OUT OF OFFICE
New York City; an exploration fact sheet.
A visual Wiki journey through the city that never sleeps.
Times Square by day
Based in Midtown Manhattan at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching over 5 blocks is the major commercial intersection that is Times Square, formerly Longacre Square. As well as being one of the world’s most visited tourist attractions and busiest pedestrian intersections, it is also the hub of the Broadway Theater District.
Approximately 330,000 people pass through Times Square daily; I was one of them.
Central Park
Covering 843 acres in the heart of Manhattan, spanning the land between 59th Street to 110th Street between Fifth Avenue and Central Park West (Eighth Avenue), this urban park is the most visited of its kind in the United States.
So I thought I should probably stop by.
Edge of Chinatown
Taking a walk in the area south of Broome Street where the apartment was and east of Lafayette, and you’ll feel as though you have entered not just a different country but a different continent.
Hearst Tower, Manhattan
This spectacle comprises of two main architectural elements; the precast stone base and the new diagrid tower.
The six-story base of the headquarters building was commissioned by the founder, William Randolph Hearst, and awarded to the architect Joseph Urban. Originally built as the base for a proposed skyscraper, the construction of the tower was postponed due to the Great Depression however the original cast stone facade has been preserved in the new design as a designated Landmark site.
The first “green” high-rise tower in New York, designed by architect Norman Foster, is 46 stories tall and has an uncommon triangular framing pattern which required 9,500 metric tons of structural steel of which contains 85% recycled material. The floor of the atrium is paved with heat conductive limestone, polyethylene tubing is embedded under the floor and filled with circulating water for cooling in the summer and heating in the winter and rainwater is collected on the roof and stored in a tank in the basement for use in the cooling system, to irrigate plants and for the water sculpture in the main lobby.
Most impressively though is the 3-story water sculpture, titled Icefall, feature in the atrium space. This is a wide waterfall built with thousands of glass panels, which cools and humidifies the lobby air. Quite disappointingly, I was not allowed in on this occasion however will catch a glimpse of this one day.
American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History, located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City, is one of the largest museums in the world. Located in park-like grounds across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 27 interconnected buildings housing 45 permanent exhibition halls, in addition to a planetarium and a library.
Soloman R. Guggenheim Museum, Frank Lloyd Wright
An internationally renowned art museum and one of the most significant architectural icons of the 20th century, the Guggenheim Museum is at once a vital cultural center, an educational institution, and the heart of an international network of museums.
It is also the permanent home of a renowned and continuously expanding collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions throughout the year.
St Patrick’s Cathedral
A decorated Neo-Gothic-style Roman Catholic cathedral church and a prominent landmark of New York City. It sits directly across the street from Rockefeller Center on the east side of Fifth Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets in midtown Manhattan.
Rockefeller Centre
This is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering 22 acres between 48th and 51st streets. Built by the Rockefeller family, it is located in the center of Midtown Manhattan, spanning the area between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987.
Grand Central Terminal
Grand Central Terminal is a commuter railroad terminal at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. Built by and named for the New York Central Railroad in the heyday of American long-distance passenger rail travel, it covers 48 acres and has 44 platforms, more than any other railroad station in the world.
Grand Central Terminal has many secrets but the Whispering Gallery is its most romantic. This unmarked archway, located in front of the Oyster Bar & Restaurant, possesses a mystifying acoustic property: when two people stand at diagonal arches and whisper, they can hear each other’s voices “telegraphed” from across the way.
Chrysler Building
The Chrysler Building is an Art Deco style skyscraper in New York City, located on the east side of Manhattan in the Turtle Bay area at the intersection of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. At 319 m, the structure was the world’s tallest building for 11 months before it was surpassed by the Empire State Building in 1931. It is still the tallest brick building in the world, albeit with an internal steel skeleton.
The Chrysler Building is a classic example of Art Deco architecture and considered by many contemporary architects to be one of the finest buildings in New York City. It was designed by architect William Van Alen for a project of Walter P. Chrysler, who decided to pay for it himself, so that his children could inherit it.
Times Square by night
This place is as alive at 3am as it is during the day.
The blindingly bright lights, the deafening beeping of horns as taxi’s rush past you and the trigger-happy snaps and flashes of tourist cameras, greet you as you enter this chaotic yet organised disco ball of an area.
