DKLB BKLN, 80 DeKalb Avenue: Review and Ratings

Review of 80 DeKalb Avenue by Carter Horsley

This 34-story apartment tower at 80 DeKalb Avenue in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn is one of the best looking in the city.

Its stepped form presents a handsome, very nicely proportioned silhouette and its shiny metal façade panels give it a stream-lined appearance that is nicely between the extremes of Deconstructivist designs and the simplistic, rectilinearity of conventional post-war modern architecture.

It was designed by Costas Kondylis & Partners, one of the city's most prolific high-rise residential architects and it is one of his very best designs.

The building is known as DKLB BKLN, a name/logo snazzy enough for its architecture whose serrated façades at its base contrast dramatically with the sharp, ship-shape appearance of the setback tower. The overall visual effect is of a superbly crafted, futuristic battleship.

The fenestration patterns on its long façades conjure vertical, floating fuel gauges. Each of the long façades have 6 "indentations," three of which have two large vertical glass elements. The three large glass elements are stepped in relation to each other.

The developer is Forest City Ratner who commissioned Frank O. Gehry to design the enormous and controversial Atlantic Yards project nearby and the very tall rental apartment and public school skyscraper at 8 Spruce Street in Lower Manhattan. Mr. Gehry, who is widely regarded as the world's best architect, was subsequently replaced at Atlantic Yards but the stainless-steel rippling façades of the Manhattan skyscraper are among the finest and most exotic in the city and the only competition for those on this tower.

While Mr. Kondylis is not as internationally well-known as Jean Nouvel, Christian de Portzamparc and Mr. Gehry, this tower has a "snap" and "pop" that can hold its own with the best of the work of Mr. Gehry, Jean Nouvel and Christian de Portzamparc, the three architectural "superstars" of this millennium in the city. The tower is not as dramatic as the "torn" screen of the new academic building at Cooper Union in the East Village by Morphosis, but is no less elegant.

It has 292 market-rate rentals and 73 "affordable" units and is the first "80/20" development in Brooklyn financed with bonds issued by the New York State Housing Finance Agency. It received $109.5 million in tax-exempt bonds and $27.5 million in taxable bonds.

Apartments have washers and dryers, maple wood floors, 9 to 11-foot ceilings, open kitchens with Japanese elm cabinetry and stainless steel appliances.

The building has a 24-hour attended lobby, a fitness center, valet parking, a residents' lounge with a fireplace, library and kitchen, a bicycle room. It is close to several subway lines and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The amenity spaces have been designed by Della Valle Bernheimer.

Some apartments have terraces.

The site was once occupied by the Barton Candy factory.

The building is also known as 2-8 Rockwell Place and 463-9 Hudson Avenue.