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30 Rock's Top of the Rock space debuts crowning Skylift observation deck

2024-10-07T11:32:00-04:00

One of New York's top tourist draws, Rockefeller Center’s Top of the Rock experiential space, has opened a brand new attraction called Skylift. Standing 30 feet above the roof deck on the 70th floor, the platform offers panoramic views of the city from 900 feet and is illuminated by 636 meters (about 2,086 feet) of LED lights. The project was designed by THG Creative, who previously designed the One World Observatory, and approved by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC).

Image courtesy THG Creative

Image courtesy Tishman Speyer

IAAC team’s mass timber nature observatory floats above a Barcelona forest

2023-05-16T12:13:00-04:00

A team from the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) has constructed a timber observatory in a Barcelona forest to support analyses of nature. The group of students and researchers from the institution’s Masters in Advanced Ecological Buildings and Biocities program were inspired by the hanging walkways of American biologist Margaret D. Lowman.

Image credit: Adrià Goula

Located in the city’s Collserola Natural Park, and named the Forest Lab for Observational Research and Analysis (FLORA), the facility seeks to provide researchers a space to live and work in the forest canopy. Among the observatory’s facilities are a bird radio, bird houses, working and projection space, as well as bird watching spaces.

Image credit: Adrià Goula

The observatory’s design process began with students studying the biodiversity of the forest, including identifying various inhabitants from underground, aboveground, canopy, and sky levels. T...

NYC greenlights 30 Rock's new 'Skylift' tourist attraction

2022-04-29T18:39:00-04:00

One of the world’s most recognizable addresses is about to get a new look after New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) granted full approval to a plan that would transform the iconic 30 Rockefeller Plaza into Midtown’s latest tourist destination.

The first of the new Top of the Rock attractions proposed by the building’s operator Tishman Speyer is the experiential 69th-floor “Lunch atop a Skyscraper” ride that allows visitors to experience 'a day on the job' of a typical period construction crew based on the iconic 1932 photograph by Charles C. Ebbets.

Image courtesy Tishman Speyer

"Lunch atop a Skyscraper" by Charles C. Ebbets, 1932.

The next floor will feature the “Skylift” observation deck with panoramic views of the city punctuated by a glowing kinetic globe that’s programmed to change colors with the arrival of each new visitor.

Additionally, the ground floor and mezzanine level will be transformed to allow for improved visitor circulation through the ticketing ...

Virginia Tech team completes world-first observation tower with innovative low-carbon timber

2022-04-20T11:51:00-04:00

A team of students and faculty at Virginia Tech has completed an innovative observation tower in rural Virginia. The design and delivery of the project saw the development and certification of a new custom timber product, off-site prefabrication, and the discovery of the ruins of a historic building.

Photography by Kay Edge and Edward Becker

The project, formally titled the New River Train Observation Tower, was delivered to the city of Radford, Virginia. In 2018, the city commissioned Virginia Tech to design and build a train observation tower that would create publicly accessible views over the city’s New River and a historically significant railroad bridge. With a budget of $100,000, the city requested that the tower used clean-tech, low-carbon building products to showcase the city’s transition away from its industrial past.

Photography by Kay Edge and Edward Becker

The student/faculty team initially sought to construct the tower from cross-laminated timber (CLT) due to its durab...

End of the line for Foster’s Tulip after UK government rejects project due to climate concerns

2021-11-11T09:57:00-05:00

The UK government has rejected the Foster + Partners-designed Tulip Tower, bringing an end to years of uncertainty over the project’s future. The scheme’s rejection by Housing Secretary Michael Gove and housing minister Christopher Pincher comes only one month after speculation within the British press that Gove was expected to approve the scheme.

The £500 million ($691 million) project was unveiled by Foster + Partners in 2018, rising 305 meter to become the tallest building in London’s financial district. The 12-story viewing pod at the building’s summit was described as a “classroom in the sky” which could accommodate 20,000 schoolchildren every year as well as bars and restaurants.

Image: DBOX for Foster + Partners

Today's rejection of the scheme by the UK government follows the advice of planning inspector David Nicholson who, as the UK’s Architect’s Journal reports, advised the scheme be rejected following a multi-week public inquiry held in November 2020.

Nicholson’s rep...

Inside Snøhetta’s choreographed observatory at One Vanderbilt

2021-11-03T17:09:00-04:00

Snøhetta has completed a four-story observation complex at One Vanderbilt, New York City. Titled SUMMIT One Vanderbilt, the architects describe the scheme as one which “calms the observatory experience with a choreographed procession of connective social spaces.”

Hallway. Image: Snøhetta

The opening of the observatory comes fourteen months after One Vanderbilt tower itself opened to the public, with a distinct terracotta detailed façade and angular crown. The tower was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF), who earlier this year was also selected to design 5 World Trade Center, one of the area’s last developable sites.

