The experimental minds of RB Systems have published a new concept for a plot of vacant land at 265 West 45th Street, in Midtown West, and today YIMBY has a first look at their sky-high renderings. As Manhattan begins to embrace taller and slimmer supertall towers that meet the intense demand of the residential market, the proposal explores how office space could take advantage of the same emerging typology.
That's a lot of building for so little floor area. I love the concept, but it would need to be situated at a larger site for this to be viable for someone.
It would be nice to see more non-rectangular buildings in the NYC skyline. This concept reminds me of the Calatrava's Chicago Spire - a project that broke ground several years ago and was terminated.
"with a multi-ton tuned mass damper controlled by software to counteract high-velocity winds". An interesting concept for when we have our next three-day Manhattan blackout as a result of the next Sandy-like suoerstorm.
Stan has a point; a TMD should be passive whenever possible. As a designer and fabricator of large Tuned Mass Dampers we always aim to keep it as simple as possible. I suspect that the reason they would go this way is because of the limited floor-to-floor height. However we've managed to deal with these challenges before. Would be cool if this made it out of the concept phase...
