The Glorious Green Future Of Brighton Beach
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSwmUBCjmXY?rel=0]
Last September, we reported on the ‘Bright N’ Green’ environmental building project that was being constructed at 67 Brighton 1st Lane. The project, designed and led by architect Robert Scarano, was met with some controversy due to Scarano’s checkered past with the Department of Buildings, where he was found to be deliberately submitting falsified or misleading paperwork.
Putting questions of Scarano’s dealings with the city aside, the video above, provided by Brooklyn Independent Televsion, presents the seemingly amazing progress Scarano has made on his futuristic six-unit Brighton Beach building.
Producer Charlie Hoxie visited Scarano’s project and got to the bottom of what compelled the architect to construct this dwelling in Brighton Beach and what his full vision of the future of architecture entails.
“I think that people now going back to repairing and rebuilding after the storm really need to understand that they can’t go back to putting things in the old way. They need to put things in a way that will mitigate damages in the future, and and actually prevent damages,” Scarano, a Brighton Beach native, told BIT.
Amazingly, according to Scarano, it was the only building in the neighborhood unaffected by Sandy.
“We had actually no water infiltration at any one of the windows and doors in this building,” he said.
The building will also produce all its own electricity via solar panels and wind turbines.
Scarano and his team had the foresight to raise his building four inches over the recommended 100-year flood level building code requirement. The difference such an elevation makes is evident when Scarano points out the water line left by Superstorm Sandy, well above the city’s standard, but well below his own.
“I believe the storm was a wake-up call for a lot of people, the city especially,” he said. “If anything good came out of Sandy, it will be that it accelerated the discussion by probably at least five to 10 years.”
