20 and 30 Halletts Point
Handel Architects · Astoria · 2025
Southwest corner of 20 (left) and 30 (right) Halletts Point from the East River.
Exterior wall installation is nearing completion at The Durst Organization’s 20 and 30 Halletts Point residential development on the Astoria waterfront in Queens. The two-tower development is the second phase of a larger master plan by Durst that includes seven sites in the Halletts Point section of Astoria. When completed, the project will bring 647 residential units and a waterfront esplanade.
Southwest corner of 20 (left) and 30 (right) Halletts Point from the East River.
Designed by Handel Architects, the 27 and 32-story towers feature a curtain wall facade with dark blue green glass and white spandrel panels at the podiums.
South facade of 30 Halletts Point from the East River.
South facade of 30 Halletts Point from 1st Street.
South facade of 30 Halletts Point from 1st Street.
Looking up at the east facade of 30 Halletts Point.
Northeast corner of 20 Halletts Point from 26th Avenue.
North facade of 30 Halletts Point from the waterfront esplanade.
Looking east towards 10 Halletts Point from the connecting plaza between the two towers.
Southwest corner of 20 Halletts Point from the waterfront esplanade.
Looking down onto 20 Halletts Point, podium rooftop terraces, and the connecting plaza at the ground.
Looking down onto the podium rooftop terraces and the connecting plaza at the ground.
Looking down onto 30 Halletts Point, podium rooftop terraces, and the connecting plaza at the ground.
Looking south towards 30 Halletts Point and the Upper East Side.
Close-up of the curtain wall facade (right) and The Durst Organization's Sven residential tower in Long Island City, also by Handel Architects.
Close-up of the curtain wall facade.
Close-up of the curtain wall facade.
Rooftop Views
Looking south towards the Upper East Side and Midtown.
Looking south towards Roosevelt Island and the East River waterfront.
Looking southwest towards the Upper East Side.
Looking northwest towards East Harlem.
Looking southeast towards Long Island City.
Looking north towards 20 Halletts Point and Randalls Island.
A corner residence under construction with a west facing view towards the Upper East Side.
Architect: Handel Architects; Structural Engineer: Severud Associates; MEP Engineer: Jaros, Baum & Bolles; Facade Consultant: Socotec; Landscape Architect: Starr Whitehouse; General Contractor: UAG; Developer: The Durst Organization; Program: Residential Rental; Location: Astoria, Queens, NY; Completion: 2024.
4 Hudson Square - Disney NYC Headquarters
SOM · Hudson Square · 2024
Northeast corner from the intersection of Varick Street and Vandam Street.
Facade installation has wrapped up for everywhere except the ground floor at The Walt Disney Company’s 22-story New York headquarters at 4 Hudson Square in Lower Manhattan from Silverstein Properties. Designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM), the full block development features a massing with setbacks that afford terraces for employees and two towers. In total, the development includes 1.2 million gross square feet with floor plates up to 85,000 square feet.
East facade from Spring Street.
In dialog with the neighborhood’s masonry and stone material palette, the development features a facade of single-, double- and triple-columned green terracotta panels, large picture windows, and bronze toned metal accents.
Southwest corner from Hudson Street.
West facade from Hudson Street.
Architect: Skidmore Owings & Merrill; Interiors: Gensler; Developer: Silverstein Properties; Structural Engineer: Thornton Tomasetti; MEP Engineer: Jaros, Baum & Bolles; Facade Consultant: R.A. Heintges & Associates; Landscape Architect: SCAPE; General Contractor: Lendlease; Client: The Walt Disney Company; Program: Office, Retail; Location: Hudson Square, New York, NY; Completion: 2024.
Tour: Museum of Modern Art Renovation and Expansion
The Museum of Modern Art is ready for it’s reopening later this month, with expanded gallery space, renovations to existing entry and gallery spaces, and a new museum store.
Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Gensler, the MoMA’s expansion occupies two sites to the west of the existing museum. Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects‘ Folk Art Museum occupied the first site from its completion in 2001 until demolition in 2014. The rest of the expansion is located in the base of the adjacent Jean Nouvel tower 53 West 53.
The museum’s main entrance is now marked by a large cantilevered metal canopy at West 53rd Street. Inside, the lobby ceiling height has been raised and the museum store has been relocated one floor below to open up views outward from the lobby. Ticketing desks have also been installed in new locations in the ground floor lobby.
