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Culture and climate, in their relationship to each other and to architectural form, have played a central role in the practice of FXFOWLE. Indian architect and educator Charles Correa has said, “At the deep-structure level, Climate conditions Culture and its expression, its rites and rituals.” Culture and climate do not form an opposition; they are intertwined. Cognizance of this position grounds our work both in its immediate environment and in the traditions of modernism. Cultural affinities and sensitivities infuse architecture with a sense of place; climatic response promotes an association between architecture and the natural environment.

Climatic specificity is a generator of design; attention to the character of the environment, especially in relation to sustainability, underlies each of our projects. A reliance on mechanical building systems has led recent generations of architects to ignore centuries of lessons about how to design in response to climate, contributing to a culture of energy waste. Passive and active strategies for climate control, hand in hand with new building technologies, embed response to climate into our architecture. We often study vernacular architecture—design approaches that have evolved gradually as a response to place—as we develop sustainability techniques attuned to the particulars of a site. Local customs of enhancing or offsetting aspects of climate, modified to suit a modern aesthetic, provide inspiration for form and technique; in addition, they reinforce the idea that a building is not just suited to its setting but at home in it.

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Local culture is as significant a design influence as local climate in the projects in this volume. Culture encompasses art, religion, language, literature, poetry, and more. We choose which cultural aspects to bring to a project, and then inflect them in relation to design logic and material execution. Our process generally begins with an analysis of the site, physical, conceptual, even spiritual. Sources and references are filtered to generate form in a thoughtful, layered manner.

At Eleven Times Square in New York City, a sculptural composition of forms reflects the solar orientation of the site as well as the rich urban environment. The tower responds to Times Square as a district of business as well as a district of spectacle. Building massing and urban relationships are incorporated into the overall form, and the facade, which utilizes a high-performance glazed curtain wall, is a responsive skin that allows ample daylighting, optimizes views, and provides environmental control. Cultural and climatic responses are aligned in an integrated architecture.

The union of culture and climate is made manifest at Renaissance Tower in Istanbul. The geometric configuration of the tower responds to local traditions.

The building skin, both ornamental and functional, draws on regional screening methods and Islamic motifs.

Greater Noida Housing, 1,700 residential units in the north of India, has a structure and logic that emphasize natural ventilation. The local climate and cultural expectations of inhabitation offered key starting points that distinguish this project from similar building types in varying contexts.

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The Museum of the Built Environment explores the role of social, environmental, and economic issues in the development of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the wider Arabian peninsula. Indigenous geologic forms inspired by UNESCO World Heritage sites provide the architectural models for a museum in which installations relate to both the history and the future of the region.

Climatic and cultural influences are critical factors that serve to differentiate architecture from one place to another. Integrating these fields drives all stages of our design, from concept to organizational logic to details of form, material, and function. The resulting body of work has disparate forms and expressions but a shared attitude to climate- and culture-sensitive design strategies. Filtering all that is offered by a site, looking to the forces that impact place, is key to the design process; both analytic and interpretive, this methodology informs not only the individual building but, over time, the collective practice.

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Renaissance Tower 16 Greater Noida Housing 32 Museum of the Built Environment 46 Eleven Times Square 60

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Analogies Thomas Fisher

Thomas Fisher is a professor of architecture and dean of the College of Design at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

1 Robert Grudin, The Grace of Great Things: Creativity and Innovation (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1990), 27.

What does it mean to talk about architecture as a filter?

And what does this analogy tell us about the four buildings in this book and also about architecture and analogies more generally? The writer Robert Grudin has observed that creative ideas do not come out of nowhere fully formed, like the proverbial light bulb going off. Instead, we use analogies to compare something new with something we already know, creating what does not yet exist on a foundation of what does. While the number of possible comparisons remains almost infinite, Grudin argues that analogies fall into two categories: intradisciplinary analogies, which are drawn from the same field, and interdisciplinary ones, drawn from another field.1 We judge an analogy by how well it enables us achieve something new. So how has the analogy of a filter informed the four buildings here? These buildings stand in very different locations—Istanbul, Noida (near New Delhi), Riyadh, and New York City—and so FXFOWLE has had to filter a lot of information about context, climate, and culture. But probing a little deeper, we can see how the person and the place affect the application of an analogy. Senior partner Dan Kaplan led the design of two of the buildings; senior partner Sudhir Jambhekar, the other two.

