Justice

There's More Than History at Stake for NYC's First Pre-Fab High-Rise

B2 Bklyn breaks ground this morning at Atlantic Yards. A lot is riding on whether it works.
SHoP Architects

The Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn has gone through the usual tortured process of redevelopment in New York City, and the most recent excitement has been the opening of the $1 billion Barclays Center, home of the now Brooklyn (formerly New Jersey) Nets. But there’s another component of the massive project that is most worthy of attention for what it says about state-of-the-art housing construction: the world’s tallest modular building.

The groundbreaking for B2 Bklyn, a 32-story residential tower, is set for this morning, with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz on hand alongside the development team, led by Forest City Enterprises and Skanska. What makes it interesting is that the building is almost entirely pre-fabricated. The apartments will be manufactured about a mile away, driven to the site on flatbed trucks, and stacked on top of each other, not unlike how my son builds Legos.