Archinect - News

KPF’s James von Klemperer on 520 Fifth Ave. and being a 'good neighbor'

2024-10-18T11:20:00-04:00

I think all tall buildings, especially, have a kind of responsibility that goes beyond the program and the site. Because once you emerge into the skyline in a significant way, which this building will, the skyline is almost viewed, I think, by us New Yorkers as public property. If you put up a terrible profile on the skyline, everybody has to look at it from uptown, downtown, Long Island, New Jersey. And it’s very subjective.

The firm's forthcoming 1,002-foot supertall, which we first previewed back in February, is ramping up construction towards completion in 2026. Its language of setbacks and arches is a nod to other towers shaped by the famous 1916 zoning envelope mandate that produced the Chrysler Building and many other quintessential designs through mid-century.

KPF is currently working on what will be the new tallest building in Texas for 2026 while the city prepares an 11-block Fifth Avenue pedestrian corridor redesign led by Field Operations.

Image credit: Binyan Studios

Image credit: DBOX

New Yorkers are still pissed about disrupted view sheds and 262 Fifth Avenue

2024-03-10T08:00:00-04:00

“It really pisses me off,” Clark said while standing in the plaza in front of the Flatiron Building on Fifth Avenue, a few blocks south of the dueling skyscrapers. “The whole New York skyline has been destroyed. When I moved here I was thrilled with it, and now it’s just getting disgusting. These new buildings have no identity, no design to them. We’ve lost the character of New York, and it breaks my heart.”

The Guardian goes inside some locals' struggle against the new 262 Fifth Avenue condo tower by Meganom and SLCE Architects. The East Siders protesting their obstructed view sheds are also not in favor of its appearance or the design for 432 Park Avenue, including several inspired teen critics on TikTok.

NYT critic Michael Kimmelman also wrote of their plight last year, declaring theirs and other opposition attempts a noble attempt at restoring the city’s history in an era defined by zoning manipulation and visible inequality.

A preservationist named Jorge Otero-Pailos told Kimmelman last October that new regulations are needed to “guarantee a collective experience, a sense of shared identity and civic meaning, which can bind New Yorkers across generations and centuries.”

Michael Kimmelman again asks: 'Should New York regulate its skyline?'

2023-10-25T15:11:00-04:00

A generation ago, the New York skyline was a global icon, shaped more or less like a suspension bridge stretched between the Empire State and the Twin Towers, making it possible to, say, pop out of some unfamiliar subway station, gaze up toward the clouds and orient oneself along the skyline’s north-south axis. Today, the skyline is vastly more complex, far-flung and difficult to picture, and it’s common to hear complaints that the city has lost its bearings.

The addition of Meganom and SLCE’s 860-foot 262 Fifth Avenue tower to New York’s accidental skyline also raises questions about legislating ‘view sheds’ and historic sightlines around the city, Michael Kimmelman writes. The city currently only has one protected vista overlooking the Financial District from Brooklyn Heights. Developers have famously been manipulating the local zoning code governing allowable height in order to receive approvals, an issue Kimmelman has preached about in earnest for the past decade.

“It’s time to rethink our assumptions,” preservationist Jorge Otero-Pailos tells him, before adding his opinion that regulations would “guarantee a collective experience, a sense of shared identity and civic meaning, which can bind New Yorkers across generations and centuries.”

Construction of 262 Fifth Avenue is expected to wrap up by the end of 2024.

Squint/Opera announces merger with Journey as the industry-leading experience designers look to scale up digital production

2022-11-02T13:54:00-04:00

3D experience pioneer Squint/Opera has been acquired by the digital agency Journey in a move announced on November 1 by the newly-formed entity.

The merger will enable both to pursue an expansion of their services at a time when the industry is seeing an increase in demand thanks to the advent of metaverse design and other forms of media.

“The opportunity to join Journey was momentous.” Julius Coke, the CEO of Squint/Opera, explained in a statement. “Over the last few years Squint has experienced significant growth, as the demand for immersive 3D experiences grows and new platforms and technologies enable a new level of creativity tapping into our storytelling, virtual production and creative media skills.”