A new blade stair serves as the circulation spine of the new gallery spaces in the west expansion. A solid six inch divider hangs from the roof structure to support the bead blast stainless steel panels and solid northern oak treads and risers. Glass balustrades are cantilevered off of the stair and held in place by pins. The walls of the stairway are clad in bird’s eye maple with acoustic micro-perforations. A separate blackened stainless steel stair at the sixth floor leads to the cafe.
The museum’s expansion includes 47,000 square feet of new and renovated gallery space. Along with the five floors of new gallery space in the west building, some of the galleries added in the Taniguchi expansion of 2004 have also been renovated and reconfigured.
Architects: Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler; Client: The Museum of Modern Art; Program: Museum; Location: Midtown, New York, NY; Completion: October 2019.
Construction Tour: 15 Hudson Yards and The Shed
Northwest corner of 15 Hudson Yards.
Superstructure has topped out at 15 Hudson Yards, the 900-foot-tall residential tower at Related Companies and Oxford Development Group's Hudson Yards mega development on the Far West Side. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Rockwell Group, the 88-story tower will offer both condo and rental units. Sales for the 285 one- to four-bedroom condo units are underway and have already surpassed 50 percent sold.
The view south towards Lower Manhattan from 15 Hudson Yards.
The tower will offer 40,000-square-feet of amenities spread across multiple floors. A fitness center, spa, and 75-foot pool occupy the 50th floor. On the 51st floor residents will have access to a club room, two corner private dining suites, screening and performance room, wine storage and tasting room, business center, and work spaces. At the top floor, residents will enjoy panoramic views from additional amenity spaces for relaxing and dining.
The view east towards 10 Hudson Yards from 15 Hudson Yards.
The view north towards 35 Hudson Yards from 15 Hudson Yards.
Curtain wall installation at 15 Hudson Yards.
Looking up at the north facade of 15 Hudson Yards.
Looking up at 30 Hudson Yards (left), 15 Hudson Yards (center), 35 Hudson Yards (right), and 55 Hudson Yards (far right).
Looking north along 11th Avenue.
Hudson Yards rising on the Hudson River waterfront.
View of Hudson Yards from 12th Avenue.
Architects: Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Rockwell Group (Design Architects), Ismael Leyva Architects (Architect of Record); Developers: Related Companies, Oxford Properties Group; Program: Residential, Retail; Location: Hudson Yards, New York, NY; Completion: 2018.
Columbia University Manhattanville Campus
Southeast corner of the Science Center.
Construction is wrapping up at Renzo Piano's Jerome L. Greene Science Center, the first building for Columbia University's Manhattanville Campus expansion. Set to open Spring 2017, the 9-story, 450,000 square-foot building will bring together researchers from across the University including the Columbia University Medical Center, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. The ground floor will house the Center for Education and Outreach, a public education center focused on brain science that will serve the general public and K-12 schools.
Looking east towards the Manhattanville Expansion campus.
Work is also wrapping up on the Lenfest Center for the Arts, the smaller structure located adjacent to the Science Center. Also designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW), the Center for the Arts houses galleries, performance spaces, a screening room, and offices in an eight-story structure. A unitized panel system of white metal and glass clads the exterior, a similar look to the firm's new Whitney Museum at the High Line.
Southeast corner of the Science Center.
The third RPBW building in Columbia University's master plan for the Manhattanville campus, the Academic Conference Center, has reached ground level. Located south of the Science Center, it will house a 400-seat auditorium and state-of-the-art seminar and meeting rooms inside a five-story structure.
The site of the Academic Conference Center (center) and the Science Center (right).
South facade of the Science Center(center) and Center for the Arts (left) from the 125th Street subway station.
Southeast corner of the Science Center at West 129th Street.
Ground floor façade of the Science Center.
Architects: Renzo Piano Building Workshop with Davis Brody Bond LLP (Science Center and Center for the Arts), RPBW with Dattner Architects (Academic Conference Center); Structure: WSP; MEP Engineer: Jaros, Baum & Bolles; Facade Consultant: IBA; Landscape Architect: James Corner Field Operations; Program: Education; Location: Manhattanville, New York, NY; Completion: 2017 (Science Center and Center for the Arts), 2018 (Academic Conference Center).
