New Lab, a first-of-its-kind center for advanced, hardware-centric technology, opened at the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s Green Manufacturing Center last week.
Encompassing 84,000 s/f, New Lab is “an ecosystem of shared resources where entrepreneurs, engineers, designers, and academics — in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and connected devices — can take their ideas from concept to prototype to production all under one roof,ˮ according to a press release from the city.
David Belt and Scott Cohen, the founders of New Lab, were joined by Brooklyn Navy Yard President & CEO David Ehrenberg and leaders from the city and state government to mark the opening.
New Lab anchors the 250,000 s/f Green Manufacturing Center. The idea for the venture came in response to a lack of central resources for people building advanced hardware products and companies in New York City.
New Lab’s interdisciplinary space will serve as the professional base for 350 innovative people, representing up to 50 independent companies.
Inaugural New Lab member companies include Honeybee Robotics, which develops advanced robotic systems for challenging environments in space, on Earth, and inside the human body; StrongArm Technologies, which creates products that improve the safety and performance for active workers; and Nanotronics Imaging, which makes the invisible visible at an atomic level through nano-microscopes.
The opening of New Lab restores landmark Building 128 — the former epicenter of America’s shipbuilding industry, built in 1902 — to its original purpose as a hub of state-of-the-art manufacturing.
Belt’s development company, Macro Sea, oversaw and executed the design for the space. Working alongside its sister management company, DBI, with Marvel Architects as the architect of record, Macro Sea — led by Belt, Design Director Nicko Elliott, and their small team — fostered the project from the idea’s inception down to prototyping and building custom furniture for the space.
“Our vision is that New Lab will be a supportive and collaborative working environment for designers, engineers, and entrepreneurs—people trying to accomplish really hard things—not in Silicon Valley or at MIT but right here in Brooklyn,” New Lab co-founder Scott Cohen said. “Our hope is that New Lab will be a place where companies can engage in, and help define, the future of technology, hardware, and manufacturing.”
