Following the completion last year of his most significant New York project to date — the Whitney Museum of American Art — Renzo Piano is wasting no time in returning to the Big Apple. The Italian architect’s firm has revealed images of a proposed skyscraper entitled the Soho Tower, a luxury residential building set to rise on a vacant site between Broome and Watts streets in the heart of Manhattan.
The 25-story tower is being developed through a partnership between real-estate firms SHVO, Halpern Real Estate Ventures, Itzhaki Acquisition and Bizzi and Partners Development. Together with renderings of the proposal, Piano released images of a meticulously detailed model revealing a key feature of the design: a curved glass façade that wraps around each corner of the building.
The sectional model shows how the building’s structural elements, a series of cylindrical columns, are pulled back from the building edge to allow for uninterrupted panels of floor-to-ceiling glazing. The result appears similar to Tadao Ando’s minimalist apartment block at 152 Elizabeth Street, on its way to completion only a short walk east of Piano’s proposed tower.
Comprising two towers connected by a common plinth, the building will contain 115 apartments, a fitness center and a swimming pool, along with shops at ground level. A rendering of the building’s upper reaches shows residents populating a roof terrace with panoramic views across SoHo, Downtown Manhattan and the Hudson River.
For more images and information about projects by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, check out the Italian firm’s extensive profile in the Architizer database.
