Brookfield Properties and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) marked the formal opening of Manhattan West, a dynamic, mixed-use neighborhood in the heart of New York City’s far west side.
Manhattan West encompasses 650,321 m2 (7 million sf) of retail, office, residential, and hospitality space in six buildings. Three were designed by SOM—One and Two Manhattan West and the Pendry Hotel—and all but the Eugene residences were engineered by SOM.
The development is organized around a series of dynamic public spaces designed in collaboration with landscape architect James Corner Field Operations and enabled by the engineering of a 1.05-ha (2.6-acre) platform above tracks leading to Penn Station.
Lined with a combined 20,903 m2 (225,000 sf) of retail, the central plaza offers a vibrant new gathering space for residents, office workers, and travelers from the station.
As commuters, pedestrians, and residents pass through the neighborhood from the east, One and Two Manhattan West—two office towers designed and engineered by SOM—will mark their entry into the site. Clad in high-performance glass, the 185,806-m2 (2-million-sf) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) -Gold-targeting skyscrapers accentuate a soft, graceful simplicity.
The SOM-designed Pendry—comprising 164 guest rooms and suites—is characterized by a glass-and-granite façade that gives the 23-story boutique hotel an outsize visual impact within the development.
Beyond giving the building a distinctive identity, this innovative façade design provides sustainability benefits and subtly indicates the building’s role as a hotel: the convex glass curves become a contemporary take on the bay window, which offer each of the guest rooms panoramic views of the surrounding city.
The Eugene, an 844-unit residential tower that was designed in collaboration with Schuman Lichtenstein (SLCE) Architects, integrates a crucial outdoor link between 31st Street and elevated outdoor space connecting to central plaza. The development is further enhanced by the renovation of two former industrial buildings—Five Manhattan West, for which SOM provided structural engineering services, and the 1913 Lofts building—into contemporary office space.
As part of the adaptive reuse of Five Manhattan West, SOM engineers—working with architects at REX—performed significant structural modifications to transform the building’s interior and façade while improving its energy performance. On the south side of the building, an elevated breezeway and passage was carved out to extend Manhattan West’s public space to Tenth Avenue—providing a view corridor to the High Line and linking Manhattan West to Hudson Yards.
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