Whitney Museum of American Art
Ungainly and awkward, the Whitney's $422 million, 220,000-square-foot new home asserts its presence at the High Line's southern edge. Renzo Piano's addition to the Meatpacking neighborhood is indicative of the district's decade-long transformation from working class industrial to trendy tourist destination. What started in the previous decade with the conversion of unused elevated train tracks into the High Line elevated park, has culminated in a major new museum for the city in a neighborhood now dominated by buildings from an elite group of architects.
The Whitney Museum of American Art, begun with a collection of artwork amassed by Gertrude Whitney in 1908, has called several places home in its first century of existence. Most recently the museum was located on the Upper East Side, in a building designed by Marcel Breuer in 1966, at the corner of Madison Avenue and East 75th Street. Breuer's building, with its stone clad, inverted ziggurat form, was also considered at its opening to be awkward and panned for its unusual massing. With time, the building gained acceptance but was never able to adequately hold the museum's vast collection.
The Whitney Museum by Marcel Breuer, 1966.
Many attempts were made to expand the museum at its Upper East Side location, with designs from Norman Foster, Michael Graves, OMA, and finally Renzo Piano. Given the scale of the neighborhood and the historic value of buildings on site and adjacent, large scale expansion plans proved too contentious to realize.
With the advent of the High Line in 2009, properties that surrounded the park gained new value and the exodus of industrial businesses in the area left behind many sites ripe for new construction. Realizing the futility of its expansion plans at the Breuer building, the Whitney brokered a deal with the city of New York for a site at the southern entrance to the High Line and occupied by a meatpacking business. While the business has remained on the northern half of the massive site, the Whitney's deal with the city allows them to acquire the remaining half should the business relocate elsewhere.
Program study models.
Massing study models.
Presentation model of final design.
The Whitney Museum by Marcel Breuer, 1966.
Piano's building is arranged with gallery spaces and other public functions in the southern half, while offices for the museum's staff, education programs, and other support spaces occupy the northern half. At the primary public corner, where Gansevoort intersects Washington Street, the Whitney engages the public at both street level and the High Line as the building's form folds skyward at the corner of Gansevoort and Washington Street, creating a multi-story volume enclosed by vast expanses of glass. Piano uses this element in conjunction with the more solidly clad galleries cantilevered above to subtly invoke the Breuer building's iconic massing, a motif that will reoccur throughout. The folded facade also evokes Diller Scofidio + Renfro's overhaul of Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hull (renovated, 2009), where a double height entry is also formed by peeling up the building's original travertine facade. For the Whitney, this space houses Danny Meyer's latest restaurant, Untitled. Stretching along the restaurant's Gansevoort Street frontage, the open kitchen visually dominates the space. At night, the scene from the street is reminiscent of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, with the patrons spread out along the bar and the glow of Robert Indiana's illuminated word "EAT" artwork hanging above.
Southeast corner of the Whitney (left) and the southern entrance to the High Line (right).
Untitled restaurant from Gansevoort Street.
Restaurant entrance off of Gansevoort Street.
View of the restaurant bar from Gansevoort Street.
Main museum entrance from Gansevoort Street.
View of the museum shop at the southwest corner from Gansevoort Street.
Museum visitors enter mid-block off of Gansevoort Street into a glass enclosed 6,000 square-foot lobby that is adjacent to a free gallery and a museum shop consisting of open shelving to maintain visual porosity. Galleries on the upper floors can be accessed by a grand stair or by one of four elevators, featuring commissioned artwork in the elevator cab by the artist Richard Artschwager. Glazing above the elevator entry at ground level allows the visitor to see the machinery needed to operate, continuing an oft used theme by Piano. The concrete and steel of the stair serves as another subtle reference to the Breuer building.
Main museum entrance from Gansevoort Street.
Museum lobby.
Museum shop shelving.
