The Next Generation Of Sky Scraping

Isaac Taylor

If your building isn’t the biggest “something” in the world, is it even worth making? For example, in Mongolia a 40-metre tall stainless steel statue of Genghis Khan on a horse has taken out the award from being the World’s tallest equestrian statue. It’s such an oddly specific qualifier, I don’t even think it should count. But let’s not get distracted from the subject at hand, this monstrous skyscraper going up in New York called 270 Park Avenue.

It will be New York’s largest all-electric skyscraper with net zero operational emissions and will be 100% powered by renewable energy sourced from a New York State hydroelectric plant. How’s that for specific!

Due to be completed in 2025, this will be the new home for JPMorgan Chase’s global headquarters. It’s 60 stories tall, standing 423 metres, and able to house 14,000 employees, a massive amount compared to the 1950s building it’s replacing, which only holds 3,500 drones.

So what makes it special, apart from being a gigantic ant farm with 2.5 million square feet of collaborative space? Well first of all a pinched base allows for 2.5 times more outdoor space on the ground level. Using a state-of-the-art structural system to negotiate the site constraints below and at ground level, the innovative fan-column structure and triangular bracing allow the building to touch the ground lightly across the entire block. By lifting the building about 80 feet/24 metres off the ground, it extends the viewpoint from the Park Avenue entrance through to Madison Avenue.

They say that the building is a “post-pandemic building” focusing on flexible workspaces and employee wellbeing, unlike previous buildings which focused on employee badbeing. But this is the world we live in now. Office spaces aren’t seen as essential as they once were a few years ago and to make them valuable, they need to be more comfortable and more appealing than an employees home office.