Changing the Manhattan Skyline
A new eleven-minute film from Foster + Partners explains the design, engineering, and functioning of 270 Park Avenue, the firm's new supertall skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, and takes viewers inside some of the spaces that serve as the headquarters of JPMorgan Chase.
Controversy has accompanied 270 Park Avenue since it was revealed, in early 2018, that JPMorgan Chase would be demolishing the 52-story Union Carbide Building to erect a 70-story replacement as its world headquarters. While Norman Foster and other architects from his firm do not ignore these circumstances of the tower's being, they begin the film by asserting its sustainability credentials, including the recycling of 97 percent of its predecessor's materials, an echo of statements made at the opening of the now 60-story office tower last fall. The Foster + Partners team then describes how a tower built atop train tracks leading into Grand Central Terminal was engineered, before heading inside the building: first to the lobby, bathed in Italian travertine, and then the four-story Exchange, considered the “social heart of the building” and likened to a “city within a city.”