56 Case Study
May 2024
Fifth Avenue Reno
KPF reclads a prominent Fifth Avenue office building with custom oversize IGUs. Design architect: Kohn Pedersen Fox Structural engineering: GMS Electrical engineering: Cosentini Civil engineering: KPFF Lighting design: TM Light AV/Acoustics: Acoustics Longman Lindsey Signage/wayfinding: Gensler Fire and life safety consultant: William Vitacco Associates Facade consultant: Front Vertical Transportation: Edgett Williams Consulting Group Facade Access: ENTEK General contractor: Turner Client representative: Brookfield Properties Facade system: Island Exterior Fabricators Glass: Interpane In 2018, Jared Kushner sold 666 Fifth Avenue to Brookfield Properties. Originally built in 1957, the midcentury skyscraper was due for an overhaul. This began with a renumbering of the address, which was changed to 660 to avoid satanic associations. The tower’s original facade, an early unitized system made from aluminum, was extremely energy inefficient by today’s standards. After more than a half century of service, it was removed through a coordinated effort above Fifth Avenue, one of Manhattan’s busiest pedestrian thoroughfares: The construction team hauled the disassembled panels down through the building’s elevator core. Brookfield then hired Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) to design a new facade. To maximize views, the firm opted for a curtain wall system—a choice that was complicated by the age of the existing structure. Unable to hang the curtain wall from the tower’s thin slab edge, as is typical in new construction, the architects could only suspend the system from the building’s perimeter columns. Taking advantage of the relatively short 18-foot span between perimeter columns (usually closer to 30 feet in a standard Class A office), KPF worked with German glazier Interpane to develop an oversized insulated glass unit fitted to this distance. Coincidentally, the building’s floor-to-floor height nearly matched Interpane’s 10-foot standard width for jumbo glass panels. When width is preset by machine standardization, length—created through an extrusion process—is less constrained. This allowed for the fabrication of approximately 18-by-10-foot panels, each rotated to fit the dimensions of 660 Fifth Avenue’s perimeter structure, offering unobstructed views between columns. Lauren Schmidt, principal at KPF, told AN, “In the end the fabricators came back to us and said it’s actually easier [to manufacture large panels] because there’s less handling, less cuts, and less waste.”
R AIMUND KOCH/COURTESY KPF
R AIMUND KOCH/COURTESY KPF
Above left: 660 Fifth has high visibility on a famous stretch of Fifth Avenue. Above right: During construction, old and new existed simultaneously. Right: Detail showing the oversize IGUs.
R AIMUND KOCH/COURTESY KPF