Edgar Street Towers, Lower Manhattan, New York, design 2008-09
images: IwamotoScott

Edgar Street Towers was produced by IwamotoScott for the Downtown Alliance as part of the larger design study, Five Principals for Greenwich South, led by Architecture Research Office, Beyer Blinder Belle and OPEN. Responding to the brief for a tower of the 'near future', our design creates an urban catalyst that adapts in form and geometry to both the local site's lost east-west connector (Edgar) street and the extended site's fortuitous and perceivable alignment with 5th Ave. to the north. The building is formed from two towers intertwining around a central void that twists vertically from the juncture of Greenwich and Edgar Streets and the mouth of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel upward to the crown's 5th Ave. alignment. The mixed use building contains cultural, civic, commercial, residential programs, around a public atrium combining fiberoptic daylighting from above and bio-filtering terraria underfoot, situated to bridge over Edgar Street's newly enhanced east-west urban connectivity. The tower's exoskeletal structural skin and tapering silhouette culminate at the top, wherein New York's Skyscraper Museum is rehoused where it arguably belongs -- with an observation deck in the sky.
rendering above: Transparent House
photos of Zuccotti Park exhibition: Craig Scott
Edgar Street Towers
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