Redefining High-Rise Design: Studio Dror Unveils 3 Concepts for Manhattan

What should drive the form of a Manhattan residential tower? Should it be program, as Bjarke Ingels argues in his trailer for the recently unveiled 2 World Trade Center? Or perhaps it could be contextual constraints like those that have made SHoP’s pencil-thin high-rise the most slender
Midtown tower yet? Or perhaps it should simply afford the best views possible as in Rafael Viñoly’s extraordinary 432 Park Avenue?

New York-based firm Studio Dror has brought its own theory to the table: it believes structural innovation can open up new possibilities for the typology and allow for all those factors listed above to be considered while striking out against the banality of conventional high-rise styles. Principal and founder Dror Benshetriet notes, “In general, the motivation was to really study different typologies and how we can push boundaries in different ways.”

To that end, the studio produced proposals for three new skyscrapers in different locations across New York, each possessing a unique structural rationale that engenders a form unlike any currently punctuating the Manhattan skyline. Here, we take a look at each tower to investigate what sets these high-rise designs apart …

100 Varick

First, 100 Varick is defined by an innovative structural system that the studio has been developing over many years, the “QuaDror.” This ingenious lattice of slender elements harnesses the natural strength of steel to a highly efficient frame that requires far less material than conventional systems. The diagonal members form a triangulated grid that can then be populated with a series of modular glazed boxes — five stories each, in the current proposal — that can be tailored to specific individual clients and “slotted in” to form a single entity.

Benshetriet acknowledges that the diagrid has been “proven already, many times, without our particular geometry,” though the exoskeleton itself offers the added advantage of modular construction. “This is one example of [how to] use of QuaDror [as] an exoskeleton,” he explains. “Instead of just a single-story component, it’s actually a five-story component; it’s just a different way of looking at basic construction, which is typically done by a floor at a time.”

© Dror

The result refers to various other stacked towers from SANAA’s New Museum to Bjarke Ingels’ “vertical village” of 2 WTC, but it is the QuaDror system that dominates the external appearance of the building, left exposed and celebrated as a bold exhibition of structural expressionism — a nod to the likes of Richard Rogers and Norman Foster. The structural system opens up the possibility of tenants occupying certain blocks within the building being others have been installed — could this approach form a polished, next-generation iteration of Kurokawa’s capsule tower?

350 Bowery

The second of Studio Dror’s towers is envisaged for the Bowery, just a few doors down from Thom Mayne’s distinctive Cooper Union campus, and aims to “both respect and enhance its surroundings.” Two glazed volumes containing apartments form a ghostly mirror to the brick massing of 2 Cooper Square one block north, offset with a dramatic cantilever that sees the upper block “kissing” the neighboring building.

Compared to 100 Varick, “It was much more about understanding the volumetric needs for the residential and commercial components and understanding the parameters of not just our site, but also our neighboring site.” If the shifting volumes bear formal similarities to some of Rem Koolhaas’s many unbuilt high-rise designs, Benshetriet speaks of a “relationship between the void and the volumes” based on the logic that the required setback aligned neatly with the height of the adjacent building. “Typically, the void is what is left over from what buildings create based on their presence … in this case, the consideration for the void is equally important as the consideration for the volumes.”

© Dror

Dror’s proposal is further distinguished by its lower massing: the residential blocks are jacked up on a forest of slender stilts as though the building has been prized apart to reveal an unexpected slice of public space above the glazed ground-floor retail space. With the interjection of these columns, 350 Bowery is visually striking from nearly every angle, its negative space offering a surprising moment of permeability within a city so used to the unrelenting solidity of its street fronts.

281 Fifth Ave.

The third and final tower is a purely conceptual high-rise structure envisioned for a compact site on the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 30th Street [Ed. Note: Which, incidentally, was the former home of Architizer!]. It is defined by a series of slender, blade-like concrete walls which are arranged in a “pinwheel” formation around the central core and support cantilevered apartment units a dozen stories above the sidewalk. “The third concept is about the residential skinny skyscraper, which is a typology that we’re going to see popping up in the coming years to really study how we can deal with typologies in different ways.”

The pinwheel design possesses futuristic aesthetics, but harks back to an icon residential design from 85 years ago: Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision for Usonia in Manhattan’s Lower East Side included St Mark’s-in-the-Bowery Towers composed of concrete cores from which floor plates radiated “like branches.” Dror’s concept adopts a skeletal version of this same structural system, allowing for windows on three sides of each apartment. The concrete fins flare outward at the foot of the tower to provide additional stability and lend the building a Richard Serra-like sculptural quality at ground level.

“If you’re looking at the apartment as a simple kind of four-sided volume, one side is a balcony, one side is pure uninterrupted view, one side is slightly obscured by the next apartment — a digital continuation of the view that you’re missing — and then the wall, which takes care of your plumbing and all [the other] needs.”

© Dror

Where 350 Bowery is decidedly site-specific, 281 Fifth Ave., like the modular concept for 100 Varick, could be adapted for nearly any site: “This building could be reconfigured to other sites with the same principles, the same logic.”

These three contrasting buildings embrace both existing and developing structural systems to drive their form, iterating on … that force us to question our preconceptions about urban density, permanence, and new ways of thinking vertically in Manhattan. Hypothetical though they may be, these concepts certainly fulfill Studio Dror’s intent to provoke debate on the future of high-rise architecture in New York City.

Nevertheless, the scalable diagrid remains the studio’s primary focus. Although a QuaDror-based building has yet to be built, Benshetriet is optimistic about its prospects and applications at various scales: “We are working on two different [QuaDror] components right now — we’re in the early engineering phase for both for the typology of mid- and high-rise and one for the typologies of relief housing, slums, and favelas.” These radically different projects illustrate the breadth of his practice and the versatility of a single construction method. The former case, seen in 100 Varick, is “looking at the efficiency of weight of steel,” while the low-cost application “deals more with the speed of construction and being able to resist the elements [better] than the existing solutions.”

The QuaDror’s potential still remains to be seen, but suffice it to say that Benshetriet’s ambitions go far beyond New York City …

Additional reporting by Ray Hu.