Union Square
Union Square is an important and historic intersection and surrounding neighborhood in Manhattan, New York City, located where Broadway and the former Bowery Road, came together in the early 19th century; its name celebrates neither the Federal union of the United States nor labor unions but rather denotes that “here was the union of the two principal thoroughfares of the island”.
Flatiron Building
The Flatiron Building, originally the Fuller Building, is located at 175 Fifth Avenue in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, and is considered to be a groundbreaking skyscraper. Upon completion in 1902, it was one of the tallest buildings in the city and one of only two skyscrapers north of 14th Street — the other being the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, one block east.
As with numerous other wedge-shaped buildings, the name “Flatiron“ derives from its resemblance to a cast-iron clothes iron.
One Madison Square Park by Cetra/Ruddy
A luxury residential condominium tower located on 23rd Street between Broadway and Park Avenue South, at the foot of Madison Avenue, across from Madison Square Park in the Flatiron District of Manhattan.
11 Madison Park
Besides knowing that there is supposedly a great restaurant here, I’m not really sure what this purpose this building has in all fairness; more offices I assume. However, I was drawn to the vaulted ceiling in the entrance lobby area and the pendulum-like light fitting at its centre.
400 Park Avenue South, Prism
The first building by Christian de Portzamparc that I had the opportunity to visit was the Cité de la Musique in Paris in La Villette quarter back in 2011. I was particularly drawn towards the curved connecting zone between the east and west wings leading from the grand and simply monolithic entrance. The horizontal circulation was something of great interest to me at the time as I was working on implementing Mondrian’s De Stijl paintings from the art movement into my architecture university work.
400 PAS takes the element of horizontal movement into another orientation; here we go vertically. The fractured facade is reminiscent of Renzo Piano’s Shard in London; in fact travelling from London that was my first observation. The multiple chamfered edges and its colossal presence along historic Park Ave are of great interest to me; would be great to research into this further.
The Morgan Library & Museum
The Morgan Library & Museum — formerly the Pierpont Morgan Library — is a museum and research library located at 225 Madison Avenue at East 36th Street in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan by architect Renzo Piano.
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States, behind only the Library of Congress.
The Bank of America Tower
The Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park is a 366 m skyscraper in the Midtown area of Manhattan.
The US$1 billion project was designed by COOKFOX Architects, and advertised to be one of the most efficient and ecologically friendly buildings in the world. It is the fourth tallest building in New York City, after One World Trade Center, 432 Park Avenue, and the Empire State Building, and the sixth tallest building in the United States. Construction was completed in 2009.
The New York Times Building
This is a skyscraper on the west side of midtown Manhattan that was completed in 2007. Its chief tenant is The New York Times Company, publisher of The New York Times as well as the International New York Times, and other newspapers. The architect is Renzo Piano Building Workshop.
MetLife Building
The MetLife Building is a 59-story skyscraper at 200 Park Avenue at East 45th Street above Grand Central Terminal in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.
Built in 1960–63 as the Pan Am Building, the then-headquarters of Pan American World Airways, it was designed by Emery Roth & Sons, Pietro Belluschi and Walter Gropius in the International style.
The world’s largest commercial office space by square footage at its opening, it remains one of the fifty tallest buildings in the United States.
The UN Building
The United Nations Secretariat Building is a 154 m (505 ft) tall skyscraper and the centerpiece of the headquarters of the United Nations, located in the Turtle Bay area of Manhattan, in New York City. The lot where the building stands is considered United Nations territory, although remains part of the United States.
It has 39 stories and was completed in 1952. The building was designed by the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer and the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier.
The New Museum, Bowery
The New Museum, designed by Tokyo-based architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa/SANAA, is a seven-story, eight-level structure located at 235 Bowery between Stanton and Rivington Streets, at the origin of Prince Street in New York City.
Sperone Westwater Gallery by Foster + Partners
The Sperone Westwater gallery by Foster + Partners architects opened in New York earlier this week, featuring a moving exhibition space that connects the floors of the gallery. The 12 by 20 foot moving gallery allows visitors to travel between floors or can be fixed at a chosen level to extend the static exhibition spaces. The milled glass facade of the gallery dampens noise from the street and controls the temperature and light admitted to the gallery spaces.
