Inhabiting the in-between

“I take another peek up and down the corridor. For a loony bin, it’s awful quiet. Most rooms have double doors. The outside door only has a small glass window so you can look in at the crazies; the inside door has bars. I’m sitting in the space between the two doors.” A threshold is formally defined as a point of entry. In the Brooklyn Navy Yard the threshold, it’s beginning, is established by a perimeter wall that runs along it’s boundary with the city. However, this entry point is, ironically, its biggest barrier with the city. We perceive a space that is supposed to be a gateway as a barrier that disconnects the Navy Yard from the city and limits the connection of the city to the Navy Yard. The project works towards addressing the issue of the isolation of the Navy Yard from the city by reassessing how the threshold can be interpreted not as an edge or barrier but rather as a functional in-between space that interacts with both sides. The design intention was to improve the quality of the surrounding area and reconnect the city by targeting people of all ages and backgrounds through the introduction of music into the neighbourhood, thus the establishment of a Music Campus alongside community spaces. The design aims to preserve the essence of the wall, firstly for its historical significance and secondly for the privacy it provides for existing tenants of the Yard, while having it serve simultaneously as an edge and a buffer. Nonetheless, while a barrier is maintained, breaks are created in certain points of the “wall” to infiltrate into areas of the Yard making the waterfront more accessible by city users.