But the designers of 40 Tenth Avenue in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District managed to prevent pools of darkness from flooding the High Line next to it by sidestepping the sun. The commercial tower’s glass curtain wall recedes and breaks into eye-catching facets on the north and south sides, allowing concentrations of solar rays to find their way to the elevated park and nearby streets.
Studio Gang, the Chicago-based architecture firm led by Jeanne Gang, designed the 139,000-square-foot building using a strategy it describes as “solar carving.” The architects mapped the sun’s annual course to determine which parts of the nearly finished 12-story tower to slice away and sheathed portions of those sections in tilted angular panes of glass.
Multiple benefits will accrue from this gemlike surface to those inside and outside the building, said Weston Walker, the design principal of Studio Gang’s New York office. Coupled with high-performance, low-reflectivity glass, the optimized geometry will minimize heat gain and reduce glare for drivers on the West Side Highway, which runs alongside the building. It will also discourage migratory birds from striking. The sculpting “creates visual noise that makes it easier for the birds to detect the building and fly around it,” Walker said.
Inside, the facets will frame dynamic views of the Hudson River and add interesting bumps to office or amenity spaces.
The building, which is scheduled to open in April, has been designed with minimum ceiling heights of almost 16 feet and outdoor space on every floor but one. An 8,000-square-foot second-floor terrace will sit alongside the High Line, and there will be a 10,000-square-foot communal roof deck.
“We call it the lighthouse,” said Jared Epstein, the vice president of Aurora Capital Associates, which developed the building with William Gottlieb Real Estate. (The cost, he said, while declining to give specifics, was “well over” $200 million.)
Epstein said he hoped the tower would entice leaders in technology, finance, the media or advertising to the Meatpacking District. A Genesis automobile marketing center and restaurant will occupy the base, and office-floor tenants will be announced early next year.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.