Special exhibitions are housed on the eighth floor, which currently features "America is Hard to See." The show serves as a means for the Whitney to reexamine American art since 1900 with works from their vast collection that has long gone unseen. The galleries at this level feature the typical white walls and reclaimed wide-plank pine flooring found throughout the museum. Because of its top floor location, Piano has designed the ceilings as a grid work that allows in light from the sawtooth skylights, resulting in a much brighter and inviting environment to wander the galleries than the Breuer building. There, the dark tones of the stone flooring and the concrete waffle ceiling gave the galleries a heavy and dark atmosphere. Although Piano's galleries are a sharp turn from the previous aesthetic, he continually references the Breuer ceilings with the varying take on grids created at each level of galleries. On some floors the ceiling grid is present but solid while other floors reveal the conduit and ductwork of necessary services in a modern building, a muted and vertical take on Piano's first museum, the Pompidou.
On floors six and seven reside the permanent collection galleries in spaces unmatched by their previous home. Now visitors can peruse the work in vast spaces that give the pieces enough real estate to stand on their own but still create a dialogue with adjacent works. With the added space comes spectacular moments of rest and reflection, where visitors can sit at one of two large walls of glass and take in the High Line in the morning light from the east facade or the setting sun from the west facade's window. Moments of connection to the surrounding neighborhood can even be experienced while in the midst of perusing the galleries, as slots of space cut through gallery walls leading to the facade's glazing.
Not to be outdone, the 13,000-square-feet of outdoor galleries and terraces provide additional opportunities to pause and reflect. Views of the city skyline serve as a backdrop to outdoor cafe seating and several large sculptures. On the fifth floor outdoor gallery, the Whitney has commissioned a site specific work by Mary Heilmann, Mary Heilmann: Sunset, which features colorful chairs scattered about the terrace that visitors can use. Also included is a projected film and panels of colorful shapes that mimic the stepping of the building's terraces.
At the northern half of the building, Piano has located the support space for the Whitney's staff, which has grown steadily in recent years. Like the galleries, these spaces are generous in size and provide ample light and views to the neighborhood.
With the opening of the Whitney, the city has gained another spectacular cultural destination. Yes, it's exterior is a quirky wrapper, more muscle than beauty, but the interior more than compensates with its spot on take on the contemporary museum. Piano expertly crafts a museum that accommodates the visitor with the right mix of galleries and leisure space, allowing the museum to coexist with, rather than be consumed by, the commercial program of contemporary institutions. Like the Breuer building, Piano's structure will likely be embraced by most over time, as visitors forgive its exterior clumsiness for the expertly crafted experience within.
Architect: Renzo Piano Building Workshop (Design Architect), Cooper Robertson (Executive Architect); Structural Engineer: Robert Silman Associates: MEP Engineer: Jaros, Baum & Bolles; Facade Consultant: Heintges; Landscape Architect: Piet Oudolf with Mathews Nielson Landscape Architect; General Contractor: Turner Construction; Client: Whitney Museum of American Art; Program: Museum; Location: Meatpacking District, New York, NY; Completion: 2015.
7 Bryant Park
Installation of curtain wall is almost complete at Pei Cobb Freed's 7 Bryant Park, a 450-foot-tall, 30-story office building on the fringes of Bryant Park in Midtown Manhattan. The tower joins other recent additions to the area, like COOKFOX's angular One Bryant Park. Overall, the tower's form is a simple rectangular extrusion with requisite zoning setback on the tenth floor and a conical subtraction at the northeast corner. This rather odd massing gestures faces the park and provides the building's signature element. The design of the curtain wall is a basic glass and linen finish stainless steel spandrel panel that gives the building a heavily striped appearance, bucking the recent trend of suppressing the solid spandrels in other new office buildings throughout the city. When completed later this year, the tower will bring 471,000 rentable square feet to the area, including 6,200 square feet of ground floor retail.
Northeast corner from Bryant Park.
Looking west from Bryant Park with One Bryant Park (far right) and 7 Bryant Park (far left).
Frozen fountain in Bryant Park.
Northeast corner from Sixth Avenue.
Detail of canopy and conical incision at the northeast corner.
North façade from West 40th Street.
Northwest corner from West 40th Street.
East façade from Sixth Avenue.
Southeast corner from Sixth Avenue.
Architects: Pei Cobb Freed & Partners Architects LLP; Structural Engineer: Thornton Tomasetti; MEP Engineer: Jaros Baum & Bolles; Developer: Hines with Pacolet Milliken Enterprises; Program: Office, Retail; Location: Midtown, New York, NY; Completion:2015.
