The Mercury Store: Adaptive Reuse Project

Energy and sustainability, Middle Density, Project, Urban Paradigms

Adaptive reuse, Carbon footprint, Construction, Cross Laminated Timber, Flexibility, Global Awareness, Low impact, Natural Lighting, New York, Power of materiality, Project, Spatiality, Sustainable Development, Texture, Timber, Transformation, USA, Waste management

Location: New York, USA
Area: 1,180 m2
Photography: Naho Kubota

Brooklyn-based architectural practice CO Adaptive Architecture has transformed a 12,700SF former metal foundry, previously used as offices, into The Mercury Store, a new light-filled developmental space for theater artists. This adaptive reuse project updates and opens the original double A-frame, timber-and-brick building by repurposing removed elements as the basis for new architectural features. Wood is the project’s dominant material: old longleaf pine timber is reconstituted, while new insertions are made from cross-laminated timber (CLT), an innovative product that has a negative carbon footprint compared to carbon-emitting materials like steel and concrete, therefore meeting CO Adaptive’s low-carbon design commitment. The project represents the first use of CLT in a fully commercial building in New York City.