The Children’s Museum of Manhattan has announced that it will renovate an abandoned church off of Central Park in New York City. Designed by architecture firm FXCollaborative and design studio Local Projects, the new museum building enables CMOM to meet increased demand for its program and resources, and marks CMOM’s first expansion in over 40 years. The project aims to engage and inspire New York City’s youngest citizens.
Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) completed One Vanderbilt, the tallest office tower in Midtown Manhattan. Part of New York City’s East Midtown Rezoning, the highrise explores the future of the central business district, “with public realm benefits, carefully crafted materiality, and a tapered form that establishes a striking skyline presence”.
The New York City Planning Commission approved unanimously the design for 550 Madison Garden created by Snøhetta. The project that re-imagines the privately-owned public space will move forward, after also having received, earlier on, the approval from Manhattan Community Board.
Courtesy of JDS Development Group/ 111 West 57th Street
Centered over Central Park in Midtown Manhattan, 111 West 57th Street, the second tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere has topped out at 1,428 feet. Designed by SHoP Architects with interior architecture by Studio Sofield, the tower is considered the most slender skyscraper in the world.
The island of Manhattan is one of the most recognizable urban centers in the world. For the past four hundred years, the island that so many New Yorkers call home has changed and evolved depending on the needs of its inhabitants – today totaling over 8 million.
https://www.archdaily.com/918446/watch-manhattan-grow-over-400-yearsNiall Patrick Walsh
Archimatika has designed a modern high rise residential scheme for Manhattan. “The Snail” prioritizes slow living in the high-paced metropolis, providing residential amenities usually lacking in typical Manhattan housing. While proposing a departure from New York City’s fast-paced lifestyle, the scheme blends with the city’s urban fabric with mosaic concrete facades over a steel frame structure.
Perkins+Will has unveiled its design for 799 Broadway, a 12-story boutique office building just south of Union Square in Manhattan. The scheme seeks to reinvent the classic NYC loft building with contemporary materials, systems and, and technology. An exercise in designing from the inside out, the midrise scheme features a range of flexible floorplates that extend into a cascade of undulating terraces on almost every floor. The sculptural massing responds to zoning setback regulations, delivering a human-scaled expression with meaningful connections to the outdoors.
https://www.archdaily.com/916209/perkins-plus-will-designs-manhattan-office-building-sculpted-by-setback-restrictionsNiall Patrick Walsh
125 Greenwich Street. Image Courtesy of Bizzi & Partners
Rafael Viñoly's 125 Greenwich Street skyscraper in downtown Manhattan has topped out. The 912-foot-tall luxury condominium skyscraper was designed as a slender structure with exposed concrete columns. Rising 88 storys, the project includes a curved glass façade to enhance the panoramic views of the Hudson River, the Statue of Liberty, the World Trade Center Complex, and the New York City skyline.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced plans for a $10 billion coastal resilience project, designed to protect Lower Manhattan from flooding. In an editorial piece in New York Magazine, Mayor de Blasio outlined the ambitious plans to alter the waterfront of the Financial District, constructing a major infrastructural element up to 500 feet into the East River.
Part of the Lower Manhattan Climate Resilience Study, and designed in collaboration with climate scientists and local offices, the Mayor describes the scheme as “one of the most complex environmental and engineering challenges [New York] has ever undertaken and will, literally, alter the shape of the island of Manhattan.” The multi-billion dollar project is designed to protect Manhattan through the year 2100.
https://www.archdaily.com/913743/new-york-city-to-combat-rising-sea-levels-by-extending-the-manhattan-coastlineNiall Patrick Walsh
New York City’s Hudson Yards has opened its doors to the public, and the reviews are flooding in. Built on Midtown Manhattan’s West Side, the project is New York’s largest development to date and the largest private real estate venture in American history, covering almost 14 acres of land with residential towers, offices, plazas, shopping centers, and restaurants. A host of architecture firms have shaped the development, including BIG, SOM, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Rockwell Group, and many others.
Read on to find out how critics have responded to Hudson Yards so far.
Construction has begun on “The Spiral,” a 1,031-foot-tall project in New York’s Hudson Yards designed by Bjarke Ingels Group. The fifth supertall to be added to the area, The Spiral was commissioned by developer Tishman Speyer as part of the ongoing revitalization of the Midtown West region of Manhattan.
The tower is named after its defining feature - an "ascending ribbon of lively green spaces" that extend the High Line "to the sky," says Bjarke Ingels. The scheme will offer 2.85 million of office space, with the anchor tenant Pfizer occupying 18 floors, according to New York YIMBY.
Construction has completed on Diller Scofidio + Renfro (Lead Architect) and Rockwell Group's (Lead Interior Architect) 15 Hudson Yards, an 88-story skyscraper marking the first residential project in the Manhattan masterplan. The scheme is now open with 60% of residential units already sold, totaling over $800 million in sales.
The development’s larger 35-story, 400-foot-tall structure will twist alongside a second 300-foot-tall sister tower, both clad with bronze and travertine, sharing a connected podium and skybridge.
Dutch practice MVRDV has broken ground on Radio Tower & Hotel, a 21,800-square-meter mixed-use high rise located in the Washington Heights area in northern Manhattan. The 22-storey building is MVRDV’s first major project in the United States and combines hotel, retail, and office functions in vibrantly stacked blocks. The project was designed to reflecte the vivacious character of the neighborhood and set a direction for future development.
This article was originally published on July 29, 2016. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.
Upon opening its doors for the first time on a rainy winter’s night in 1932, the Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan was proclaimed so extraordinarily beautiful as to need no performers at all. The first built component of the massive Rockefeller Center, the Music Hall has been the world’s largest indoor theater for over eighty years. With its elegant Art Deco interiors and complex stage machinery, the theater defied tradition to set a new standard for modern entertainment venues that remains to this day.
This article was originally published on December 5, 2016. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.
Even in Manhattan—a sea of skyscrapers—the Empire State Building towers over its neighbours. Since its completion in 1931 it has been one of the most iconic architectural landmarks in the United States, standing as the tallest structure in the world until the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were constructed in Downtown Manhattan four decades later. Its construction in the early years of the Great Depression, employing thousands of workers and requiring vast material resources, was driven by more than commercial interest: the Empire State Building was to be a monument to the audacity of the United States of America, “a land which reached for the sky with its feet on the ground.”[1]