The largest of its stores globally, Adidas’ new North American flagship at 565 Fifth Avenue in New York City spans four floors, including a lower level, and occupies approximately 45,000 sf. The overall design was conceived with the theme of sports and high school stadiums. In particular, the entry tunnel, reminiscent of a stadium entry, is made up almost entirely of glass with some stainless steel hardware and connectors; this load bearing glass structure at street level includes a glass ceiling and glass walls. The previous storefront was replaced with new glass panels spanning over 16 feet, supported only at the base and the head.
Interior renovation for the store included creating larger floor openings to create 2-story volumes inside of the original cast-in-place concrete building. Within those 2-story volumes, bleacher-like staircases ascend. In addition to the glass storefront, GMS provided engineering of the stair structures and miscellaneous items like a scoreboard, light trusses, LED walls, and sculptures throughout the store.
A new rain screen system will be installed over the existing glass façade; it will be supported on the 2nd and 3rd floors and cantilever up to the 4th floor. A wind tunnel study was performed to reduce the cladding pressures enabling the designers to keep the storefront glass and the rain screen structure as thin as possible.
The rain screen will bebuilt out of two layers of chain link fencing reminiscent of fences surrounding high school fields. The chain link is supported by stainless steel diagonal bars which span to stainless steel vertical fins. The chain link is set on a diagonal to resemble the signature logo for Adidas branding.
Designed as a grid structure, the load path consisted of vertical elements and diagonal elements overlayed. A 3-D model was created to investigate how both systems interacted with each other and worked together to resist and support the loads of the screen. The weight of the screen itself, wind-load, plus the weight of atmospheric ice loads and wind acting on the atmospheric ice (which would increase the screen’s surface area) were factors in determining the design of the screen.
Support for the screen structure consisted of new struts connected through pockets in the existing façade at key locations along the 2nd and 3rd floors. These struts extend to support a tube steel frame and girt system to receive the screen framing members. This secondary framing allowed for a limited number of penetrations through the existing building façade. Struts have been installed in preparation to build the screen within the coming months.
Team
Client: Adidas
Architect: Gensler
Façade Consultant: GMS
Structural Engineer: Rosenwasser/Grossman Consulting Engineers, P.C.
General Contractor: J.T. Magen & Company Inc.
Sub-Contractors: Mistral (Façade); Koenig Iron Works Inc (Steel)