While we're into glass buildings, here's another brand new one in the Big Apple --larger than the 32-foot-sided cube of the Apple store we just saw. One of the most interesting buildings to open in NYC in quite a while, the Hearst Tower rises 46 stories and houses the privately-held media corporation's 2000 New York employees. Its modern glass design is girded by the 1920ish 6 story concrete landmark.
The lobby won't open to the general public until after Labor Day when the interior gets closer to completion. Its signature will be a $7M and 3-story waterfall called "Ice Falls." This will help cool and humidify the lobby with rain water collected on the roof. If that's not enough, try a 7-story Richard Long mural made of mud (perhaps appropriate for a once proudly yellow journalistic enterprise!) There's also a glass roof so even the men who work here will can confront career plateaus. (Now that's equal inopportunity.)
Here's two exterior views of the "new" building, one nearby and the other (more in the modern bland skyscraper context) taken from the edge of Central Park near where Randolph Hearst convinced the city to raise a monument to the Spanish-American war that he all but started.
The Hearst building is only partially new as the exterior of the six-story cement building (including those quirky columns holding up the sky) was gutted but preserved on the outside as NYC has deemed it to be a landmark. When Randolph Hearst (remember, he is the inspiration for Citizen Kane) built that section in the late 1920s, he envisioned a building soaring above -- but the realities of the Great Depression intervened.
|
|
The tower is architect Norman Foster's first New York building. By coincidence, Foster was scheduled to propose his design to Hearst on September 12, 2001 -- the day after another NYC skyscape-altering moment if there ever was one. (Two years later, Foster's proposed design for ground zero won the popular vote in NYC but was still rejected.)
Yale-educated, Lord Foster is perhaps England's best known architect. While in London in March, I became obsessed with his "big Gherkin" tower shown below rising up from that city's financial district. The second tallest building in London, 30 St. Mary Axe (its real name) replaced historic buildings damaged by IRA bombs. NYC didn't invent urban terror attacks!
Foster is obviously into diagonal glass cross-hatching. There's a new term for it: diagrid design where diagonal beams create glass triangles. This uses 20% less steel and holds together better in case someone flies into the building (a NYC thing but probably not an issue here given the bland skyscrapers that surround the Hearst tower). The Gherkin has lost one of its 5000 glass panels, however, so maybe this design needs a little more seasoning lest others fall 28 stories to the ground. Both Foster's London "Gherkin" building and the new Hearst tower are "green" buildings, meant to use substantially less energy than similar modern designs. NYC's newest building at 57th and 8th avenue is expecting to get the US Green Building Rating System's LEED award for excellence in energy use, indoor air quality, and water consumption.