Prefab Towers at Atlantic Yards: Will They Look Good?

Forest City Ratner and architect house SHoP are still working to make prefabricated towers a cost-saving reality at Atlantic Yards, but critics question whether prefab buildings can save money while still looking good, according to The Real Deal.

The report looks at B2, the first of three residential high-rise buildings that will be built at the corner of Dean Street, Sixth Avenue and Flatbush Avenue. B2 will contain 350 of the development’s 1,500 units, says The Real Deal, and at 32 stories, will be the tallest prefab structure ever built.

The real estate paper wonders if, despite and the achievement of creating the tallest prefab building, if B2 will “look like real architecture, or like something that’s just rolled out of one of the recently unveiled 3-D printers,” arguing that the building’s “severe geometry” may look too stark against the curves of the Barclays Center arena.

The Real Deal also believes that Brooklyn is too good for buildings that look like corners were cut in order to save money, adding, “value engineering is the besetting sin of architecture in the five boroughs.”

Design perspective notwithstanding, the idea of prefab buildings came under fire last March, when plans for modular construction at the Atlantic Yards site was announced, and on the site.

“We understood that there would be a certain number of jobs generated by this project that would in turn support the local economy. Clearly farming out modular housing does not do any of those things,” Richard Weiss, a spokesman for Construction & General Building Laborers’ Local 79, told Patch in March.