Ideas contest concludes for New York high-rise transformation

WilkinsonEyre have received first prize in the Metals in Construction magazine 2020 Design Challenge, as part of a team which included façade consultants Eckersley O'Callaghan, facade contractor Gartner, MRG Studio and Level Infrastructure. The international ideas contest invited proposals to upgrade an aging, energy-inefficient office building at 63 Madison Avenue to comply with New York City’s Green New Deal goals, while creating a desirable space for companies competing for highly skilled employees. 

The contest site was chosen as it is typical of a large swathe of American real estate, which means the winning solution could be replicated across the country. Most of New York’s high-rise office buildings are more than fifty years old, but will still be standing in 2030 - a milestone year on the city's roadmap to carbon neutrality. The brief asked for a cladding solution to halve energy consumption, bring daylight deeper into the building and give better access to the outside.

The WilkinsonEyre scheme, called Second Skin, employs the concept of an 'adaptive net' façade, which creates a habitable area within an efficient and simple cladding system. External shading and reflector devices provide shade, reduce glare, increase the quality of the daylight and extend the usable area, while preserving views to the outside. The engineers demonstrated through thermal modelling that this concept, combined with an improvement in the efficiency of M&E equipment, would offer a 50% reduction in carbon emissions, as well as offer an embodied carbon offset after four years.  

Lucy Nordberg
TenderStream Head of Research

This competition was first published byTenderStream on 01.11.2019 here

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