David Chipperfield Architects has just completed The Bryant, the latest addition to New York City’s every-changing luxury residential development landscape. Adding elegance and poise to the Big Apple’s iconic skyline, the project, created by David Chipperfield and his team in London, is a 32-storey tower building located by Bryant Park, which lends the property its name.
The project mixes private residential with a hotel located on the lower levels and up to the 14th floor. Two retail units are placed on the ground floor. Marking this array of uses through its design, the building nods to the historical skyscraper typology that the city is so well known for. ‘The building articulates three separate parts following the traditional tripartite composition of the New York tower: base, middle and crown,’ say the architects.
As a result, the ‘base’ occupies the full length and width of the plot and reaches up to the fourth floor. The rest of the structure is confined to a smaller footprint, which spans up to the top, where a visually distinct ‘crown’ contains the double-height spaces of two penthouses at the top of the tower.
The facade also responds to local Landmarks Preservation Commission guidelines, which stipulate that a new building needs to relate to its surroundings. This, The Bryant, certainly does. While in keeping with its context, the project offers a contemporary interpretation of surrounding volumes and patterns that mixes minimalist calm and a concrete modernist grid, in the graceful and at the same time majestic style that defines Chipperfield Architects’ work.
This approach is continued inside, where built-in furniture and carefully chosen materials – think: wood and exposed concrete – are matched by large openings and Juliet balconies with wide views of the park, and New York skyline beyond. §
