Wednesday, February 13, 2008

2 Columbus Circle Site Visit


We got to visit 2 Columbus Circle today during construction tech which was great. This is the existing building which is, ummm . . . lets say a little dense.


They are doing a pretty major renovation and dramatically modifying the curtain wall. The new art galleries / restaurant will have these funky slice windows through their walls and floors/ceilings which you can see in the rendering here.


All the new structure is in place now and most of the new curtain wall is in. The structure of the 'slices' was pretty cool because they had to remove a chunk of the outside girder and so had to pick up that load in this tiny little fins hidden behind the window mullions. you can sort of see it here - this is looking up at a slice in the wall (the plywood strip is covering one of the slices that will connect two floors)



Holy curtain wall batman. These brackets have a hinge on either side because the main body of window panels curves. The bracket is bolted and welded to the steel girder which supports the floor and then the curtain wall assembly gets hung on it.




Impressions in of the columns- The original structure was built in the 60s and they tell me these are artifacts from the formwork they used. I don't really get it though.

ummmm . . . right - you got all that?

I snuck out on the staging and got some pics of what the new facade will look like. These are terracotta tiles and you can see on of the slices running vertically here.

1 comment:

Brian May said...

So then ... what keeps me from falling through the floor slices?