When working in cultures each of them knows well—the United States and India, respectively—the approach to the design was more intradisciplinary.

In Greater Noida Housing, Jambhekar alludes to the architecture of Louis Kahn, the mid-twentieth-century American architect who worked in India and who influenced many practitioners there. The mix of concrete shear walls and infill housing units at Noida recalls Kahn’s Salk Institute in La Jolla, and the offset forms and fin walls that extend above the top floors echo the animated skyline of Kahn’s Richards Medical Center in Philadelphia. Jambhekar filtered Kahn’s ideas in response to a different program and place—middle-class housing in the hot Indian climate—but the intradisciplinary influence of Kahn’s work on this new and imaginative residential development is undeniable.

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Kaplan’s design for Eleven Times Square in New York also refers to other architecture. The illuminated base of the building evokes the brightly lit signage covering the facades of buildings along Forty-second Street and nearby Times Square. Meanwhile, the outwardly canted glass tower that rises from that base and angles toward the corner exaggerates the looming quality of Midtown Manhattan skyscrapers and also channels the playful, fantasylike aspects of other buildings in New York’s theater district. In both cases, the architects’ deep knowledge of the culture and context in which they worked has made them more comfortable in drawing connections to their experience of a place.

Familiarity and intradisciplinary analogies go hand in hand.

The other two buildings in this book show interdisciplinarity at work. Kaplan’s Renaissance Tower in Istanbul has a pointed top, like the many prayer towers in that predominantly Muslim city. But the building’s folded and faceted form also looks like an enormous body cloaked in the full-length, long-sleeved clothing of many Muslim men and women; this nearly complete cover is worn for reasons both religious and climatic. Kaplan’s reference to Gustav Klimt’s painting The Kiss, with its angular couple wrapped in an enveloping robe, both reflects his thinking about the building in terms of the body and shows the influence that abstract Islamic ornament has had on modern Western art.

Aspects of foreign cultures filter through the work of creative people, sometimes consciously and sometimes not.

The same interdisciplinary approach occurs in Jambhekar’s Museum of the Built Environment in Riyadh. Here, the filter analogy seems almost literal: the building sifts people as they move through the structure horizontally via skyways and a monorail and vertically to shops, restaurants, offices, and museum.

Internal and external circulation patterns are likewise split by the building as it bridges over a wadi, a recessed open space that runs under the structure as part of a continuous pedestrian path. While the traditional masonry architecture of Saudi Arabia influenced Jambhekar’s design, the museum also recalls something quite different: its shimmering, glass skin of triangular scales and its bent form, uplifted at each end, evoke a giant fish about to swim off among the towers that will soon surround it. That fishlike form seems particularly appealing in a hot, dry country and especially appropriate in a peninsula nation surrounded by seas, but this design—like Renaissance Tower—also shows the increasingly cultural and biological nature of the analogies contemporary architects now draw.

Ample reason for these new analogies exists. Modern architecture represented not just a formal and technological break from the past but also a profound shift in the analogies architects use when designing. Most premodern designers referred to traditional buildings in an intradisciplinary way, reinterpreting a classic or vernacular precedent while making incremental changes or improvements to it. With modernism, designers began, instead, to compare buildings

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to non-architectural phenomena—cars, ships, and planes.

And after the brief counter-reformation of postmodernism, in which intradisciplinary analogies to older buildings came back in vogue, current architecture has largely embraced both approaches, with the same architects sometimes drawing analogies to other buildings and sometimes to other fields—especially, in recent years, to biology and ecology—when called for by culture and context. The better the architects, the better they are in filtering out the inappropriate and seizing upon the essential.

Beyond helping to develop overall form, analogies serve to clarify internal arrangements and details of plans and sections, as evidenced in the buildings here. The idea of a filter seems particularly useful, since it refers both to devices that sort out different materials and to membranes that screen different liquids or gases. The Riyadh museum and the Noida housing work more like filtering devices. The museum functions, in section, like a giant sieve, directing the flow of people to diverse program elements by means of escalators, elevators, and ramps.