Hall of Light. Image: Michael Grimm Photography

Snøhetta’s observatory sits more than 1000 feet above Midtown Manhattan. The attraction is accessed at Grand Central Station, with visitors passing through a wood-paneled waiting area and mirrored elevators on their way to the observatory’s entrance on the 91st floor. On arrival, an illuminated walkway named the Hall of Light...

Summit One Vanderbilt announces opening date. See the latest pictures here.

2021-09-20T15:59:00-04:00

A dramatic new feature is close to opening atop one recent addition to New York’s skyline.

Summit One Vanderbilt offers visitors of the Kohn Pedersen Fox-designed tower a multisensory experience as well as an attractive nordic-themed café and lounge in addition to stunning views of the surrounding city that can be taken in from New York’s highest exterior viewing platform.

Image courtesy SL Green

Snøhetta is behind the design of Summit One Vanderbilt’s 65,000-square-foot interior space and lounge called Après. Kenzo Digital’s Air gives visitors an option of two Matrix-like experiential spaces courtesy of Levitation boxes and an all-glass elevator called Ascent that extends to a height of 1,200 feet.

Image courtesy SL Green

“We can’t wait to welcome New Yorkers and visitors to New York to experience this truly unique destination right in the heart of Manhattan connected to Grand Central Terminal. People are going to want to come back to SUMMIT One Vanderbilt again and again.”

Image c...

The New York Times goes inside the Empire State Building's post-pandemic finances

2021-09-20T14:46:00-04:00

Most of the Empire State Building is dedicated to office space. With its mix of big and small businesses, the building is perhaps a better barometer of the state of office space in New York and the city’s economy than the towers dominated by global firms.

The building’s tourist and retail income has been essentially shut out for over 18 months because of the pandemic. As a result, tenants are being offered sharp discounts despite increasing signs that the remote work trend is here to stay.

“We’ve found ourselves being able to work in ways that we couldn’t imagine were possible before,” one tenant told the Times. “We just thought for so long we needed an office to be efficient, and that’s not true.”

An expansive $165 million renovation of the Empire State Building Observatory authored by Thinc was completed just before the pandemic. The New York Times has a visualization of the Art Deco landmark’s future here.

See the new observation deck and rooftop ride proposed for 30 Rock

2021-09-13T20:47:00-04:00

One of the city’s most popular observation decks could be getting a facelift. Tishman Speyer Properties has proposed several enhancements to the Top of the Rock deck at landmarked 30 Rockefeller Plaza, including a rotating attraction that lets visitors recreate the iconic “Lunch atop a Skyscraper” photo, a kinetic globe, and a new viewing platform on the 70th floor. The proposal was recommended for approval by Manhattan Community Board 5 last week and will be heard by the Landmarks Preservation Commission on Tuesday.

"Lunch atop a Skyscraper" experience. Rendering: Tishman Speyer

During last month’s community board meeting on landmarks, EB Kelly, the managing director at Tishman Speyer overseeing Rockefeller Center, called the proposal a “collection of enhancements” to the Top of the Rock experience that “lean into the history and magic of this special place.”

“With these changes, we’re looking to tell the story of Rockefeller Center in a new way that will bring people back to discove...

103 floors up, Chicago's renovated Skydeck reopens at Willis Tower

2021-04-23T15:25:00-04:00

Three years in the making, the renovated Skydeck Chicago is reopening Friday for public tours of the 45,000-square-foot space that has undergone a multimillion-dollar renovation the general manager calls “part Chicago museum, part selfie museum, part architectural river tour and part children’s museum.”

A design collaboration of SOM, Thinc Design, and Chicago Scenic Studios, the re-envisioned Skydeck experience on Willis Tower's 103rd floor (of 110 in total) reopened to the public today.

Photo © Dave Burk | SOM

"In creating the new Skydeck, we wanted to honor the structural clarity and simplicity of the tower’s original design approach," explains SOM Design Partner Scott Duncan. "We wanted to create a quiet backdrop for people to be fully immersed in the city’s skyline and allow the view to speak for itself."

Photo © Dave Burk | SOM

Over 1,100 foot-high observation deck to open in Hudson Yards, will be highest in Western Hemisphere

2020-03-10T11:46:00-04:00

The KPF-designed 30 Hudson Yards has long been deemed the tallest building of the Hudson Yards development, and due to open this month is the anticipated observation deck Edge, which, floating right at 1,131 feet high, will be the tallest observation deck in the Western Hemisphere. Located on the 100th floor of 30 Hudson Yards, it will take visitors a 52 second elevator ride to reach the platform's 7,500 square foot viewing area.

Nine-foot tall glass walls of angled glass allow viewers to "lean out over Manhattan." The sky deck also includes a glass floor to further exaggerate the intensity of the observation experience as the deck extends almost 80 feet from the face of the tower.

