Cladding Principle for HighRise Building - Blue Condo Tower, New York

1.0 BLUE CONDO TOWER, NEW YORK

1.0 BUILDING BACKGROUND

1.1 CLADDING PRINCIPLES

1.2 CHOOSING FACTOR

1.3 CLADDING SYSTEM

1.4 CLADDING DETAIL

1.5 GLAZING SELECTION

Blue Tower, New York

New York, NY

2004-2006

50,000 ft2

USD 10 mil

Project Team: Bernard Tschumi, Kim Star, William Fenerman, Adam Dayem, with Dominic Leong, Alan Kusov, Casey Crawmer, Shai Gross, Adam Marcus, Amy Yang.

Consultants: SLCE Architects, Saky Yakas, Carlos Palacios

Curtain Wall Consultants: Israel Berger & Associates

Structural Engineers: Thornton Thomasetti

MEP + FP Engineers: Ettinger Engineers

Façade Contractor: East End Window Technologies,NY.

Client: Angelo Cosentini and John Carson 

PROJECT STATEMENT:

The Blue Condo Tower is a demanding and complex design consisting almost entirely of compound angles at corners. One corner of the building is defined by the intersection of four different planes.

The seventeen-story tower contains thirty-two apartments and rises to a height of 181 feet. This is Tschumi’s first high-rise structure, and his second in New York City, where his main office is located. BLUE also marks Tschumi’s first residential structure.

The project was kept within its budget and schedule with a combination of in-house design and engineering, 3D modeling, CNC manufacturing, factory glazed panels, and a Total Station GPS site survey.

The Blue Condo Tower using a Uni-Wall Curtain Wall System from Architectural Glazing Technology.

The Blue Condo Tower is a demanding and complex design consisting almost entirely of compound angles at corners. One corner of the building is defined by the intersection of four different planes.

Sloped vertical walls lead to inverted sloped walls, and only one small corner of the building, from the 13th floor to the 17th floor, is a typical 90 degree application.

The geometry and visual design of the Blue translated into a project that would be very difficult to build with stick-built curtain wall.

The assemblies part of the system:

-Aluminium unitized glazed curtain wall framing

-Aluminum metal panels, condensate gutters, and louvers;
-Aluminum trim, snap in sealant stops, flashings and similar items in conjunction with aluminum curtain wall assemblies.
-Painting and coating in conjunction with the above aluminum items.
-Internal steel and aluminum reinforcements.
-Internal and perimeter sealants, weeps, vents and gasketing systems. Anchors, embeds, shims, fasteners, inserts, expansion devices, accessories, support brackets and attachments.
-Glass and glazing for the curtain walls.

  

The provide glazed aluminum curtain wall systems meeting or exceeding the following performance requirements:

-Wind loads -Seismic loads

-Deflection Limitations -Dead Loads

-Air Leakage -Water Penetration

-Thermal Movements -Building Frame Movement

-Condensation Resistance -Glass Statistical Factor

Uni-Wall's unique, field-tested design provides three key benefits over conventional curtain wall:

Safety
Aluminium is characteristically a durable and resistant material. It can be adapted to the needs of the users from basic safety to very high level safety.

Faster installation times
Speed of installation is one of the most critical factors impacting overall project cost and schedule. Complete fabricated panels are shipped and erected immediately, eliminating the lengthy process of glazing and capping. Custom aluminum anchor system further simplifies the process by allowing 3-way adjustments to automatically plumb panels.

And since the building can be wrapped horizontally from the inside, requires only about 1/5 the labor required with stick-built curtain wall.

Customizable, and easier to maintain
Custom exterior caps are designed as a secondary extrusion, making them inexpensive to add as an option. They are also designed to roll on and off, if reglazing is ever needed.

Performance requirements
Provide glazed aluminum curtain wall systems meeting or exceeding the following performance requirements:

-Wind loads -Seismic loads

-Deflection Limitations -Dead Loads

-Air Leakage -Water Penetration

-Thermal Movements -Building Frame Movement

-Condensation Resistance -Glass Statistical Factor

AGT ‘s Uni-Wall Unitized Curtain Wall System

Blue Condo tower using a Uni-Wall system cladding from AGT’s which is unitized type. It is factory-assembled, sealed, and glazed. The system provides significantly higher performance than stick-built curtain wall, in terms of movement, load bearing capacity and water penetration.

The Uni-Wall fabricated panels are shipped and erected immediately, eliminating the lengthy process of glazing and capping. It’s faster installation and requires only about 1/5 the labor.
The custom aluminum anchor system allows installers to easily adjust the unit in 3-directions to automatically plumb panels. This provides the flexibility to adapt to variations in the building frame.
Uni-Wall's all-bolt design avoids the weakening of aluminum caused by welding. The approach ensures structural integrity while making fabrication and erection faster. All fasteners are concealed for a clean, uncluttered look.
Uni-Wall panels can be customized to include much more than just glass in the spandrel area of the unit. External shading systems and window washing channels can also be incorporated into the framing system in-case the renovation or removal part in the future.

The advantages of Uni-Wall is that it provides with the flexibility to adjust system sizes and incorporate custom extrusion shapes to meet environmental, engineering or aesthetic requirements.

 

It was a question of aesthetics, which lead to the choice of the largely blue pixilated glass panels stemmed from the need to design a façade for a building on which almost every supporting column was in a different alignment - all while using floor-to-ceiling windows as often as possible

"I hate the kind of context in which people imitate the brick façade next door,“. "It's not just visual: I liked the mosaic of the old and new, the mix of generations on the Lower East Side.“ – Bernard Tschumi Architect