Situated across the street from the High Line Park, 837 Washington Street is a six-story office and retail development designed by Morris Adjmi Architects and built by Sciame Construction for Thor Equities and Taconic Investment Partners. Gilsanz Murray Steficek (GMS), which served as structural design engineer, was intensely involved in the construction phase and provided special inspection services including steel erection and structural safety. The building is a new torquing tower that rises out of an existing two-story Art Moderne style brick warehouse built in 1938, which was once part of the Gansevoort Market.
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The unique torso of 837 Washington provided opportunities for creative approaches to its structural design. Steel perimeter girders are positioned so as to pivot around the axis of a brick-clad core, which ties back into the warehouse structure below. The natural rotation created by this geometry is resisted by braced frames at the core. Twisting floor plates were designed to echo the angles of neighboring streets.
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The structure exists contextually within its built environment. Mr. Adjmi’s concept and GMS’s execution produces a building expressive of the up-and-coming retail center that is the Meatpacking District. It stands as a case study of melding the old and the new with a steel frame that is engineered to serve both an innovative aesthetic and a standard erection process, while at the same time, respecting neighborhood context.
