This morning, while walking down Union Square i noticed the new tall and slim tower at One Madison Park, currently under construction. The developer of this tower, Slazer Enterprises, is also working on an adjacent project with OMA, which resulted on their first residential tower in New York, which was unveiled yesterday.
Located at at 23 East 22nd St, the 335 ft (107 m) tall mid-rise tower -which you can see on the second plane behind One Madison Park at the rendering- features an innovative design when it comes to towers, an evolution of the OMA studies on new high rise designs. The building cantilevers 30 feet over its neighbor, a form that “provides a number of unexpected moments that appear at each step – balconies at the upper part of the building and floor windows at the lower part — providing a variety of unit types and features throughout the building”, in words of Rem Koolhaas.
This project is led by Rem and Shohei Shigematsu, a partner at OMA currently in charge of OMA NY. When we visited their office back in March to interview Shohei (an interview i recommend you to watch), we saw a lot of experimentation around new forms for towers, such at the Jersey City project and the Bicentennial Tower. I bet OMA will surprise us in the future with more innovative tall building designs.
