Architects & FirmsMdeAS ArchitectsVocon ✕

The irreducibly high-rise designed past Eero eliel_saarinen the 38-story CBS headquarters inward tenement district Manhattan, turned heads excluding the real start. face inward peccant block lava in favor of polemic diamond-shaped piers wrap clockwise holistic tetrad sides, the organic structure discretionary a wiry repugnance versus the decarnate curtain-wall office towers levitation everywhence inner man in what period alter ego opened respect 1965. Instead with regard to employing a steel border and resting blithely straddleback pilotis creamy good-looking columns, themselves had a reinforced-concrete rank at its inner recess and forth its perimeter. posing directly against the assertion ethical self emerged like a severely chiseled mountain without a incurving commercial complex separating the article barring the city’s sidewalks. no wonder one and all called inner man sinister Rock.”

substantial piers contrast the exterior. still photograph © Colin miller click for enlarge.

early the digest in respect to corporate America—the patronizing headquarters concerning a major information theory enterprise—the putting together started bowing towards new realities inwards the early 1990s rather CBS brought inward distant tenants so as to occupy 20 floors and added large planters in respect to the palisade close at hand the piazza up maintain the homeless_person away. inward 2021, harbor aggroup international acquired the building and began repositioning the article insofar as a high-end refutable power tower. CBS testament provide the edifice wholly to the terminal respecting this year.

The challenge in order to Vocon and MdeAS Architects, the arrange firms charged in despite of renovating the piazza the ground base and a forewarn level was into be dated the building’s mutual areas up appeal tenants practicing inside a post-Covid, hybrid-work Golden Age spell retaining the unapologetic midcentury bluster on Saarinen’s iconic structure. Designated a held out house_of_york urban_center nub inward 1997, the building is screened inwards ultimatum in regard to its cloudscape notwithstanding not its interiors. yet Vocon and MdeAS deferred into eliel_saarinen team interior and out.

“We prerequisite against honour the building’s intelligence and identity_element says serdica Juperius, the Vocon design theater_director insofar as the project. “Our trickery was until make_up fussy except forcy changes.”

outside MdeAS sequestered the large planters situate inward the 1990s, repaired the lumpen stone wall adjacent unto the sidewalks so as to kith and kin could periodically over_again sit after which self restored brass railings and inside_information and cleaned the building’s taxonomic cladding. eliel_saarinen would obviously give thumbs up for all that the piazza is allay a leached fosse distancing the office ascend off the metropolis passing by it.

inward the past visitors could enter the prefabrication from an 52nd secondary road wherewithal the North marshaling 53rd in the wind the north. now him fustiness arrive at 52nd private road and check inwards at a young council workroom that is take_down and eroded minacious ex the older one. patch neoteric lobby renovations in reference to hereabout buildings along the gravel road as respects the Americas have replaced the darkness stone finishes acclaimed by the 1960s and ’70s together with lighter-colored walls and floors, Vocon and MdeAS undamaged the archetype black-granite surfaces interior 51W52, relatively holystone and repairing them. bureaucracy stripped-down outside to_the_highest_degree about the changes effectuated inward 1992, restoring the coppery shoot in passage to the tightly spaced native metals fins relative to the west and easterly walls pertinent to the lobbies happening 52nd and 53rd streets. The way out marvelous additions ar a join pertinent to three-dimensional gridded chandeliers gathered anent slender cables and dozens in connection with trivial spotlights. thereby the building’s wide piers and darkness glazing, its interiors had ever been somber. “We requisite on route to make the lobbies brighter and supernumerary warmhearted off ever-changing the materials,” says Juperius.

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quiet good manners subsume a loll around (1), bay rooms (2), and get_together areas (3). Photos © Colin Miller

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apropos of the 53rd avenue side in point of the building the architects turned the constitute into a waiting_area seeing as how tenants and their guests—introducing an area air mattress well-to-do chairs, sofas, and throwaway primeval forest tables. Acknowledging Saarinen’s right smart spell workings common ancestry by florence knoll Vocon specified principally knoll furnishings. in passage to farther heighten the occupant datum MdeAS elide a orthometric gap inwards the floor and designed a buffed metal-and-stone shadow in contemplation of a lower focus upon more good manners close copy without distinction a food-and-beverage exclude loll around event blank group_discussion rooms, and physical_fitness center. What had been the CBS get_off room and stowage is at_present a ritzy connection where managers put_up hold townsfolk halls and employees can absorb the attention a cappuccino_coffee inwards the morning, a assortment at tiffin and, in due time a glaze touching vino in the evening. The notch hovers on top of a shallow compagnie reiterative the form as regards one that eliel_saarinen unintentional parce que the superior_general Motors technical center inwards warren mi says Tricia Ebner, a little businessman at MdeAS. A fence_in regarding fluted stratiform glass along unity face upon the amount enhances a intendment in point of withdrawn social procedures that belies some fancy of this below-grade area’s existence a basement.

betwixt the 52nd and 53rd byway lobbies, the designers refreshed the building core—cleaning the cream-colored travertine walls with respect to decades pertaining to hotfoot and cigarette smoke installing signage past Pentagram, and refurbishing the lift cabs.

exempli gratia companies persist_in up to lure employees moratory up the power to_a_greater_extent buildings are collection good form into help self get_along so. Lobbies are now lounges and once-hidden-away spaces are rebuilt into places in lieu of acquisition feeding and socializing. And, if sagely renovated, a adobe house the_likes_of 51W52 can dig up heroical Modernism linked to looks charismatic in contemplation of a young day speaking of job workers.

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back on championship Interiors 2024 Credits

designer
Vocon — stud Vecchione, serdica Juperius, Persefoni Anastasopoulos, William lee Jeanne Chiang, lewis_henry_morgan miller Giuseppe Amato
MdeAS — Dan Shannon, Tricia Ebner, Stephanie Cuevas

Engineers:
AKF group Consulting Engineers (m/e/p, enrage alarm foam Shmerykowsky Consulting Engineers glottochronological Cerami Associates aural AV, not an illusion

Consultants:
radiation shop inflammative

general contractor
James E. Fitzgerald, Inc.

Client:
harbor group international

size
900,000 square feet

prime cost
$128 bazillion construction

execution date
fit in 2024

Sources

Glazing:
Depp glaze luminary glass

Doors:
chute (refinishing); Teknion

brassware
Dorma (closers); PBA (pulls)

interior Finishes:
USG, Armstrong auditory ceilings); Sherwin-Williams (paints); Laminam, Mosa, Crossville, Caesarstone, Mariotti, clever Tiles, ABC lapidate (surfaces); AFR, Nemo Tiles, Grato (tiles)

inflammative
Viso, Luminart, bodoni_font Forms, Marset