The Architectural Task
About a year ago, a real estate developer client of ours gave us a pretty fun task - to create any design for a skyscraper on the water in the Financial District that could be a completely unique building in a city with countless famous towers. The overall goal for the design was to get excitement from a group of investors in order to fund a potential project. For us, this is the best kind of architecture project because we get to design anything we want and there are almost no real restrictions or requirements.
A Site of Opportunity
There aren’t too many modern looking skyscrapers in this part of lower Manhattan other than the World Trade Center area and Battery Park City, but still nothing of any serious note architecturally. This means that there is a lot of opportunity to stand out and create an exciting proposal with some serious marketing and branding potential. In addition to being in a very dense and highly visited area, our site was literally on the water - we'd add onto the footprint of New York City be extending the public and built area over the water on the East River. With the recent growth of the Beekman area in Financial District we thought that creating a waterfront public area would greatly increase the appeal to investors for a number of reasons. First of all, there is a huge opportunity for ground floor retail in a high-traffic area like this. There is also an opportunity for creating a public water taxi dock that could participate in the NYC transportation system. The design of the building ties into many elements of the site particularly to the water and combined with the height and unique look, we thought an appropriate name for the tower would be Lighthouse.
The Skyscraper Design
Our skyscraper design incorporates subtle twists in the form of the building, which creates a very dynamic and unique looking tower. The building reaches high into the sky to offer incredible view of the water, Brooklyn and New Jersey. The building looks completely different when viewed from different angles because of the twisting geometry. The facade on each side of the building is completely different, adding to the dynamic twisting and appearance of the building. One facade has massive marble frames while another has thin vertical windows with 18” glass mullions protruding from the facade, which creates a shimmering texture of scales along the warping surface. Lights are placed throughout the facade to emphasize the design and again to tie into the name Lighthouse. A recognizable name goes a long way to creating a memorable piece of real estate with a brand story, elevating the value of the property.
A New Type of Urban Space
It is fun to create very unique, non-rectangular forms especially in an area that is famous for generating the zoning laws we now have today. The base of the tower lifts off the ground to provide a massive lobby space with shopping, cafes and restaurants. The large glass area underneath the lifted column is based on the idea of it being a pearl within the oyster. The form also offers a very welcoming opening and appearance to boats on the East River. New York City’s waterfront has been used almost entirely for industrial purposes rather than recreational use for most of NYC’s life and the waterfront is finally making a resurgence. We loved the idea of being a part of creating more waterfront destinations and contributing to that new wave of urban development.
Your thoughts?
Steemians, I’d love your thoughts on the design of this building and if you have other ideas for how to regenerate urban areas that have been poorly utilized in the past. While our proposal was just a concept design to get some investors excited about an opportunity, we believe that this theme of rethinking and redesigning the under-utilized spaces in our cities is incredibly important and valuable for future generations. What would you do to regenerate under-utilized parts of the NYC waterfront or any other space that has potential? Please engage in this discussion, it can only help!
Ciao for now, Steemians.
- Weston (aka @design-guy)
