One57 was designed by Christian de Portzamparc, with WSP Cantor Seinuk as structural engineer. It is 75 storeys, with 92 residences stacked above a hotel occupying the lower part of the building. Ceilings in the apartments reach eleven feet.
The facade is the design. Portzamparc drew the glass as a set of shallow vertical folds and colour bands running the height of the tower, so the wall is shallowly faceted across its whole height, and the light it throws shifts through the day rather than holding one flat reflection.
Indoors the faceting means the window wall is not consistently perpendicular to the rooms behind it. Where a fold falls inside an apartment the glass turns a few degrees, and a run of joinery or a seating plan set parallel to one part of the wall will sit at an angle to the next. Take the angle off the plan of that apartment rather than assuming a rectangular room.
The building divides at the hotel floors, so residential apartments sit well above the street and the lower levels answer to a different use entirely.
Within walking distance
Building facts
Built
2009
Floors
75
Residences
132
New York City Primary Land Use Tax Lot Output, version 26v1. Tax lot 1010107506.