At the intersection of Myrtle and Vanderbilt Avenues in Brooklyn, a restaurant and fish market sit on one side of Myrtle, while townhouses and an apartment building line Vanderbilt. Some of these buildings are made from brick, and most are neutral toned. But at the corner, one building is an outlier: It’s pink.
That pink building — on the site of a former gas station at 144 Vanderbilt Avenue in Fort Greene — is slated to be completed at the beginning of next year. The building’s rippled edges, stacked silhouette and varying height stand out in stark contrast to anything else nearby. Tankhouse, a Brooklyn-based developer, collaborated on the project, to be known as 144 Vanderbilt, with SO-IL, an architecture firm, and Ted Kane, the project’s architect of record.
Sam Alison-Mayne and Sebastian Mendez, the owners of Tankhouse, are aware of the reputation that developers have: They go into a neighborhood, build something and then leave. That’s why, Mr. Alison-Mayne said, they try to build in familiar neighborhoods, like their own. He lives nearby on Willoughby Avenue, and Mr. Mendez lives in Gowanus.
“It’s really tempting to think that you can develop anywhere,” said Mr. Mendez, who founded Tankhouse in 2013 with Mr. Alison-Mayne. “I think it’s a little difficult because you just don’t know where you are. You don’t know what’s going on, and you don’t know what the issues are.”
Their familiarity with the area extends to some members of the project’s team, most of whom live nearby. (The architects from SO-IL live on Adelphi Street, two streets over.)
Zoning restricted the building to eight stories on the Myrtle Avenue side and four stories on Vanderbilt Avenue, occupying almost 90,000 square feet.
The building’s atypical, cascading design translates to the residences, which will start at $1.95 million for a two-bedroom, with sales handled by Douglas Elliman. Out of 26 residences total, 21 have unique floor plans and range from two to four bedrooms. Each one has a private outdoor space.
At 144 Vanderbilt, communal corridors slice through the building from the street to the courtyard, connecting the inside and outside. The design is described as porous, which means that the building isn’t entirely enclosed from the environment, said Florian Idenburg, one of the principal architects at SO-IL.
The design is also meant to make it easy to run into your neighbors. Shared exterior corridors can be places to hang out or socialize, Mr. Mendez said. Mr. Alison-Mayne compared living in this building to living in a brownstone neighborhood, where slinging beers or having birthday parties on the stoop is the norm.
Residents will have over 11,000 square feet of private amenities, as well as retail space on the ground floor. Those working from home can take advantage of the co-working space and residents’ lounge. There will also be a gym, children’s playroom and a studio space tucked away in the garden, for meditation or yoga.
The building is fully electric and, according to the news release, it will be one of the first in the country to have a QAHV electric hot-water pump, which uses carbon dioxide as a refrigerant. Lush greenery and native plants, which will attract pollinators from nearby Fort Greene Park, will adorn garden spaces throughout the building.
But why pink? Some of the surrounding buildings in the area are brick, and pink is closest to the color of red brick, so it fit the context of the neighborhood, said Jing Liu, the other principal architect at SO-IL. The building is made from precast concrete, and pink pigment is added to the concrete mixture, helping to give the building its dusty pink hue.
“It’s not something that’s completely blending in, but we also didn’t want something like purple,” Mr. Idenburg said, with a laugh. “It needed to still have sort of a quality that in some way reminds you of a residential building.”
These interviews have been edited for clarity.
Sam Alison-Mayne, Tankhouse, owner and developer
One of the things that was always kind of bothering us about multifamily housing in New York City is how the privacy was ultimately so important in these projects that you destroyed all intimacy, essentially. And so you can walk down a hallway, and there could be 50 people living on your floor, all living a life, and you would have zero clue that there was a single beating heart anywhere on that floor, because you’re walking down and it’s just an empty corridor without any access or visual connections to life.
Sebastian Mendez, Tankhouse, owner and developer
This is probably the last large site in this neighborhood. You don’t see large sites, right? You see brownstones and small buildings. And we wanted to, obviously, be distinctive. This is a new project. Our job is not to imitate the past; we just look back to it to learn. But the idea was how do we build something that is of today, but that is relatable to the context in a way that is different but also sort of respectful?
Jing Liu, SO-IL, principal architect
It’s a very porous three-dimensional structure that you’re never really so far from the outside and never so far from the street. Even when you get inside your private unit, you’re still kind of open to the streets. All the circulation is exterior, no matter if you’re arriving in the elevator lobby or you’re arriving from the staircase, so all the circulation is just covered, protected exterior space.
Natalia Priwin, O-N-P, lighting designer
For the apartments, it’s kind of a cleaner look. And we also apply the same layers of low-level lighting, the flexibility for you to create your own home, and then also very low-glare fixtures. It’s smooth, and it also dims to warm, so it kind of has that tune-ability during the day that is beautiful.
Julia Watson, landscape architect
Bear in mind that you want the project to look full and to look beautiful and to look immersive and super experiential from Day 1. With that in mind, as a landscape designer, this project just gets better as you allow the ecosystems to evolve and to diversify, and to really take over the site.