The housing performs as a sieve in plan: ingeniously offset wings and open apartment plans allow for cross ventilation and views in multiple directions, enhancing the livability of each apartment.

Both buildings recall a time when modern architecture had a greater permeability and porosity than it typically does now, with more interpenetrating spaces and operable exterior envelopes than building codes and mechanical systems allow today.

At Eleven Times Square and Renaissance Tower, stacked floors and sealed walls make the buildings operate more like membranes.

The New York building uses different kinds of glass, with varying degrees of reflectivity, to filter light, keep out heat, and minimize glare. The Istanbul tower does something similar. A gold-colored scrim, draped like a garment over the building’s envelope, enhances the filtering capabilities of the glass curtain wall by controlling solar gain yet also maintains exterior views and interior privacy.

The power of an analogy lies in what it allows us to do and in what it says about what we have done, and in that regard, the idea of these four buildings acting like filters has served them well. The analogy has allowed their architects to sort through the myriad information and influences that surround every project and arrive at a distillation in four compelling and revealing works of architecture. The buildings draw interest not only because of the simplicity and clarity of thinking behind each one but also because of their memorable qualities, all driven by a strong, coherent analogy. In this way, these buildings also say a lot about what underlies the best design. Poor design usually arises either from a lack of ideas, all too common in the modern built environment, or from too many unresolved ideas, all too common in the work of inexperienced designers. Alternatively, good design—evident in the four buildings here—typically has a single broad and powerful idea or analogy that allows an architect to explore its possibilities and to play with its implications in diverse ways. In the end, all good design demands that we filter.

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RE NAISSANCE TOWER ISTANBU L, TU RK EY, 2014, RENAI SSA N CE CON STR UCTI ON 9 0 0,0 0 0 S Q UARE FE ET, LEED GOLD (A N TI CI PATED)

I am always mindful of the profound connection between culture and climate, a connection that has been illuminated in Charles Correa’s writings in particular. If you drill back far enough and down deep enough, culture emerges as a response to climate and vice versa. Through design, you try to knit them back together.

Dan Kaplan Istanbul’s forty-two-story Renaissance Tower draws its design from a cultural reading of place.

Istanbul, a city both ancient and modern, stands at the junction of Europe and Asia, of East and West. The region offers a limitless territory of ornament and expression. We looked not just to analysis of this fertile domain but to interpretation. The office tower brings together sculptural massing, which is rooted in place; a solar-responsive skin, which alludes to Islamic tradition; and numerous green spaces. Like Istanbul itself, the building is culturally specific yet internationally resonant; it operates locally and also within a larger field of worldwide architectural concerns.

Istanbul is divided by the Bosphorus, a narrow strait. The Old City is situated on the western, European side; Renaissance Tower is on the Asian side, ten kilometers to the east, at the intersection of two major highways. The first tall building that visitors to the city encounter on the route from Sabiha Gökçen Airport to the center of Istanbul, it is a marker, a welcome to the city.

During the development of the design, we studied different spheres of cultural references.

Early in the project the unique geographic and historic landscape of Cappadocia in Central Turkey—towerlike habitations emerging from rock formations—proved influential. The Islamic prohibition on figurative imagery, which generated a culture with an almost obsessive relationship to ornament, was likewise of interest. In Islamic architecture, nearly every surface is adorned; sophisticated techniques map intricate geometric patterns onto architectural form. The basic figure of the tower—a faceted obelisk—is rooted in Islamic ornamental geometries that contribute to overall form, building skin, and plaza design and simultaneously take note of the character of the site.

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Sustainability goals provided another set of design parameters. The chiseled surface of the obelisk takes cues from solar response as well as from Ottoman geometric motifs. Insolation modeling suggested that rotating the tower thirty-three degrees from the base would ensure optimum solar control.

Governing sky-exposure planes were applied to the rotated form to produce the overall geometries.

Islamic vernacular architecture was brought to bear as the design advanced.

Geometrically ornamented Islamic mashrabiya screens both temper direct sunlight and limit views from the street into residences. We wanted to replicate the qualities of the mashrabiya on the building skin. The solution, a stippled golden scrim that drapes over the glass surface of the building, incorporates ornament-like patterning, is tuned to the solar orientation, and reduces heat load.

