3 Columbus Circle

3 Columbus Circle - NYC

3 Columbus Circle

New York, NY 10019

(Archidata, NY)

Tishman Interiors served as Construction Manager for the renovation and modernization of the 29-story, 625,000-square-foot office tower at 3 Columbus Circle. The scope of work included a new curtain wall, renovating the building lobby, new subway entrances, infilling steel to roof setbacks, mechanical and electrical equipment upgrades and a life safety system generator installation.

Article observer.com

By Matt Chaban 11/22/10

Columbus Circle has been the victim of bad architecture for decades... Now comes the latest controversy, over 3 Columbus Circle, a building formerly known as 1775 Broadway that is not actually located on the roundabout but behind the museum. Bought by Joseph Moinian early last decade, his firm undertook a $100 million refurbishment of the project in 2008, which involved glassing over the facade of what was once known as the GM Building, when it was built in the 1920s.

Because much of the original art deco masonry was left in place, and the new glass curtain wall was simply slapped in front, the building has come in for criticism from the blogosphere, architecture critics and even a very powerful neighbor trying to take the building over and possibly tear it down.

Today, The Journal penned an apologia of sorts for the renovations, talking with the architect responsible for the project, Peter Wang. Among the challenges facing him:

For one, he was dealing with a building that dates to the mid-1920s, which means the structure had myriad built-in challenges, like low ceilings and forests of columns. Further, because there were financial and structural limitations, he couldn’t strip the facade down to its steel girders and replace the masonry with a glass one. Rather, Mr. Wang had to snap a glass facade onto the existing one-something that becomes readily apparent in the evening, when the glass becomes transparent, and the old masonry peeks out from underneath.

“It was determined that the brick facade of this building actually performed a very important structural function,” Mr. Wang says. “So it would have been very difficult to remove the old facade entirely, because new curtain wall glass systems are not designed structurally.”