Archinect - News

SOM completes restoration of Lever House, a midcentury Manhattan office icon

2023-11-17T15:14:00-05:00

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill has announced the completion of a recent restoration project that’s meant to breathe new life into their historic Lever House design in Manhattan.

The scope of their work entailed the creation of a new lobby, ground-level public plaza, installation of an entirely new modernized building system, and 15,000-square-foot Lever Club hospitality suite in addition to redesigned interior spaces from Marmol Radziner.

Image: Lucas Blair Simpson © SOM

The brief called for repairs affecting the material character of the building (terrazzo flooring, refinished exterior columns, and a glass mosaic tile wall) and fixes to water-damaged ceilings. Reed Hilderbrand has also contributed a comprehensive new landscape program for the building that connects the plaza area to third-floor terraces. Costs for the project were around $100 million.

Image: Lucas Blair Simpson © SOM

“This renovation brings Lever House into the 21st century,” SOM Partner Chris Cooper said in a statement...

The MetLife Building’s letters are getting a makeover

2017-06-07T12:54:00-04:00

While the Brutalist architecture of the MetLife Building, formerly the Pan Am Building, makes this 59-story skyscraper stand out among Midtown’s many tall towers, its large sign touting its namesake makes it easy for all to identify. Beginning this week, the insurance company will replace the massive letters with a brand new typeface, as Crain’s reported.

The installation of the new, more modern logo will be the first time the building’s sign has changed since 1993 when 15- and 18-foot-long letters spelling out MetLife replaced Pan Am’s sign.

Park Avenue, the Art Gallery

2014-03-12T20:06:00-04:00

Alice Aycock, the sculptor, was holding her breath. [...] a massive crane, blocking traffic, lifted one-half of “Cyclone Twist,” a swirling series of white aluminum bands, into place, precisely connecting with its other half already standing on the avenue’s slim median. [...] Called “Park Avenue Paper Chase,” and stretching from 52nd Street to 66th, they are inspired variously by tornadoes, dance movements and drapery folds, and will be up until July 20.

Proposed: A promenade up an expanded Park Avenue median

2012-10-19T12:44:00-04:00

Chakrabatri is proposing that the city basically double the width of the medians along 11 blocks of Park Avenue, between 46th and 57th streets, and run a 12- to 15-foot-wide pathway up the middle, thereby creating 2.24-acre promenade surrounded by the sort of lush gardens and sculptures that already occupy the medians.