Clearly, what Brooklyn has been missing is a $150,000 man-made lake.
One evening last month, Robert Elmes, the founder of the Galapagos Art Space, which is moving to a new home in Dumbo, surveyed the hole carved out of his new outpost and explained just how one goes about building an indoor body of water.
Elmes’ former club—which opened in Williamsburg in 1995, pioneering the art, music and social scene there—housed a 300-square-foot pond that was its centerpiece.
Now, after multiple rent increases, Elmes is moving the venture to Dumbo and constructing a new space of 10,000 square feet with a 1,600-square-foot “lake.”
Elmes is designing the new moat with architect Tony Daniels.
While Elmes’ Williamsburg pond became an attraction for Galapagos, maintaining it was not easy, he said, adding that he learned from that pond what not to do.
The former pool sat in a fiberglass coating over a wooden floor. But when the fiberglass cracked (which it did regularly), it gave the water a pathway to seep out and rot the wood.
This time, the design is different, and so is his space, which is in a former horse stable at 16 Main Street. To create the pool’s foundation, contractors poured a cement floor that was covered with a layer of epoxy to ensure that no water can get into the cement.
“From a design perspective, it’s fairly straightforward,” said Daniels, whose firm Cycle specializes in environmentally-efficient design.
Indoor water displays are nothing new in the city; they have become even more popular since feng shui design has come into vogue. In fact, the use of running water to tap into the “energy flow” of a space has given rise to an industry of mini-fountains and indoor “water walls.”
For example, the Platinum, a condo building on West 46th Street in Times Square, has a moat in its lobby. In May, The Real Deal reported that the moving waterway rings the 2,500-square-foot-lobby, creating a mini-island.
At Galapagos, Daniels and Elmes said they devised an environmentally efficient system of pumps and pipes to keep the water moving slowly in a way that will prevent dust from collecting on its surface.
Daniels said one of the challenges is giving the six-inch-deep pool the appearance of greater depth. He said that was done by having the walls and lights slip seamlessly into the pond. The idea is that when patrons see tall walls and lights reflecting in water, it creates the illusion that the water goes down almost as far as the walls go up.
There will be seating on top of the lake, where guests will walk to “floating” pods on a winding, quarter-inch-wide, diamond steel path that will be raised on metal legs.
Elmes, who is in his early 40s, migrated to New York City from his native Vancouver to immerse himself in a more diverse arts scene.
He worries that the rising cost of real estate is driving away the city’s artists. He said it almost took him, and Galapagos, to Berlin—but then the real estate developers David and Jed Walentas offered him a deal in Dumbo.