Fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg’s headquarters has become an urban icon in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. A new structure inserted behind three preserved historic facades, the six-story building brings together flagship retail with performance venues, offices for a staff of 300, a design studio, and a private residential penthouse.
A single iconic staircase, cut as a diagonal shaft through the building, ties these spaces together. Part stair and part chandelier, the “stairdelier” also brings daylight down through the entire building. Along the stair’s length, light from a heliostat mirror refracts through some 3,000 Swarovski crystals suspended on (and structurally bracing) vertical steel cables that double as guardrails.
The stair coincides with a series of shared double-height voids, culminating in the faceted penthouse-studio on the building’s roof. Visible from the streets around, the penthouse registers the disjuncture between the new interior and the preserved facades below, while broadcasting the studio’s presence to the neighborhood.
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