Random House Tower

Michael commented...

As one of the architects who worked on this building, I have some comments.
First of all, the photo is the rear of the building! The notch near the top of the stone facing is a concession to the building department who demanded we remove some floor area to meet zoning requirements. We thought putting it in the rear would hide it. Hah!!! SOM was architect for the entire exterior. Leyva and Tihany did the residential interiors and HLW did the Random House interiors. The transition from steel to concrete was an amazing engineering achievement. BTW, the penthouse reverts to steel framing.

4 months ago

Cristobal added this project

The Random House Tower and Park Imperial is a 52-story mixed use tower in New York City that is used as the headquarters of Random House and a luxury apartment complex called Park Imperial.
The book publisher entrance is on Broadway and goes up to 27 floors, while the apartment complex entrance is on 56th Street.

Separate architects designed each of the sections. Skidmore Owings & Merrill designed the office portion, which has a steel frame. Ismael Leyva Architects and Adam D. Tihany designed the residential portion, which has a concrete frame. The two sections do not entirely line up, and trusses were built on the 26th and 27th floor to transfer the load.

The apartments have three-meter ceilings, and there are five penthouses of up to 276 m² in size. Even though the apartments start on Floor 28, the residential floors indicate they go from 48 to the 70th floor. Among the first tenants were P. Diddy and New York Yankees pitcher Randy Johnson.

At the top of the building are two fluid tuned mass dampers -- the first of their kind in the city--which are designed to damp building sway. Similar dampers are on the Citigroup Center building, although Citigroup's dampers are made of concrete. Random House's dampers have capacities of 265,000 and 379,000 liters of water.

The complex is on a trapezoidal block between 55th Street and 56th Street and follows the angle of Broadway. It has jagged setbacks to improve the views of Central Park.

1 year ago