Manhattan Districts 1/2/5 Garage

The Manhattan 125 Garage by Dattner Architects placed in the AIA COTE Top Ten and is a great example of the concept of sustainability being applied to a civic building who's program is fairly mundane and forgettable. The client is the New York Department of Sanitation and houses municipal vehicle maintenance garages. Normally this would be a cut and dry design, similar to all other vehicle maintenance garages in the city. Dattner did a commendable job intertwining sustainability, design, attention to employee's health, and attention to the urban context. 

The garage has a 1.5 acre green roof (pictured below) that actually does several useful things for the building and surrounding ecosystem, unlike your classic bolt-on "green roof" as a half-hearted attempt at "sustainability." It reduces the heat island effect of the building (which is very common in New York), provides food to local birds, and simply enhances the buildings thermal performance. The green roof harvests stormwater, and in turn that water is used as gray water throughout the building, used for washing the trucks.

It would be nice to see more cut-and-dry civic buildings designed with this level of sustainability in mind. Clemson desperately needs a second parking garage downtown, maybe a quick one-month studio project in a Fluid Studio here could create some proposals and catch the city of Clemson's interest.

The garage

Green roof