Daniel Libeskind recently unveiled a soaring green skyscraper for New York that is constructed of mostly glass and stands to be the city’s tallest residential structure at 900 feet. Dubbed the New York Tower at One Madison Avenue, the 54-story apartment building features a series of ‘sky gardens‘ cut out from its facade that provide green space and terraced balconies for residents. Terraced gardens are becoming quite popular as a means for people to have an outdoor connection, fresh air, and even a place to grow their own food.
There’s a certain competitiveness involved in designing a skyscraper that drives designs to be bigger, better, greener and more innovative. Often the designs for skyscrapers are unveiled and promoted extensively by very proud architects. Daniel Libeskind, on the other hand, has been considerably modest about his newest skyscraper design, which has no other name but the New York Tower.
Rumors have circulated for over a year about the New York Tower, but nothing had been seen of it until recently, when Libeskind’s new book, Counterpoint, was released on November 18th. The pictures you see here were actually scanned from his book, as they are the only known images of the design.
As for the other green amenities, few details have been released. We can most likely expect the residential project to have great great indoor air quality, and be very energy and water efficient thanks to the insular effects of the sky gardens. No word as to whether this project would seek LEED certification. The images you see here were created over a year ago, so it is likely the project has undergone significant changes since and hopefully has become even greener.
As the architect tells New York Magazine, “We didn’t just fill up the tower, we’ve taken space away [from the apartments] to create the gardens,” which are actually balconies tucked within the envelope. “It’s as if nature has come back into the city.”
Via Designboom
I do like the overall design, however not knowing is the “project would seek LEED certification” and is being promoted and marketed as the “Green Tower” is borderline “Greenwashing”. It seem like every architect around the globe is trying to brand themself and monopolize on the green marketing phenomia…