800 First Avenue Office Tower

Critical of the rampant icon creation on the city skyline, this project instead locates the iconic within the heart of the building. The project’s exterior facade mimics its midtown context with a curtain wall of seemingly repetitive square units. Closer inspection reveals subtle variations creating soft indeterminate figures that drift, hover, and avoid easy identification. An interior void brings daylight and fresh air into the center of a deep floor plate, while creating a multistory outdoor garden and public space that twists, and folds back on itself, connecting to and puncturing each façade once. Open floor plates with a regular grid of water, data, and power points allows for flexible occupation. A building with participatory geometries without and within, the project is a hypothesis for the value of the iconic banal.