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BEHOLD: Greenpoint's Enormous New Restaurant / Co-Working Space / Design Store / BMW MINI Startup Incubator
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Mar 29, 2016
Modified Mar 29, 2016
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nARCHITECTS / MINI
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Mar 29, 2016
Modified Mar 29, 2016
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Last year when we reported that the Brooklyn Night Bazaar was leaving its warehouse space off Wythe Avenue to make way for BMW, the arrival of a luxury auto dealership to the neighborhood made perfect, if grim, sense. But this is the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront district of 2016, where reason is as twisted as the lurid colors of a rainbow bagel. In fact, the BMW-owned MINI is building a 23,000 square-foot restaurant / retail design store / co-working space that the company hopes will become a "hotbed for future ideas and innovation."
It's called Amalgamated Drawing Office, which is "an homage to the team that designed the first MINI," according to Nate Pinsley, ADO's managing director. The warehouse's renovations are being designed by nARCHITECTS and ADO is scheduled to open late this summer.
On a recent tour of the construction site, located where Wythe becomes Norman Avenue at Banker Street, Pinsley told reporters that there won't be any indication that a car company is running the show. "It's part of our exploration of new products and services that improve urban life," he said. "It's a non-automotive space."
The "world class" restaurant will serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and sits next to a "free space" open to the public with tables and free Wi-Fi.
"Better than a coffee shop—like, but better," Pinsley says.
The retail portion will sell "goods from a bunch of different categories with the particular curation of high caliber design," Pinsley told us. We asked what this meant.
"There isn't one answer to what design is, which is interesting to us," he explained, noting that items will have different price tiers to reflect the "showstoppers" as well as "funky necessities."
Three classrooms towards the back of the space will offer varying degrees of public workshops; the northeast corner will house a coworking space available to rent by the day, week, month, or year, complete with 3-D printers and laser cutters.
The northwest corner will house Urban-X, MINI's "startup accelerator program" that it created in a partnership with a venture capital firm in January. Sorry, Urb-Ex kids, your hobby is now synonymous with "new ways to leverage existing frameworks in a meaningful way." (Who'll be the first to Instagram an illicit photo from the construction site?)
"It's a source of innovative ideas and bringing together many different types of problem solvers and thinkers into one space," Pinsley says. "We think that it will really be a catalyst for new ideas—things that happen within the walls of this building will have never been thought of before."
We asked Pinsley if A/D/O wasn't just another amenity for the million-dollar condos a few blocks away.
"This space is for the local community and one that has existed for a long time," he replied, acknowledging that the Brooklyn Night Bazaar kiosks had become "beloved neighborhood institutions," something A/D/O would attempt to emulate.
"We chose the Greenpoint area because it has the heritage of industry and manufacturing and continues to have a really vibrant base of small businesses and fabricators and designers, which we want to join and enhance and bring together," Pinsley said.
Isn't their location just as associated with Williamsburg as it is Greenpoint?
"That's the same as with the epistemological debate over what design means," Pinsley replied. "We'll leave that for other people to debate."
Tagged
a few more expensive leather goods and maybe a shawl will fill that hole in yr heart
bmw
guess Vice executives will have to go to Bay Ridge to get their BMWs serviced
MINI
thank god a coworking space
original
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
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