Plan to add exterior glass elevator to Chicago's Aon Center is approved

2020-02-11T14:13:00-05:00

A plan created by architects Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB) and developer 601W Companies that aims to bring the tallest exterior glass elevator in North America to the Edward Durell Stone-designed Aon Center in Chicago has been approved by the city's Department of Planning and Development. The project was first announced in March of 2019.

Detail shot of the proposed exterior glass elevator. Image courtesy of the Chicago Department of Planning and Development.

The Chicago Tribune reports that the $185 million project will create the city's third sky-high observation platform, following those at the Willis Tower and John Hancock Center. The project aims to bring a 1,000-foot exterior elevator to the northwest corner of the tower that will ferry passengers from a new ground level pavilion up to the top of the tower.

View of the ground level entry pavilion that is being added to accommodate the new observation platform. Image courtesy of the Chicago Department of Planning and Development....

Empire State Building's new observatory culminates $165 million renovation

2019-12-05T11:11:00-05:00

Thinc Design and Empire State Realty Trust (ESRT) have announced the completion of the reimagined Empire State Building Observatory, marking the culmination of the final phase of a four-year $165 million-dollar transformation of the iconic tower. Acting as Experience Designer on the project, Thinc Design led and collaborated with a cross-disciplinary team of individuals specializing architecture, travel, technology, and entertainment to curate, design, and realize the comprehensive rework.

The 80th-floor, which is now the first viewing level of the observatory provides a wide range of interactive exhibits along with panoramic views of the New York City skyline, dynamic "smart" lighting that modifies its levels based on exterior lighting conditions, virtual reality binoculars that introduce users to augmented views of New York landmarks, and much more.

"The Empire State Building brings people together from all around the world. We’ve had the extraordinary opportunity to create an un...

Empire State Building set to open revamped 102nd-floor observatory

2019-10-10T19:19:00-04:00

[...] the Empire State Building, which has just spent $165 million and four years meticulously revamping the experience of getting to — and appreciating — the views from its two vertiginous observatories on the 86th and 102nd floors. Simultaneously, its designers have tried to banish the things visitors hate about the observation-deck trek: the lines, the crowds, the congestion.

The 102nd-floor observation deck of New York City's most iconic skyscraper will reopen this weekend with floor-to-ceiling glass windows, a 360-degree panorama glass elevator to the top, and an overall updated experience.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Empire State Building (@empirestatebldg) on Oct 10, 2019 at 2:20pm PDT

Check out Effekt's Camp Adventure Forest Tower, Denmark's answer to NYC's Vessel

2019-05-04T11:44:00-04:00

Everyone hates the Vessel, the stairway to nowhere for capitalism’s grifters at the heart of New York’s latest mirage of a neighborhood, Hudson Yards. Perhaps that’s why it’s so refreshing to see an observation tower that actually leads somewhere meaningful beyond an Instagram selfie frame: the Camp Adventure Observation Tower in Denmark.

While Thomas Heatherwick's Vessel has been a media darling (or pariah) for the last month, a similarly tall, arguably more elegant observation tower quietly popped up in a Dane forest.

The Camp Adventure Forest Tower, by Effekt

The Camp Adventure Forest Tower, designed by Copenhagen-based firm Effekt, begins with a long serpentine boardwalk that directs a scenic path through the trees before reaching the gently sloping ramp that is the centerpiece of the project. Once visitors walk to the very top of the 147-foot structure ((for comparison, the Vessel is 150 feet), they are greeted with a view of the forest from all angles, thanks to its perfectly circular observation deck.

Ole Scheeren's MahaNakhon tower in Bangkok now complete with glass 'Skytray'

2018-11-27T19:22:00-05:00

The new Mahanakhon SkyWalk, however, is a thrilling addition to Bangkok's roster of family-friendly tourist attractions. Located at the top of Thailand's tallest completed building, King Power Mahanakhon, it's a 314-meter-high (1,030 feet) observation deck and rooftop bar that offers 360-degree views of Bangkok. The terrifying bit comes in the form of a large glass floor, which juts out over the edge of the building.

With the opening of its glass-floor observation deck high up above Bangkok's Silom/Sathon central business district the Büro Ole Scheeren-designed King Power MahaNakhon tower is now considered completed (construction of the main building concluded in 2016).

"The idea behind MahaNakhon was to take the life of the city and bring it up the tower in a dramatic, spiralling movement," explains Ole Scheeren.

"Even the very top of the tower is surrendered to the public, so there is not only a public square at the ground, but human activity rises along the pixelated shaft to the top floors of the building which are given back to the public domain. It is a project that is strongly embedded in the city and the public realm, and expressively proclaims itself as an active part of it."

The MahaNakhon SkyWalk consists of an indoor observation deck with 360-degree panor...