Among the wide-ranging sources for the golden sunscreen were the sensibilities of the “exotic Orient,� where gold and bronze are metals of sophistication; the innovative garments of Paco Rabanne; the cloak in Klimt’s iconic painting The Kiss; and the work of Andy Warhol. For us, the building skin represents a merger of cultural and climatic goals, an incorporation without pastiche. The cultural references act as symbols, but symbols that are integrated into the logic and function of the building.

Renaissance Tower also unites opposites in new forms of synthesis. The building is a modern skyscraper, but it is imbued with a textural richness and ornamentation appropriate in the East. The exterior

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skin controls the sun, but it creates transparency. The skin expresses the local culture, but it also refers to a larger aesthetic vocabulary.

Green spaces laced through the tower signify an environmental emphasis.

Three groupings of sky gardens are positioned at key exposures. These twostory gardens provide a thermal buffer between exterior and interior, access to fresh air, and places of relaxation for office workers. A larger garden with a weave of planting and architectural elements, including a wood conference pod, crowns the tower. Plaza-level gardens respond to occupants and to the locale: a water garden reflects the tower and sky; a sunken garden admits light and greenery to the below-grade spaces; and a piazza introduces a gathering space. These green areas temper the verticality and closed environment inherent to any high-rise building.

The tower is constructed primarily from reinforced concrete; the spire is framed in structural steel. The four-sided structural glazed, unitized glass curtain wall has full-depth shadow boxes. Structural glass members span the sky gardens, and the podium is distinguished by a refined glass wall. Inside, columns are spaced at 10.3 meters, generating flexible open floor plates. A raised floor system permits easy customization and incorporates an energy-efficient displacement ventilation system. The sky gardens on the office floors designate areas for formal and informal meetings, allowing building occupants to enjoy natural light in a multifunctional area within the workplace.

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GRE ATE R NO IDA HOU SI N G NO IDA, IND IA, 2008 ANSAL P RO P E RTIE S AND I N FR ASTR UCTUR E 47 ACRE S

Three things set the design for Noida apart. The architectural expression is based on a structure of shear walls and flat plates. Passive sustainability tactics emphasize natural ventilation and relationship to climate and are articulated within the building.

Manipulation of the ground plane forms a topography for the complex.

Sudhir Jambhekar Greater Noida Housing is a middle-income housing development for a region in the north of India, not far from New Delhi. The 47-acre site accommodates 1,700 units of housing and 3,700 parking spaces. The massing and structure of the buildings translate specifics of culture and climate into integrated and innovative architecture.

Noida is hot and dry; rain falls seldom. Hot, dusty winds blow from the west during summer months, and cool winds move in from the southeast during monsoon season. In this area of India, natural ventilation is preferred, especially for bedrooms, kitchens, and bathrooms.

Although our design for the complex allows for some air conditioning, we made the most of the inclination toward natural ventilation; in addition, minimizing solar heat gain was a vital part of our scheme.

The aesthetic of India proved influential for functional and visual properties alike.

We studied and interpreted intricately adorned Haveli architecture, which creates a sense of community in its internal common spaces: these promote social engagement, offer opportunities for shading, and cultivate conditions that further natural ventilation.

The red hues and earth tones of the region appear in the red terra-cotta on the shear walls of the housing structure. By addressing climate and culture, the architecture of Noida acknowledges the foundations of Indian architecture.

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As we developed the massing for the project, we analyzed the impact of building height, ground coverage, and circulation, and we studied the effects of solar orientation. The buildings are arrayed across the site from north to south; taller structures are positioned at the northern edge to allow air and sunlight to reach the lower structures. Varying heights (from seven to forty-three stories) create an urban rhythm for the development.

The buildings interweave solids and voids; residential units are interspersed with cultural and amenity spaces.

Each floor is composed of three to four apartments organized in a T or a cross.

Open, column-free living spaces span the relatively narrow width of the buildings and have exposures on both sides; this configuration, while primarily designed for ventilation, also emphasizes daylighting and views. Assemblies of units generate the overall building volume. A central core accommodates elevators, stairs, and entry to each apartment. Even the core has windows for ventilation.

A modular system comprises concrete shear walls and flat plate construction and does not require columns or beams.

