To design a skyscraper in New York City is every architect’s dream. I had an opportunity to fulfill this dream when the office decided to participate in a competition (in collaboration with the New York office of Skidmore Owings and Merrill) to design the new headquarter for the New York Times newspaper (NYT).

The site for the competition is located in Mid-Town Manhattan, to the west of Times Square. As a joint development between NYT and the developer Forest-City-Ratner. The project included space for the newspaper’s offices , as well as new retail units and speculative offices for lease . New York City’s zoning laws required the building’s massing to step-back from the site’s perimeter. The newspaper would occupy the lower levels with the larger footprints (coded in orange in the model), with speculative offices on the typical upper levels (coded in white).

We began the design process by analyzing the extremely complex program requirements of the New York Times with a number of adjacency diagrams. We considered carefully the relationships between the various departments of the newspaper and arrived at a scheme that favored the ‘newsroom’ as the heart and focal point of all the spaces.

The key spatial relationships were studied with a large-scale (1:1/2 in) physical model, representing the newspaper’s program on the tower’s lower levels. Designing with the aid of such a large-scale model allowed the team to fully visualize and develop the client’s complex spatial requirements.

Using this large-scale model, we further developed the proposed connections to and from the ‘newsroom’ through a central atrium space. This atrium, accessible to all floors by a monumental staircase was to become a hub for circulation between the different departments. Located at the top of the stair and adjacent to the ‘newsroom’ we proposed the creation of an enclosed winter garden. This space would provide a calm and contemplative gathering space for the newspaper’s staff.

This organizational concept was then translated into architectural floor plans. Special consideration was given to provide clear separation between the floors for the newspaper’s offices (in orange) and the other speculative office floors (in yellow).

We then applied our organizational approach to the exterior design of the tower, complete with zoning and other constraints. Refining the scheme in this way was a highly iterative process, producing many study models in various scales.

This sequence of four models illustrates the evolution of our exterior design concept. Starting from the left, the wood block model (1) represents our massing/zoning concept at its most basic. The structural model (2) studies the different elevator cores serving the newspaper’s and other floors. The model in silver (3) constitutes our first attempt to translate our initial ideas developed from the RTD tower in LA (see early projects) to our design for the NYT. Finally, the model to the right (4) shows our proposal with a glass curtain wall enveloping the tower’s exterior.

Clad in glass with a white ceramic frit to filter natural light, our proposal for the new NYT headquarter sought to distinguish itself from the surrounding buildings through it lightness and transparency. Mullions running the length of the building further accentuated the sinuous verticality of the design while providing support for the building’s external cleaning gantry.

The tower’s slender massing and sensual curves pay homage to the classic renderings of the New York skyscrapers by Hugh Ferriss, but re-imagined for the new century.

Our submission for the New York Times tower competition was the result of many days and nights of hard work by our team. Although we were not selected as the official winner of the competition, our scheme presented an opportunity to bring together many ideas that we had been developing in the office. The proposal remains one of my most memorable charrette experiences at the office.