Jane's Carousel

Jean Nouvel's acrylic shed for an antique carousel on the Brooklyn waterfront is a lustrous gift to the city.

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As brooding skies beckon a timid autumn moonlight by the East River a jewel sparkles, horses dance and children play. Jane's Carousel, a restored former amusement park ride encased in a pristine acrylic box designed by Atelier Jean Nouvel, occupies a resplendent setting at the redeveloped Brooklyn Bridge Park, in the DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) neighborhood. The carousel represents a gesture, a gift to the city, from its financiers and developers David and Jane Walentas. What started out as a theme park attraction in Youngstown, Ohio almost a century ago has since become a labor of love—following its salvation from the dilapidated Idaro Park in 1984—now proudly provides the foreground to a Manhattan backdrop.

The carousel, bought by the Walentases in its entirety at auction, was manufactured in 1922 by the then-largest roller-coaster manufacturer in the world, the Philadelphia Toboggan Company. Named in sequence of manufacture, PTC #61 was originally located in the Idora Park before fire damage saw the foreclosure of the theme park. Upon purchase in 1984, Jane Walentas began restoration of the carousel in her DUMBO warehouse. After decades of painstaking restoration, the carousel was finally opened to the public on September 16, 2011 and serves as a focal point for the riverside site owned by the Walentases. The bulk of the Walentas's development has been in this part of Brooklyn, since David purchased two million square feet in 1983 for $12 million.

Top: Jane’s Carousel, Brooklyn Bridge Park, 2011. Rendering courtesy Atelier Jean Nouvel.<br />Above: Jane’s Carousel, Brooklyn Bridge Park, 2011, Atelier Jean Nouvel. Photograph by Dan Clifford. — Top: Jane’s Carousel, Brooklyn Bridge Park, 2011. Rendering courtesy Atelier Jean Nouvel.
Above: Jane’s Carousel, Brooklyn Bridge Park, 2011, Atelier Jean Nouvel. Photograph by Dan Clifford.

Upon the closure of Brooklyn's cargo operations in 1984, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey began the search for commercial purchasers for its stretch of piers. It was David Walentas who had the foresight to pinpoint the site's potential as a valuable public resource. After fourteen years of delay, the Downtown Brooklyn Waterfront Local Development Corporation was formed with the task of providing the public planning process for Brooklyn Bridge Park. Finally with the introduction of the September 2000 Illustrative Master Plan, David Walentas began negotiations for the design team to incorporate the carousal as the centerpiece of the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park.

Interior, Jane’s Carousel, Brooklyn Bridge Park, 2011, Atelier Jean Nouvel. Photograph by Dan Clifford.

The site of the carousel, once an area teeming with industrial activity, lapsed into a state of dereliction until the recent eighty-five acre redevelopment initiative of Brooklyn Bridge Park waterfront. As part of the PlaNYC and Vision 2020 Mayoral agendas, the city's waterfronts have become a focus of attention. Maybe as a force of habit, New Yorkers have neglected and turned their backs upon the waterfront, and only recently has the city seen its social, economic and ecological potential. Throughout all five boroughs there is a conscious effort to reclaim and restore coastal ecosystems and underutilized area; one such location is Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park, home to the carousel. The former theme park ride plays an integral role in this broader initiative by becoming a social activator of the previously derelict urban fabric.

It is still a little ambiguous whether the carousel, star architect and precise location collude to create an act of pure ostentation or a pure act of giving.

Skylight/ceiling, Jane’s Carousel, Brooklyn Bridge Park, 2011, Atelier Jean Nouvel. Photograph by Michael Holt.

Precious artifacts and antiquated novelties require display cases that enable preservation and do not hinder spectacle. As such the task of exhibiting the carousel was afforded to the Walentas's architect of choice, the Pritzker Prize-winning French designer Jean Nouvel. An architect famed for his innovative use of advanced glazing systems and facade treatments, Nouvel presents a design that remains unobtrusive to the main attraction. The design provides a 72ft x 72ft clear cast acrylic panel and steel-frame box measuring 26ft in height. The improbably large spanning acrylic panels derive from a manufacturer in Colorado; the full-height, fully operable accordion-style doors were formed in Switzerland; and, the steel supporting structure was prefabricated in Canada. Its cosmopolitan agglomeration makes it wholly New York. The total cost of construction was US $9 million, a remarkable figure considering its formal simplicity, but a justifiable amount when considering the scale of the encasement's panel system, minimal structure and radial, flat-pitch skylight. The figure accounts for nothing less than a lavish, somewhat exorbitant, gift to the city. The cost is offset by the grandeur of the civic benefit, and this expenditure is reflected back onto its patron and namesake, Jane Walentas.