The use of concrete conforms to an Indian tradition of construction; the thermal lag is suited to the hot climate. Glass that minimizes thermal gain saves energy and provides maximum transparency.

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Openings in the facades of the towers create deep terraces that are used as community gathering spaces.

A sense of visual porosity reflects the local preference for natural ventilation and communal/social spaces.

The landscape design reinforces the disposition of the buildings. The apartment structures are integrated into a large planted area. Evaporation and plant transpiration work in concert to lower ambient temperatures, giving rise to a microclimate on the site. The site design includes three types of open spaces, fostering both active and passive recreation. Sculpted ground planes with organic landscaping encourage walking for exercise and relaxation. Low points in the landscape have a more natural character. And the areas around the towers are refined, with hybrids of plazas and gardens, some covered, that allow residents to gather.

The two main entrances to the housing development are at opposite ends of the site. Cars are restricted to a peripheral loop and underground parking, maximizing space devoted to landscape. The parking, in fact, forms the landscape: soil excavated for the parking area is shaped into berms that create an undulating topography on the previously flat surface. The exterior areas also provide opportunities for water collection and graywater treatment.

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Building Placement Design 1 These schemes were combined to site the buildings. Larger structures are located on northern edge.

Building Placement Design 2 Smaller buildings are organized in a layered manner that relates to the path of the sun.

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Sunlight The buildings are situated to maximize sun exposure.

Wind The site receives hot west winds during summer months and cool southeast winds during monsoon months.

Tower Height Taller structures placed toward the north boundary of the site allow air flow and sunlight to reach lower structures.

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Green Space Extensive green belts and parks on the site cool the area via transpiration.

A commercial belt and setback act as noise buffers.

Circulation Two main entrances on opposite sides of the site minimize distances that must be traveled by car and restrict vehicles to the periphery of the housing development.

Water Collection The topography has been molded to promote water collection.

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Environmental and Air Flow Analysis 1

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Vegetation at indoor gardens provides air purification and solar shading

2 Southern orientation allows the majority of buildings to take advantage of sun exposure during the winter 3 Canopies for downdraft protection 4 Minimal ground disturbance during excavation

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5 Favorable topography for water collection 6 Non-absorbent roofing materials reduce heat-island effect 7 Porous layout of modules allows for cross ventilation and natural cooling 8 Openings in the garage admit natural light and increase air flow

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We have created many windows of opportunity, in the Museum of the Built Environment, to experience both the building, the surrounding district, and even the nation and its people. The building is about learning by observation and by experiencing the space. Sudhir Jambhekar The King Abdullah Financial District is a new 55-million-square-foot mixed-use urban community in Riyadh. Among its public buildings is the Museum of the Built Environment, which explores the role of social, economic, and environmental issues in the development of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the larger region. The museum will exhibit works related to the history of the arts and architecture on the Arabian peninsula, as well as document trends in sustainable thinking and their role in the future of the built environment.

The museum puts the traditionally private culture of Saudi Arabia on display, creating a building for residents and visitors.

The design principles of MOBE are bound with the planning of KAFD as a whole.

A sunken wadi runs through the development, bisecting the museum’s site, a large plaza.

A wadi is a temporary desert riverbed—a valley that is wet during heavy rains. Central to the inhabitation of the desert, a wadi allows limited agriculture in a severe environment.

At KAFD, the wadi has been transformed into a linear pedestrian park that connects key buildings. The two UNESCO World Heritage sites in Saudi Arabia—Madâin Sâlih and At-Turaif—offered design inspiration for the museum. The juxtaposition of worked stone and natural rock, formed by erosion and other geologic processes, is echoed in a dynamic carved volume that nestles around the artificial topography of the wadi.

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The program draws the public into the building, activating the space at all times.

Along with permanent and temporary exhibition galleries are a restaurant, bookstores, research and education center, auditorium, public spaces including atrium, administration and support spaces, monorail, and parking. Three district-wide circulation systems are integrated into the fabric of the building: the building connects to KAFD via the monorail (two levels above ground), a skywalk (one level above ground), and the wadi (one level below ground). The MOBE station on the monorail offers direct views into the galleries, and the adjacency of the wadi creates visual porosity and emphasizes synergies between interior and exterior.

