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
