Image courtesy of OMA
For commercial buildings, Manhattan’s zoning laws prescribe a silhouette from which there is no escape (yet): a stretched pyramid. Our current aesthetics oscillate between nearly exhausted orthogonality and a still immature curvaceousness.
Our building is an intersection of these two observations: it proposes a stack of three cubes—the lower one a full solid block on Park Avenue, the smallest on top, rotated 45 degrees vis a vis the Manhattan grid, oriented beyond its mere location in a sweep from midtown to Central Park.
The three cubes are connected by curved planes to create a subtle alternation of flat and three dimensional planes, each reflecting sky and city in their own way.
The shape is at the same time highly artistic and highly efficient, a diagram of maximum beauty and maximum rentability, combined in a single, Brancusi-like shape. Its geometry at the same time reinforces and escapes the existing city. It resonates with each of its famous neighbors—Seagram, Lever, AT&T, Racquet Club—yet is emphatically futuristic.
Its conceptual model accommodates both the design competition’s request to maintain 25% of the existing building and the entirely-from-scratch scenario with equal ease.