The complex program requires divisions between public and private spaces; secured and unsecured spaces; and spaces that have traditional admission hours and those that are open twenty-four hours a day. Blurred boundaries between private and public, internal and external, promote a setting that is welcoming to museumgoers and others. The internal distribution of the program is expressed by solidity and opacity on the museum’s upper floors and transparency on the lower levels. The facade of the upper portion consists of laminated glass panels that create a textural quality and allow daylight into select locations. This strategy borrows from At-Turaif, the first capital of the Saudi dynasty. An oasis city dating from the fifteenth century, the citadel incorporates climatic responses—adobe construction, small triangular apertures— into its expressive architecture. At MOBE, the apertures recall those of At-Turaif in both visual presentation and function, but in a contemporary manner. The facade, likewise, adopts the role of its ancient

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counterpart—minimizing heat gain—but with an up-to-date reflective system.

The outer wall of laminated glass covers an inner insulated, weather-tight envelope.

The interior circulation is clear despite the intricate arrangement of program elements. Visual cues draw visitors into the site and through the building.

A large interior atrium, publicly accessible and open around the clock, connects to parking, monorail, and skywalk.

Half interior and half exterior, the atrium marks a bridge over the wadi; it also links levels within the museum. Museum administration and support are located at grade and a level above. The exhibition areas and restaurant are on the upper floors, encouraging visitors to tour the entire building. Elevators manage vertical movement between museum spaces; horizontal circulation is organized by virtue of proximities between similar program components. Staircases traverse the interior of the museum, providing access to the lobby, exhibition spaces, and transportation. The elliptical auditorium, wrapped in rapidly renewable woods, floats independently in the atrium.

Integrated passive and active strategies maximize sustainability. We used building performance modeling to help shape the building envelope and to incorporate solar shading. Along with the reflective, highly insulated building envelope, advanced HVAC systems reduce energy use. Other energy-saving components include LED lighting, automated lighting systems, and mechanical shading devices. Rainwater is collected and graywater is treated on site. Open offices and internal stairs encourage active work spaces and better internal environments. Sky gardens bring the landscape into the architecture.

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E LE VEN TIM ES SQUA R E NE W YO RK , NEW YOR K, 201 0 S JP P RO P ERTI ES 1.1 M ILLIO N S Q UARE FEET, LEED GOLD

In high-density cities like New York, buildings are rarely seen or experienced as complete compositions. Eleven Times Square is therefore conceived not as a singular object but as a collage of shape and form that changes depending on the viewpoint and contributes to a larger urban experience. Dan Kaplan Times Square has a dual identity: it is the entertainment and tourist heart of the city, but it is also the center of a concentrated business district. As much a symbolic space as a real one, it is a vibrant yet controlled melee, a twenty-four-hour convergence of media, entertainment, theater, commerce, dining, and tourism. This layered urban fabric gave rise to the design for Eleven Times Square, a forty-story glass-clad office tower. The site, on Eighth Avenue between Forty-first and Forty-second Streets, is surrounded by significant architectural structures: the Candler Building, built with the Coca-Cola fortune in 1914; the McGraw-Hill Building, an Art Deco landmark designed by Raymond Hood in 1930; and Renzo Piano and FXFOWLE’s New York Times Building of 2007.

The consciously mediated design of Eleven Times Square is sensitive to its surroundings, physical and cultural. The structure brings together three distinct components—podium, crystal, and spine—each with its own function and visual character. The composition offers a unique facade in every direction. The podium is a six-story ribbon base that wraps the corner of Forty-second Street and Eighth Avenue. The striated surface of the podium provides a framework for the large signage “spectaculars” typical of Times Square. On Forty-first Street, the podium becomes a sleek and contemporary building face that responds to the adjacent business district. Super-scale media and contemporary design coexist with and reinforce each other.

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Emerging from the podium, the crystal is a transparent volume that slopes outward, creating a dynamic gateway to Times Square. The form inverts the setbacks of the typical New York skyscraper. The sculpted crystal responds to its urban context: the north facade inflects inward to highlight views to the McGraw-Hill and Candler Buildings.

The west front is carved to reveal the New York Times headquarters. The angled form opens views for pedestrians on the street and for occupants in the tower.

