Tribeca Townhouse, New York City
Posted
05/6/2011
Alcon Builders Group has created an awardwinning, one-of-a-kind
11,000-square-foot luxury single-family townhouse in Tribeca that
combines a complete interior redesign of a landmark status
two-story 1915 brick building with new construction of an adjacent
six-story, steel-framed, fiber and cement tower.
Patrick Boland, president of Alcon,
construction manager for the project, explains, "This perfect
marriage of old and new is living proof that a building can feature
every Smart, state-of-the-art aspect of today's technology without
sacrificing character, style or warmth."
Designed with a keen eye for
proportion and scale, the new six-story tower adds four stories of
height as-of-right to the existing structure and features a two-car
garage, 50-foot-long lap pool, indoor gym and dual offices, in
addition to five bedrooms plus a staff apartment and seven baths.
On the second floor joining the buildings, a kitchen, dining room,
living room and billiards room overlook a landscaped courtyard with
steps to the larger third floor garden.
Approximately 75 tons of structural
carbon steel were used in the building construction. The east
façade is a unique construction of faux I-beams (modified MC
Channel) encapsulated in a weatherresistant coating, that created
the illusion of full steel beams. The engineered façade is actually
a rainscreen that allows the moisture to flow behind it and
facilitated the construction of a perimeter wall system with a very
high R-value. Infra-Metals Co., supplied the structural steel for
the project.
To maximize the use of natural light, Alcon Vice President of
Operations John Dwyer put the construction manager's prime glazier
to the task. The team constructed the new tower's façade of a glass
curtainwall composed of ultraviolet, heatresistant, laminated,
high-efficient, low-E glass and made ample use of glass
interspersed with fiber and cement for the sides. For the
renovatedtwo-story structure, double-pane thermal windows were
custom-cut to fit the space of the original arches. A pair of
oversized skylights flood the original building with light.
A pair of walnut-clad, structural steel staircases runs through
both buildings, tying together the interior elements and making a
completing design statement. The uniquely configured handrail, a
bold work of art, was custom fabricated and installed by Alcon's
millworker and designed by Wayne Turett of Turett Collaborative
Architects, the
project's architect.
Excavation was executed down to a depth of 13 feet and a series
of steel piles were installed to stabilize the foundation with
grade beams followed by a subsequent underpinning of the adjacent
building. The existing landmark building's façade had to be shored
extensively as new stabilization and construction was completed
within.
Architect: Turett Collaborative Architects, New York City
Contractor: Alcon Builders Group, New York City
Structural steel: Infra-Metals Co., Wallingford, Conn.,
www.infra-metals.com, Circle #82