443 Greenwich Street

Reimagining a Bookbindery

Once an abandoned bookbindery, 443 Greenwich is an eight-story historic landmark building in Manhattan’s trendy Tribeca neighborhood. In 2010, the building converted to 53 luxury residential condominiums that required the careful restoration of its traditional masonry façade alongside modern glass technologies to provide visual transparency and dramatic city views.

We provided façade engineering services to Costas Kondylis and Partners for this 215,000-square-foot project.

Highlights

• Our multidisciplinary approach for this project combined façade engineering, design coordination and documentation for the glass and steel structures.
• The 4,000-square-foot interior courtyard features a large elliptical walkable glass skylight over the swimming pool.
• The 15-foot-by-25-foot clear insulating laminated glass skylight is supported by an efficient, light-weight, two-way tensegrity structure, which consists of thin stainless steel rods spanning across an outer elliptical compression ring.
• Two elegant 107-foot-high all-glass enclosed exterior staircases provide vertical egress to the courtyard level.
• Slip resistant laminated glass treads and landings are supported by thin steel tube framing, set back from the outer walls.
• Interior stairs in the townhouse and penthouse apartments are supported by load-bearing laminated glass walls, engineered to localize glass failure and prevent progressive collapse.