In buildings, Mass Concrete is frequently used for mat foundations, blast resistant walls, transfer girders or deep beams. However, there are no hard and fast rules to determine if your concrete element qualifies.
For over a decade, GMS has served as the Woolworth Building’s structural engineer. Presently, the upper portion of this landmark (30th Floor-60th Floor) is being converted to residential apartments designed by Thierry Despont.
As the New York Times points out, in the Financial District, there is a pedestrian bridge to nowhere …for the moment, at least. The footbridge over Trinity Place between Rector and Thames Streets used to connect Trinity Church to the parish house, which was demolished last August.
252 East 57th Street is a 60-story luxury mixed-use tower in Midtown Manhattan. The building’s residential program is organized with 173 rental units on the lower floors and 93 high-end, two- to five-bedroom condominiums on the 26th floor and above. Residential amenities include elegant porte cochère, automated parking, a double-height residents’ lounge, and a private spa with a 75-foot indoor swimming pool. The commercial component of the development includes retail and a public school.
Earlier this week, Gary Steficek, founding partner of Gilsanz Murray Steficek, spoke at the 6th annual IUAV International Conference on Tall Buildings in Milan. The program was divided into two sessions, one on new technologies and a second on new uses for existing tall buildings. His presentation, “Reinventing Woolworth: Adaptive Reuse of an Historic Skyscraper,” was part of the Existing Structures Session.
To complement this year’s conference in New York of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the CTBUH Journal has published a case study of the redevelopment work that GMS is undertaking with Alchemy Properties and SLCE Architects at the Woolworth Building.
Fast-paced construction within a dense urban environment like New York City has several distinctive rationales, approaches, constraints, and requirements for careful coordination.
The luxury residential development at 150 Charles Street in Manhattan’s West Village is nearing completion. 98 condominium units with estimated asking prices ranging from $4-$40 million (or approximately $7,000 per square foot) comprise the 300,000 square-foot building, situated on an acre lot. The project incorporates the structure of the existing 4-story Whitehall warehouse for the lower podium floors. Above, two towers are joined by a middle volume and cascade down to the Hudson River, allowing for spectacular views.
QLIC, the residential development at Queens Plaza North between 23rd and 24th Streets in Long Island City, is almost finished. The 21-story tower holds 421 rental units, double-height retail at grade and parking below grade. The building’s 28,000 SF of amenity space includes a rooftop pool, cabanas, a roof deck with an open-air theater and barbecue, a landscaped courtyard with a fire pit, media lounge, game room, fitness center, and other amenities on an occupied terrace.
The reason we became engineers and technical architects is that we love to make things better – we learn how things work, take things apart and fix them! So a trip to the factory to see how things that we have designed are actually being constructed is always exciting. For a recent project, we did just that.