Empire State of Mind: Moshe Safdie’s First New York Building to Rise in Midtown Manhattan

Moshe Safdie is most famous for Habitat 67, the experimental housing complex that still stands as a bold and compelling vision of modular design. From those avant-garde beginnings, Safdie Architects has conceived a vast array of unorthodox forms for multiple typologies across the globe, but never within the architectural melting pot of Manhattan — until now.

The firm has unveiled their first project for New York City, a 64-story mixed-use tower situated on West 30th Street, just south of the Empire State Building. The building will stand adjacent to the historic Marble Collegiate Church and will house new administrative spaces for the congregation as well as office space for conflict resolution initiative Churches and Intersections International. Funds generated by the development will go into the restoration of the 1854 church.

Rising from an eight-story limestone plinth — a material chosen to echo that of the adjacent church — a glass condominium will offer apartments with unparalleled views of the Empire State Building and the rest of Midtown. According to Safdie, the building “will be distinguished by its vertical massing, which breaks down the scale of the tower into a series of three-story-high, offset projections.”

“The offset projections also provide energy efficiency by self-shading the tower’s façade, further enhanced by additional sun shading at the south façade.” The elements of the façades will be extruded in a manner reminiscent of Herzog and De Meuron’s pixelated condo on 56 Leonard Street, currently on its way to completion further downtown.

Stay tuned for further updates on this project and more over on Safdie Architects’ firm profile page.