56 Leonard Street by Herzog & de Meuron
Work has started on the construction of 56 Leonard Street, a 56-storey residential tower in New York designed by architects Herzog & de Meuron. The tower, the architects’ first, will be built on the corner of Leonard Street and Church Street in Tribeca. A specially commissioned sculpture by Anish Kapoor will sit at the corner of the building at street level but this was not on site at the time I went. Another trip will be needed.
African Burial Ground National Monument
African Burial Ground National Monument is a monument at Duane Street and African Burial Ground Way (Elk Street) in the Civic Center section of Lower Manhattan, New York City. The site contains the remains of more than 400 Africans buried during the late 17th and 18th centuries in a portion of what was the largest colonial-era cemetery for people of African descent, some free, most enslaved. Historians estimate there may have been 15,000–20,000 burials in what was called the “Negroes Burial Ground” in the 1700s. The site’s excavation and study was called “the most important historic urban archaeological project in the United States.”
Staten Island Ferry Terminal Entrance
Ferry and Statue of Liberty
“The Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World” was a gift of friendship from the people of France to the United States and is recognized as a universal symbol of freedom and democracy. The Statue of Liberty was dedicated on October 28, 1886. It was designated as a National Monument in 1924. Employees of the National Park Service have been caring for the colossal copper statue since 1933.
A prominent French architect and structural engineer, Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel was the second designer of the internal structural elements of the Statue of Liberty. In his early work designing railway bridges, Eiffel relied on sophisticated mathematical designs renowned for their lightness, grace, and strength.
Wall Street
Wall Street is the home of the New York Stock Exchange, the world’s largest stock exchange by overall average daily trading volume and by total market capitalization of its listed companies. Several other major exchanges have or had headquarters in the Wall Street area, including NASDAQ, the New York Mercantile Exchange, the New York Board of Trade, and the former American Stock Exchange. Anchored by Wall Street, New York City has been called the world’s principal financial center.
World Trade Center (PATH station), Santiago Calatrava
Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, designer of the station, said the Oculus resembles a bird being released from a child’s hand. The roof was originally designed to mechanically open to increase light and ventilation to the enclosed space.
Herbert Muschamp, architecture critic of The New York Times, wrote:
Santiago Calatrava’s design for the World Trade Center PATH station should satisfy those who believe that buildings planned for ground zero must aspire to a spiritual dimension. Over the years, many people have discerned a metaphysical element in Mr. Calatrava’s work. I hope New Yorkers will detect its presence, too. With deep appreciation, I congratulate the Port Authority for commissioning Mr. Calatrava, the great Spanish architect and engineer, to design a building with the power to shape the future of New York. It is a pleasure to report, for once, that public officials are not overstating the case when they describe a design as breathtaking.
One World Trade Center, (Freedom Tower)
One World Trade Center also dubbed the “Freedom Tower” refers to the main building of the new World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan, New York City. It is the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere, and the fourth-tallest in the world.
Design by the Polish-American Architect Daniel Libeskind who is well known for the design for the Jewish Museum in Berlin was chosen as part of a competition.
The National 9/11 Memorial
The National September 11 Memorial is a tribute of remembrance and honor to the nearly 3,000 people killed in the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 at the World Trade Center site. The Memorial’s twin reflecting pools are each nearly an acre in size and feature the largest man-made waterfalls in the North America. The pools sit within the footprints where the Twin Towers once stood.
The names of every person who died in the 2001 and 1993 attacks are inscribed into bronze panels edging the Memorial pools, a powerful reminder of the largest loss of life resulting from a foreign attack on American soil and the greatest single loss of rescue personnel in American history.
Michael Arad, a partner at Handel Architects, worked as a New York City Housing Authority architect before winning the competition to design the Memorial.
Arad also spent three years with Kohn Pedersen Fox, where he worked on several major projects, including Union Station Tower, a mixed-use 108-story skyscraper in Hong Kong, and Espirito Santo Plaza, a 37-story tower in Miami that won the New York chapter of American Institute of Architects’ Design Award Citation in 2001.
8 Spruce Street, Gehry
A 76-story skyscraper designed by architect Frank Gehry in theNew York City borough of Manhattan at 8 Spruce Street, between William and Nassau Streets, in Lower Manhattan, just south of City Hall Park and the Brooklyn Bridge.
