One Liberty Place sketches
Unfinished design compared to the finished design
I’ll post more pictures of this soon
Here’s KPF’s extremely postmodern proposal for the Bank of the Southwest Tower, which lost to Helmut Jahn in the design competition.
Very cool! What are the names of the books?
Here are a bunch of unbuilt postmodern skyscrapers from the 80s and 90s:
Rockefeller Center West by KPF, 823 ft, NYC 1988
Canary Wharf Office Tower by KPF, London 1986
Ameritrust Center by KPF, Cleveland, 1,198 ft, 1988
Block 265 supertall by KPF, 1,231 ft, Houston 1982
Travelstead Tower at 383 Madison Avenue, 1,080 ft, NYC 1985
New Orleans office tower by Cesar Pelli, 1983
Indiana Tower, Indianapolis, by Cesar Pelli 1980. 750 ft limestone observation tower with a spiraling interior ramp to the top.
Society Center by Cesar Pelli, Hartford CT, 696 ft, late 1980s
Houston skyscrapers by Kevin Roche, 1981
Denver skyscrapers by Kevin Roche, 1981
300 East Pratt Street by Kevin Roche, Baltimore 1988, 32 stories
Republic Bank Building by Michael Graves, San Antonio 1982
Hotel and Entertainment complex at 43rd street and 8th Avenue, NYC, by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, 1994
Jacksonville office towers by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, 1985
David Childs/SOM original proposal for Time Warner Center, NYC 1989
Dearborn Center, Chicago, by Adrian Smith/SOM, 1989. 1,135 ft
180 Allyn Street, Hartford CT, by SOM (1990) 801 ft
Cutter Financial Center, Hartford CT, by Russell Gibson von Dohlen Architects, 878 ft 1988
Columbus Center, NYC, by Moshe Safdie 1985. 70 stories ~900 ft
Times Square redevelopment, 1984. Buildings and master plan by Philip Johnson/John Burgee, Big Apple sculpture by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown
Block 37 Chicago, mall and towers, by Helmut Jahn 1983
60 Wall Street proposal by Helmut Jahn, NYC 1983
Broadway and 52nd Street tower by Helmut Jahn, NYC 1985
Fountain Square West by Helmut Jahn, Cincinnati 1985
South Ferry Plaza by Helmut Jahn, NYC 1985, over 1,000 ft
Helmut Jahn Architecture and Urbanism 1986 and Helmut Jahn by North Miller 1986, but the second book came in a red hardcover that was not advertised on Amazon
wow those Hartford proposals would have seriously elevated the skyline versus others in the country. Today the Insurance Capital of the World isn’t all that impressive.
Yeah it would have been a very cool and dramatic skyline, since the three tallest cancelled skyscrapers each had interesting crowns/spires. Hartford and Houston were the cities whose skylines were most impacted by the late '80s-early '90s economic slowdown. If all the unbuilt Hartford proposals had been realized, Boston’s John Hancock Tower would be relegated to third tallest in New England.
I still think Hartford’s current skyline is pretty decent for a city its size, though. It’s not even in the top three largest cities in CT and it still has the most high rises.
Losing competition entries for the Humana Building, Louisville KY, by Jahn, Pelli, and Foster:
Helmut Jahn (this design was recycled for a skyscraper in Durban, South Africa)
Cesar Pelli
Norman Foster
Winning design by Michael Graves
Awesome work as always. Travelstead gives me real supervillain headquarters vibes.
Federal Reserve Bank of New York Tower, by Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates, 1969. A 46 story, 715 foot skyscraper lifted on four massive 165 foot tall stilts or piloti. It would have been connected to the existing Renaissance style bank building with a sky bridge. Excavation for this tower began, but when space in a nearby building became available, the bank decided to move there instead of completing this building.
I actually really like this. A modernized version would be great. Far better than some of the unorthodox stuff from that period
Early version of 7WTC with black glass, exposed cladding and a single, covered bridge
Unsure of the date but most likely from the 60s; it looks identical to this black model you can see in the corner of this 1969 photo
383 Madison, from my new KPF book Kohn Pendersen Fox Architecture & Urbanism 1986-1992
I have that book too! It’s great.
Oh, what I would do to get into the complete KPF and SOM archives…
Here’s a cool old NYT article about KPF from 1986, when they were still a young up-and-coming firm.