New York, New York, USA
Designed by American Prize for Architecture laureate Norman Foster, the new 15 Penn Plaza—the mammoth 2.8 million-square-foot, 57-story office project—is being developed by Vornado Realty Trust and is part of the much larger 7.4 million-square-foot Penn District master plan in Midtown, Manhattan.
The redevelopment aims to transform and revitalize the area between Sixth and Seventh Avenues and West 32nd and West 34th Streets with a total of eight new buildings—all of which would surround the 109-year-old James A. Farley Building and Skidmore Owings & Merrill‘s newly opened Moynihan Train Hall, as well as One and Two Penn Plaza and Madison Square Garden, which itself has also seen grandiose proposals to be re-imagined.
The new 1,200-ft tower will replace the shuttered 1,700-room Hotel Pennsylvania on Seventh Avenue between West 32nd and 33rd Streets.
Norman Foster’s design replaces the earlier original scheme by Pelli Clarke Pelli, which featured multiple levels of slightly different sized floor plate triads cantilevered over large, green spaces and the latest design by Rafael Vinoly, which evened out the floorplates and bulked up the building while reducing the green spaces.
Foster + Partners reveals their rendition, which resembles different sized articulated glass containers with 27 landscape outdoor spaces, alternating from the sides to the front and back facades every fourth floor.
Penn 15 will be divided into five tiers that encompass a number of office floors that would be serviced by its own set of express elevators.
The highest office level will be 1,165 feet high on the 61st level of the supertall. Inside Penn 15 will be 27 landscaped outdoor terraces, 17- to 19-foot-high ceiling heights, and 90- to 100-foot lease spans.
The elevation rendering detail highlights both the facade and the many sets of landscaped terraces, and the mechanical extension with its flat roof parapet that brings the architectural height to 1,270 feet tall.
The ground floor has the main lobby facing Seventh Avenue, the egress and elevator cores largely positioned along West 33rd Street, a food hall almost the size of the lobby and three retail spaces along West 32nd Street. On the northeastern corner is a vehicular entrance.
The crown has a much taller extrusion of the final rectangular volume that continues the design motif of stacked glass boxes, as opposed to the previous version that culminated with a short mechanical extension covered in horizontal metal grilles.
Project: Penn 15
Architects: Foster + Partners
Client: Vornado Realty
Renderings: DBOX