It is one of the tallest residential towers in the world, and the tallest residential tower in the Western Hemisphere at the time of opening in February 2011.
Brooklyn Bridge
The Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883. At the time, it was the longest suspension bridge. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service, and a New York City Landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Manhattan Bridge
The Manhattan Bridge is a suspension bridge that crosses the East River in New York City, connecting Lower Manhattan at Canal Street with Downtown Brooklyn at the Flatbush Avenue Extension. The main span is 448 m long, with the suspension cables being 983 m long. The bridge’s total length is 2,089 m. This is one of four toll-free bridges spanning the East River; the other three are the Queensboro, Brooklyn, and Williamsburg Bridges.
It was designed by Leon Moisseiff, and is noted for its innovative design. As the first suspension bridge to employ Josef Melan’s deflection theory for the stiffening of its deck, it is considered to be the forerunner of modern suspension bridges and this design served as the model for many of the long-span suspension bridges built in the first half of the twentieth century.
Brinkley’s
Vibrant gastro-pub with New American comfort chow, a NY-focused beer list & a beautiful-people crowd.
The Whitney Museum at Gansevoort, Renzo Piano Building Workshop
The Whitney Museum is building itself a new home in downtown Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Due to open in 2015, the project will substantially enlarge the Whitney’s exhibition and programming space, enabling the first comprehensive view of the Museum’s growing collection, which today comprises more than 19,000 works of modern and contemporary American art.
The High Line
A disused railway line from the 1930s that has been revitalized and converted into a pedestrian walkway due to efforts by the Friends of the High Line; ‘non profit caretakers’, who in the 1980s fought against the demolition of the railway road.
The new park was designed by the James Corner’s New York-based landscape architecture firm Field Operations and architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, with planting design from Piet Oudolf of the Netherlands, lighting design from L’Observatoire International, and engineering design by Buro Happold.
Javits Convention Center, I M Pei
Sylvia Hart Wright,
The exterior of this mammoth, five-block long building is an assemblage of rectilinear forms, all shaped by a framework of prefabricated steel modules fitted with clear glass. Inside, the structure is supported by tubular steel pillars that resemble chunky champagne glasses. At its south end there’s a spectacular 150-foot-high lobby, dubbed the crystal palace. Also housed within the center’s 1.8 million square feet: a 2,500 seat auditorium and acres of exhibition halls and meeting rooms
The New Yorker Hotel
Huge historic Jazz Age (1929) hotel offers over 900 rooms and suites across from Penn Station.
The Empire State Building & Views
The Empire State Building is a 102-story skyscraper located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on Fifth Avenue between West 33rd and 34th Streets. It has a roof height of 380 m, and with its antenna spire included, it stands a total of 443 m high. Its name is derived from the nickname for New York, the Empire State.
The Empire State Building is generally thought of as an American cultural icon. It is designed in the distinctive Art Deco style and has been named as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world. The museum’s collection offers an overview of modern and contemporary art, including works of architecture and design, drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, prints, illustrated books and artist’s books, film and electronic media.
The Seagram Building, Mies Van der Rohe
Located in the heart of New York City, the Seagram Building designed by Mies van der Rohe epitomizes elegance and the principles of modernism. The 38-story building on Park Avenue was Mies’ first attempt at tall office building construction. Mies’ solution set a standard for the modern skyscraper. The building became a monumental continuity of bronze and dark glass climbing up 515 feet to the top of the tower, juxtaposing the large granite surface of the plaza below.
Mies’ response to the city with the Seagram Building was the grand gesture of setting back the building 100 feet from the street edge, which created a highly active open plaza. The plaza attracts users with its two large fountains surrounded by generous outdoor seating. By making this move, Mies distanced himself from New York urban morphology, lot line development, and the conventional economics of skyscraper construction.
The detailing of the exterior surface was carefully determined by the desired exterior expression Mies wanted to achieve. The metal bronze skin that is seen in the facade is nonstructural but is used to express the idea of the structural frame that is underneath. Additional vertical elements were also welded to the window panels not only to stiffen the skin for installation and wind loading, but to aesthetically further enhance the vertical articulation of the building.
Such an intensely great way to start the year; hopefully it’s not too long before I visit the city again.
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