New York City’s Murray Hill district is not exactly known for landmark architecture and design. However, that is beginning to change thanks to a progressive endeavor by Fisher Brothers and Gemini Residential, LLC. The 36-story, 372-unit residential tower being constructed at 225 East 39th Street, located on Tunnel Exit Street between East 39th and 40th streets in Murray Hill is highlighting the “curve” as a shape of things to come in residential building design.
Photo Credit: www.yimbyforums.com
The owners chose Handel Architects to lead the design efforts for the building measuring 430-feet tall with 373,248 square feet of space in its entirety. This tower is a very unique project in many ways.
Inspired by the Fisher Brother’s vision, the designers at Handel Architects decided to highlight a glass tower featuring a curving glass façade, offering some visual relief to an area comprised of less remarkable residential architecture. The glass entrance is set back from the street, and the gently curving form creates breathing room on the corner. This reflective curtain wall, transparent base, and shallow plaza form a truly unique stature on the eastside of Manhattan.
The owners and designers knew this was not going to be an easy facade to build, so construction manager Plaza Construction selected one of the best-known, successful firms in the city for glass facade installation, W&W Glass.
W&W Glass professionals knew it would take the utmost in creativity and design to make this project reflect the owner’s dream. The glazier selected a proven unitized curtain wall system for this application that could meet the challenges, the Sotawall® HYBRID-WALL® system. With a 25-year history, the Sotawall® HYBRID-WALL® system was originally developed as an alternative to traditional window wall systems. Window walls are typically limited in their architectural aesthetic and performance capabilities. Sotawall® HYBRID-WALL® has greater flexibility in design to allow for larger expanses of glazing, flush external appearance (capless framing), greater adjustability in anchorage (no embeds required) and a variety of custom feature profiles and infill materials available.
In order to have a continuous air and water barrier, these hybrid curtain wall systems span slab to slab similar to window wall, however, they have a built-in slab edge cover panel and are fully gasketed similar to a traditional unitized curtain wall providing much higher air and water penetration resistance and multiple levels of redundancy.
Another clever and unique aspect of this project is the use of large bands of the JURA stone product as a spandrel infill and accent. Widely used in making jewelry, JURA stone comes from the Jura hills in France and is a porous, light beige natural stone. W&W Glass used curtain wall frames to hold the stone in panels that measured 4-feet by 10-feet and totaled over 153,000-square feet. The technique is creative and the effect is magnificent.
Slated for completion in the spring of 2017, residents will be greeted by an expansive interior lobby with high ceilings, undulated slatted walls, and a spiral staircase leading to the amenity floor. Amenities will include a fitness center, yoga studio, game room, children’s playroom, lounge, library, swimming pool, hot tub, and sauna. Atop the building will sit a roof deck complete with cabanas and BBQ stations, and residents will find further outdoor oasis upon the terrace and inside the courtyard garden.
For more information on this project and all the projects completed and underway by the W&W Glass, go to wwglass.com and look under the portfolio section.
W&W Glass, LLC is a family owned business with a 70-year history in the metal and glass industry, one of the largest metal and glass companies in the New York metropolitan area and the largest supplier of structural glass systems in the country. We have over two decades of experience in the design and installation of various building enclosure systems, including stick-built curtain walls, pre-glazed unitized curtain walls, Pilkington Planar™ structural glass facades, and custom metal and glass enclosure systems. We install all of our work with our own dedicated union labor force. W&W is consistently the largest employer of glaziers in the NY metropolitan area.