The spine anchors the Forty-first Street side of the building with a balanced and more muted facade. The three-story lobby is an airy and calm refuge from the visual noise of the city. The warm material palette includes hammered Carrara marble, sandblasted mirror, wood, and burnished silver leaf. A kinetic sculpture of metal leaves by the artist Tim Prentice hangs from the ceiling, giving rise to beautiful, continuously changing patterns of light and shadow.

The spine also acts as the mechanical core of the building. The L-shaped site would not allow for a central mechanical zone. Instead, a core housed in the crook of the L provides efficient lateral and torsional stiffness for the structure. Longspan steel framing keeps the building weight low and allows for columnless corners throughout the building. The long spans and the glass curtain wall combine to afford uninterrupted views along the perimeter of the building. Office spaces in the crystal are generally large and open; those in the spine are convenient for either closed or open work spaces.

The facades are differentiated through both solar response and architectural expression. The climate of New York necessitates that large office buildings

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are nearly always in cooling mode; here, the building skin modulates solar rays to mitigate their effects. Eleven Times Square is the first major tower in New York to have different curtain wall treatments on the north and south sides.

Reflective glass and perforated-aluminum sunshades on the south reduce glare and heat. A sleek volume of transparent glass on the north admits a softer light.

Occupant well-being is an important aspect of the tower’s sustainability.

The design promotes interaction between building occupants and other natural systems by revealing and enhancing connections to the exterior. Floor-toceiling windows and open floor plates maximize daylight and views. A visual connection to the outside increases tolerance to variations in temperature, humidity, and lighting within the building.

State-of-the-art HVAC technologies, coupled with passive solar shading elements, improve the energy efficiency of the building. Monitoring of air intake and enhanced air filtration improve indoor air quality.

Herbert Muschamp has written of Times Square that it is a “logical crossroads between the producers and consumers of popular culture.” Eleven Times Square is considered the last piece in the area’s three-decade-long redevelopment puzzle.

In the early years of this complex process, the visual and physical frenzy of historic Times Square was the strongest aesthetic determinant for new architecture. By the time we started on this tower, however, a wider range of expression was typical of the area around Forty-second Street and architecture in general. A collage of form—or perhaps a formal collage— Eleven Times Square is foremost a unified composition.

Contextual Response Diagrams

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Ground Floor Plan

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Senior Partners Gerard F. X. Geier II, FAIA, FIIDA, LEED Sudhir S. Jambhekar, FAIA, RIBA, LEED Daniel J. Kaplan, FAIA, LEED Sylvia J. Smith, FAIA, LEED Mark E. Strauss, FAIA, AICP/PP, LEED Partners Heidi L. Blau, FAIA, LEED Tim Milam, AIA, LEED John Schuyler, AIA, LEED Founding Principal Bruce S. Fowle, FAIA, LEED

Project Credits Introduction/Analogies Eleven Times Square, Coe Hoeksema (p2, 4, 10), Anton Kisselgoff (p12) Museum of the Built Environment, Coe Hoeksema (p8), FXFOWLE (p6) Renaissance Tower, FXFOWLE (p14) Renaissance Tower Partner-in-Charge: Dan Kaplan Project Manager: Fatin Anlar Project Designer: William Haskas, Seiji Watanabe Team: Kazuhiro Adachi, Carol Hsiung, Hyung Kim, Jiyoung Lee Associate Architect: Fehmi Kobal Design Structural Engineer: DeSimone Consulting Engineers MEP Engineer: Cosentini Associates Mechanical Engineer: Okutan Engineering Electrical Engineer: FDC Electrical Exterior Wall: Axis Facades International, LLC Greater Noida Housing Partner-in-Charge: Sudhir Jambhekar Project Manager: Edward Mayer Project Designer: Pascale Sablan

