Stephen DeSimone , president ofDeSimone Consulting Engineersin New York , is engineer a new form of skyscraper . He ’s working on structures unlike anything else in the domain : Supertall buildings with unusually small footmark .
Ahuge building microphone boom is underwayalong a few blocks of Midtown Manhattan . A perfect violent storm of economic circumstances are producing very grandiloquent building that are also very , very thin . And this yr has felt like a race to see which outrageously pricy supertall building could sell the most expensive penthouse . DeSimone is one of just a few firms that are working to engineer these unusual specimen , each the result of a complex serial of negotiations involving setback law , aviation right deals , and market forces .
the right way now , the business firm is focused on a building contrive by the architect Robert A.M. Stern : 220 Central Park South . Its penthousecould become the most expensive penthouse ever sold in New York , at $ 175 million , while$1.1 billion - Charles Frederick Worth of condoshave already been sold in the bare building .
For DeSimone , what ’s really incredible about 220 has nothing to do with the ridiculous economics of the market forces that create it . Because if you look at the footprint of the 950 - foot - tall construction , you ’ll note that it ’s only 53 feet wide-cut . That ’s an prospect ratio of 18:1 , a structural challenge that is pretty much unprecedented except along this stretch of real estate .
Building in a Wind Tunnel
On buildings this tall and thin , the agency the wind reacts to the pattern of the facade is just as important as anything else about the social structure . “ What mass do n’t sympathise is that buildings do n’t want to be flowing , ” says DeSimone . When most of us think of tall building , we imagine air flux around sleek glass facades . But buildings that look like canvas or wing have the slick tendency to act like them too , generating lift and dangerous structural force . On tall , lean buildings like 220 , the goal is to discover up the nothingness — catching it on nook , cranny , and ornaments to decelerate it down .
Images : DeSimone Consulting Engineers .
That means that DeSimone and his squad in reality establish image spell of the building and then essay them in a wind tunnel . There , in the acute rush of wind , architect can simulate the force that will pummel their creations every Clarence Day . “ We ’ve done task before where we sit there at the confidential information tunnel with the architect and a glue gun , ” he says . This is where the architectural designs actually fill reality . At that head , the engine driver have to take the track . “ It ’s not of necessity about what the architect need , ” say DeSimone . “ It ’s about : listen , this is how we ’re going to make it work . ”
When you look at the neoclassic limestone frontage of 220 , wind tunnels are n’t the first matter that bounce to listen . But that ’s where this staid building began its life . “ That was a process we start before we even put pen to paper , ” DeSimone says .
Everything’s a Prototype
The designer DeSimone work with are often pejoratively referred to as “ starchitects . ” They ’re celebrity intriguer who hightail it small shop , more dress shop than department store . DeSimone ’s occupation is to take their fanciful image and ideas and turn them into math . What ’s tough is that every construction is singular . “ In our business , everything we do is a one - off epitome , ” DeSimone aver . “ A lot of the things these architects are essay to do have never been done before — they ’re using materials in a way that may not have been used before . ”
Take Frank Gehry ’s IAC Building on the west side of Manhattan — a building where every unmarried pillar is splatter at an slant . This novel design actually made the structure more inflexible . “ We learned apace that by splosh all these columns , you create a howling amount of horizontal force , ” says DeSimone . Then there ’s Neil Denari ’s HL23 , a residential tower that literally hang over the High Line . To make that body of work , DeSimone ’s squad had to build lank steel skeleton of hybridization - bracing on its face , thus cantilevering it over the commons .
IAC byC - Monster / cc ; HL23 byForgemind ArchiMedia / cc
Another of their client , Zaha Hadid , is building a 62 - story tower call 1000 Museum Tower in Miami in good order now . It take two years to exercise out the construction ’s construction . Originally , the sinuous alloy munition that curl around its window dressing were purely cosmetic — the building was pretty normal , but it looked like an alien living course with an exoskeleton .
DeSimone visualise out a way to make that decorative exoskeleton part of the construction ’s structural technology . They ’re made out of vacuous precast panels ( produced in Dubai ) that are then filled with cementum when they ’re set up . It actually is an exoskeleton , just Hadid ’s design imply from the beginning .
Even though each building is a unique , one - off anomaly , noesis build up . you could see this in the phylogeny of twisting building . What began with Gehry ’s IAC build — where every single column is slop — made its style into a twisting tower in Abu Dhabi called the Regent Emirates Pearl .
The piece of work DeSimone did on those projects is now help him construct a dyad of twisting towers in Miami designed by the Danish architect Bjarke Ingels . Each of the buildings start as a square and then twist itself into a big rectangle as it rise — an gist DeSimone call “ shapeshifting . ” This elongation on the upper floors is for a very wide-eyed grounds : Top units betray for more . Why waste space on priming - level units when everyone wants a penthouse ? The twisting , meanwhile , concede each unit of measurement idealistic views .
It reckon unbelievable architecturally , but it ’s also a ruthless developer ’s dream , and DeSimone rule a way to make the tidy sum even sharp . Most tall building in Miami are built with hearty concrete , which takes up wanted floor area in grandiloquent buildings . By building with composite steel walls , the engine driver managed to come down the thickness of those load - bearing walls by half . It was more expensive in the short term , but the extra outer space on each flooring plan paid for the more expensive steel itself .
When architects win commissioning , the success of their work depend not just on their designers , but on their partners — from local firm who leave on - the - earth service in foreign city , to the consulting locomotive engineer like DeSimone who must figure out the purgative behind the computer architecture . It ’s a comparatively ungrateful job — after all , it ’s rare that you take heed the structural engineer name .
“ [ designer ] are the celebrities , and it ’s our job to work behind the scenes and facilitate them realize that vision , ” DeSimone enjoin . But he ’s OK with it — getting credit is n’t the only reward . There ’s also the boot of the challenge . “ No matter how improbable the building you ’re work on today is , there ’s always a taller one coming . ”
reach the author at[email protected ] .
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