Portfolio: Sims Municipal Recycling Facility

Sims Municipal Recycling Facility opened late in 2013 on the industrial waterfront in Sunset Park. Designed by Selldorf Architects, it consolidates city recycling efforts and allows recyclables to arrive by barge rather than truck. An education center, not yet complete, will also introduce New York City schoolchildren to environmentalism. (It was amusing, on the day of our visit, to hear children still in diapers complain about the strong smell of diapers in the Wall-E-like storage hangars.) I especially liked some of the design with recycling: tables in the education center, and glistening beds of tumbled glass, typically used as concrete aggregate, out front. My kids put handfuls in their pockets as a souvenir. To forstall an obvious question: Yes, it is on the waterfront, but the under-construction facility weathered Hurricane Sandy with feet to spare. Michael Kimmelman reviewed the building here.

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