Team: Bissera Antikarova, Aniket Chavan, Stephan Dallendorfer, Cory Goings, Steven Herzberg, Steve Miller, Animesh Nayak, Elena Ranjeva, Ankita Rao, Tim Sudweeks, Tingxing Tao Landscape: Lynn Gaffney Architects, PLLC Unit Layouts: Spaarc Design Collaborative, Inc. CAD Documentation: Satellier LLC Museum of the Built Environment Partner-in-Charge: Sudhir Jambhekar Project Manager: Heidi Blau, Nick Cates Project Architect: Ed Mayer Project Designer: Kevin Cannon Team: Kazuhiro Adachi, Nobuhiro Arai, Brian Foster, June Kim, Benjamin Kroll, Heng-Choong Leong, Alvaro Quintana, Pascale Sablan, Lucio Santos, Sisto Tallini, Tingxing Tao Structural, Civil Design: DeSimone Consulting Engineers MEP, IT Design: Cosentini Associates Lighting: Fisher Marantz Stone, Inc. Curtain Wall: Werner Sobek, New York, PC A/V, Acoustic, Security: Shen Milsom Wilke Signage, Wayfinding: Carbone Smolan Agency Landscape Design: Shankland Cox Asia, Ltd. Photography: Coe Hoeksema (p8)

Eleven Times Square Partner-in-Charge: Dan Kaplan Project Manager, Project Architect: Daniel Schmitt Job Captain: Sharon Wu Project Designer: Dan Kaplan Team: Fatin Anlar, Jill Edelman, Brian Fanning, Carol Hsing, Alvaro Quintero, Alexander Redfern, Jacquelyn Suozzi, Kristina Tetkowski, Nicholas Tocheff, Priya Verma, Brian Vladovich, Seiji Watanabe, Lauren Zailyk Construction Manager: Plaza Construction Corp.

Structural Engineer: Thornton Tomasetti MEP Engineer: Cosentini Associates Geotechnical, Civil Engineer: Langan Engineering, Environmental, Surveying and Landscape Architecture, D.P.C. Vertical Transportation: Van Deusen & Associates Exterior Wall: Heitmann & Associates Exterior Maintenance: Entek Engineering Transit Authority: Stantec Acoustic: Cerami & Associates Energy Efficiency, LEED: Viridian Energy, Environmental Lighting: SBLD Studio Glass Wall Engineer: Schlaich Bergermann & Partner Photography: Anton Kisselgoff (p61, 68–71, 73), Coe Hoeksema (p74), Lester Ali (p66–67), James D’Addio (p72), Julian Olivas (p74–75)

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Copyright © 2014 by FXFOWLE Architects, LLP ISBN: 978-1-935935-63-6 10 09 08 07 06 5 4 3 2 1 First Edition Consulting Editor: Andrea Monfried Text: Liz Campbell Kelly Design: Caju Collective (João Doria, Gustavo Prado) FXFOWLE Monograph Team: Guy Geier, Amanda Abel, Karen Bookatz, Brien McDaniel Color Separations and Printing: ORO Group Ltd. Production Manager: Usana Shadday Printed in China All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying of microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

This book was printed and bound using a variety of sustainable manufacturing processes and materials including soy-based inks, aqueous-based varnish, VOC- and formaldehyde-free glues, and phthalate-free laminations. The text is printed using offset sheetfed lithographic printing process in 2 color woodfree art paper and 4 color on 157 matt art paper with an offline spot gloss varnish applied to all photographs.

ORO Editions makes a continuous effort to minimize the overall carbon footprint of its publications. As part of this goal, ORO Editions, in association with Global ReLeaf, arranges to plant trees to replace those used in the manufacturing of the paper produced for its books.

Global ReLeaf is an international campaign run by American Forests, one of the world’s oldest nonprofit conservation organizations. Global ReLeaf is American Forests’ education and action program that helps individuals, organizations, agencies, and corporations improve the local and global environment by planting and caring for trees.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Available upon request

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FXFOWLE has defined a practice in architecture, interior design, planning, and urban development in relation to the precepts of design and the principles of the environment, whether natural or constructed. Urbanism, technology, and sustainable strategies provide the context within which FXFOWLE has operated for more than thirty-five years.

The works of FXFOWLE adhere to shared bodies of ideas. Emerging from an individual structure or a series of buildings, these concepts sustain the culture, the process, and the design approach of the firm; they likewise organize the works presented in this publication.

FILTER refines the association between architecture and context. Vernacular structures and distinctive local customs provide a frame of reference for the generation of form. Incorporating culture and climate infuses buildings with a sense of place and develops a close bond with the natural environment.