Previously on Archinect: BIG and UNStudio's investment in co-working platform SpaceForm signals a tide-change in architectural practice

Founded in London in 2021, Squint/Opera has since then, it has garnered a reputation through groundbreaking projects like The Observatory at The ...

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.

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

Height vs. Hashtags: Where do the world's tallest skyscrapers stack up?

2019-08-20T07:00:00-04:00

With plenty of futuristic and architecturally diverse buildings to choose from, which of these world-famous designs has gained the title of the most popular on Instagram around the world? We gathered research to find out the most Instagrammed skyscrapers in the world [...] we wanted to see what the total height of these Instagram photos would be in comparison to the height of the buildings themselves.

With the looming presence social media has over the built environment, iconic buildings have never been easier to track down, especially as platforms like Instagram make high-profile architecture accessible at the press of a button.

Dublin Airport Central recently conducted a study to understand where five of the most instagrammed skyscrapers rank against their related hashtags.

Stacked column next to image of building: the group used Polaroid pictures as if they were printed and piled up. Graph courtesy of Dublin Airport Central

According to Dublin Airport Central, despite no longer being the tallest building in the world, the Empire State Building is the most instagrammed skyscraper in the world. If those individually tagged posts are printed out as physical Polaroid photos and stacked one on top of the other, according to the source, the height of all the “hashtagged” photos of the Empire State Building easily towers over the skyscraper itself.

The Burj Khalifa, on the other han...

Manhattan loft residents purchase an $11M view in air rights

2019-07-23T19:50:00-04:00

[...] when the residents of a 12-story loft building in Chelsea learned that a proposed tower next door threatened to darken most of their windows and block their Empire State Building views, they tried a less confrontational approach. They banded together to make the developer an unusual offer: $11 million not to build.

A group of Chelsea condo owners have shown that a million-dollar view can actually be worth $11 million.

As J. David Goodman writes in the NYT, "The owners used a typical developer strategy and turned it on its head: They bought the developer’s air rights — normally used to allow for taller buildings than allowed — at the neighboring property."

Empire State Building unveils new observatory deck entrance just for visitors

2018-08-29T18:01:00-04:00

Thankfully, workers will no longer have to wade through crowds of wayward tourists every day. A new entrance officially opened [Aug. 22] for the famous Midtown supertall, designed to accommodate the large number of visitors and create a more engaging experience. [...] The crown jewel for the new lobby is certainly the introduction of a two-story tall model of the Empire State Building in front of an illuminating blue seamless background.

33-story endangered species picture show

2015-08-06T19:02:00-04:00

According to the New York Times, the event cost around $1 million to produce and involved 40 stacked 20,000-lumen projectors on the roof of a building on West 31st Street that beamed 5K resolution video onto a space covering 33 floors — roughly 375 feet high and 186 feet wide.

The Empire State Building took a breather from being an icon last Saturday, and instead became the canvas for a series of projected images of endangered species and other trippy imagery. The event was part of "Projecting Change," an awareness-raising project thought up by noted National Geographic photographer Louie Psihoyos. The remarkable clarity and size of the images is due to the artistry of design firm Obscura Digital, who captivated a city of people used to being too sophisticated to unguardedly stare up in wonder. No word yet on the reaction of those city dwellers who, unaware of the show while occupying a penthouse and a questionable state of mind, looked out the window and saw giant animals gazing back at them.

One World Trade Center to become NYC's tallest building...today!

2012-04-30T13:28:00-04:00

More than a decade after a terrorist attack brought down New York's twin towers, their under-construction replacement will become the city's tallest building on Monday. The placement of a column of the 100th floor will bring the colossal new steel structure of One World Trade Center tower to a height of 1,271 feet – surpassing the frame of the Empire State Building, which is currently New York's tallest skyscraper, by 21 feet.

Wanna buy the Empire State Building? Really.

2012-02-15T12:50:00-05:00

Forget Facebook, I've got a whole new IPO for you. The owners of the Empire State Building filed papers to go public this week.

Empire State Building Achieves LEED Gold Certification

2011-09-14T13:44:58-04:00

It’s official — the Empire State Building has been awarded LEED Gold certification. Thanks to a massive green overhaul that took more than two years, the landmark is now the tallest building in the United States to receive LEED certification.