefully coordinating the structural and HVAC systems to reflect the industrial feel of Industry City.

The programmatically complex space is organized around two central free-standing volumes which serve to define the boundary between office and production zones to the north and the two large flexible studios to the south without interrupting the overall spatial and visual continuity. The strategic positioning of the volumes allows for the required office program while providing ample space for the movement of the large robotic rigs used in the motion shoots within the studio spaces. These volumes hold the post-production suite, prop storage, and serve as a space for clients to be directly adjacent to the work happening within the studios. The volumes present as high-tech sculptural objects wrapped in full height uninterrupted curved glass and custom high gloss curved black lacquer panels. Their ceilings are discreetly suspended from the existing exposed structure above and appear to levitate lightly over the conference/client rooms.

Other key elements include custom millwork throughout; twin parallel light-tracers that converge and diverge as they wind their way through the space, illuminating and defining the primary circulation corridor, a full commercial kitchen; and a fully insulated editing/color suite. A pair of custom 700 lb. 9x9 ft black lacquer center pivot doors function as movable partitions between public, production, and studio zones, and allow the users to visually and functionally transform the space with a single light touch.