The design of the 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge is a visual praise poem dedicated to Brooklyn's waterfront. Overlooking Brooklyn Bridge Park, the East River, and lower Manhattan, the aesthetic of the hotel draws inspiration from contemporary Brooklyn design culture, the history of the wharf that originally occupied the site and the natural coastal landscape as exemplified by the Park. The mission driven hotel is real green development with the hotel financing the creation of the extraordinary public park. INC drew the park directly into the hotel by opening up the entire ground floor visually to the exterior and blurring the lines between inside and out with greenery and natural materials evocative of the adjacent park landscape.

Identifying with contemporary Brooklyn design culture where beauty is the by-product of thoughtful solutions, practical applications and the usefulness of the well-crafted object, INC developed a site specific, purpose-built, made-to-last aesthetic driven by smart problem solving and an expressive use of materials with a layered, easygoing hand. Remnants of the wharf that once occupied the area can be found throughout the immediate neighborhood. Inspired by the great wooden lofts, docks, cleats, bollards, crates, platforms, hoists, ropes and racks that would have populated the wharf, INC developed informal, additive, assembled, seemingly ad hoc compositions of the stacked, racked, piled, placed and layered forms to create an aesthetic tied to its context.