Urban Artifact

Architecture of Residue

Undergraduate Thesis
Brooklyn, NY.
Year 5
Fall 2024 + Spring 2025
Beth Weinstein + Clare Robinson

This proposal imagines a near future where cities begin to reckon with their forgotten coastlines, zones once dominated by industry and now defined by abandonment marred with the artifacts that represent fragments of past utility. These coastlines, are often relegated to the periphery of urban attention. They however, hold immense potential as spaces for architectural and cultural reinvention. The project seeks to reframe these landscapes not as voids or scars, but as new artifacts, rich with the layers of past and present.

Framing the Narrative
At the core of this proposal is a study of residue and artifact. Residue, as defined in the English Dictionary, is “a small amount of something that remains after the main part has gone, been taken, or used.” It refers to the overlooked or leftover, the faint marks that signal what once was. In parallel, Aldo Rossi’s concept of the Urban Artifact speaks to the endurance of architectural forms that persist in a city over time those structures and spaces that, regardless of original function, become vessels of collective memory.

These two terms, residue and urban artifact, serve as the project’s conceptual pillars. Through the lens of their definitions, the project undertakes a forensic examination of a series of abandoned or neglected structures, uncovering traces of past use, social activity, and architectural logic through drawing. Using photographic documentation, the research began with a city-wide exploration of residual processes in the built environment. A key observation was the phenomenon of construction site barriers re-purposed as informal ad space. Posters are applied, torn away, and layered again, creating accidental collages, visual archives of exposure, erasure, and time.

Mapping

The study of this residual condition evolved into an interest on a more urban scale. This map consists of the area of interest that spans from the Brooklyn Navy Yard to the Brooklyn Army Terminal self-titled “Post-Industrial Coastline of Brooklyn”. Through this mapping exersize, 6 buildings were selected for their latent potentials.

Red Hook Silos Sports + Entertainment Facility
Facilities:

Red Hook Recreation Center
Facilities:

Original Ground Plan
Ground Plan
Level 2 Plan
Level 3 Plan
Level 4 Plan
Level 5 Plan
Level 6 Plan
Roof Plan
Ground Plan
Roof Plan

This fascination with marks of use, neglect, and reinvention directly informed the design strategy. The proposal intentionally engages with the architectural DNA of what already exists. It draws from the geometries, material rhythms, and structural logic of existing buildings, recognizing their latent order, and reinterprets them through a contemporary lens.

The intervention does not seek to erase or overwrite, but to amplify and translate the stories embedded in the site’s form. At multiple scales, urban, architectural, and material, the project interrogates how space can carry memory forward. Spatial sequences are informed by remnants of circulation paths. Material choices echo the textures and patinas of decay and weathering. Fragments of existing walls are not demolished but re-stitched into new frameworks, creating continuity between past and future.

Ultimately, this proposal acts as a negotiation between permanence and transformation. It is a meditation on the afterlives of buildings, the poetry of urban residue, and the role of architecture in shaping narratives of renewal. By treating the post-industrial coastline as both a canvas and an archive, the project offers a model for urban repair that values what remains not just as a constraint, but as a generative force for design.

Models

Photos

Beam me up scotty!