Bird’s eye view, Jane’s Carousel, Brooklyn Bridge Park, 2011. Rendering courtesy Atelier Jean Nouvel.

When spending such a substantial amount on what is ostensibly a shed built to protect, it transforms the project into a magnificent urban gesture. Nouvel's design provides majesty, yet achieving it through a structure that is entirely appropriate of both its context and usage. It is still a little ambiguous whether the carousel, star architect and precise location collude to create an act of pure ostentation or a pure act of giving. Nevertheless, it is a gleaming structure and simultaneously disappears in reflection and announces its presence in projection. In daylight, the expansive acrylic walls disappear from sight, allowing the carousel to take center stage as the object of spectacle. However, as darkness descends and the carousel closes for the day, the building stakes a claim at awe-inspiring amusement and bewilderment. In a haunting, almost menacing manner, projected images of horses adorn the structure. The silhouettes should cast an eerily, somewhat ethereal appearance. At the time of writing, however, there have been teething problems with the projection equipment, so such effects are only prevalent in Nouvel's renderings. Whether the projections become the feature they were designed to achieve is beside the point, it is the effervescent simplicity of form and innovative material usage that really magnifies the carousel, with no need for pyrotechnics or other such paraphernalia.

Facade, Cartier Foundation, Paris, Atelier Jean Nouvel. Photograph by Kei Koyama.

Reflecting back on other projects, Nouvel appears to alternate his use of glazing systems as a device to either provide the illusion of disappearance or the confusion of a multiplicity of realities. For example, Cartier Foundation, Paris (1994): the glazing screen that spatially offsets the building from the boulevard also distorts the viewer's perception through the repetition of the reflection of the tree on the screen; stark example of a glazing system that builds a barrier through reflection. This notion is carried forward in the 100 Eleventh Avenue residential project in New York. When viewed from the renowned High Line, the curtain wall glazing system juts out at the building's top floor. It has programmatic reasons of providing shelter for penthouse balconies, but it also operates on the level of the illusory—the seeming three-dimensional facade is revealed as a flat, vertical plane. It is then interesting to consider the use of acrylic at Jane's Carousel. The project aims to be intentionally inconspicuous. The two fully operable doors are designed to provide an openness that never takes the limelight away from the attraction. But just as the glazing in previous works result in buildings that reflect their context–and as such blending into their environment by becoming visual blockades–the carousel project shows a sleight of hand through a disappearing act of the highest order.

Facade details, 100 Eleventh Avenue, New York, Atelier Jean Nouvel. Photographs by Michael Holt.

As DUMBO continues its transformation and gentrification, the former industrial heartland will forever bear the marks of its industrial heritage through its warehouses revamped as loft apartments and piers reconfigured into lush open spaces and parks. Nouvel may well label the project a bijou or jewel, but would a better expression not be a pearl? The pearl is regarded as a precious object, a hidden beauty clasped within a robust, rugged exterior. The internal face of its shell liquefies colors like petrol in a puddle, while inside the pearl glistens. The carousel and encasement are the pearl, set within its robust, rugged context. Similarly, the same analogy applies: Jane's Carousel safely rests under the auspices of Nouvel's acrylic shell as it shelters the historic, prized possession.

Facade, Jane’s Carousel, Brooklyn Bridge Park, 2011, Atelier Jean Nouvel. Photograph by Mazdak Jafarian.

Jane’s Carousel, Brooklyn Bridge Park, 2011, Atelier Jean Nouvel. Photograph by Dan Clifford.

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Jane's Carousel

Jean Nouvel's acrylic shed for an antique carousel on the Brooklyn waterfront is a lustrous gift to the city.

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"Less, but better", the "necessary" project at Agorà Design

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