Located above the celebrated Grand Central Terminal in midtown Manhattan, the Met Life Building is a long-standing icon of modern architecture. To refresh the aging structure and position it for commercial success in the 21st century, KPF was commissioned to renovate and restore the retail concourse and main lobby levels.

The project scope included improvements to street-level traffic patterns, updating elevator lobbies, new elevator cab interiors, new ceilings and lighting, and new bronze retail storefronts. Also included were provisions for ADA compliance, asbestos abatement, upgraded mechanical systems, restoration of the terrazzo floors and cleaning the travertine walls. 


MetLife Building

MetLife Building Lobby

KPF’s design for the new Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) develops a state-of-the-art facility for the University that will attract researchers from across the country. The ASRC is designed to accommodate research initiatives ranging from photonics to structural biology and from weather research to cancer research, through a strategy of providing a modular utility “infrastructure” that can be modified at the laboratory space to support specific research requirements. The design allows core laboratory facilities to be shared by multiple disciplines and the design’s two buildings are linked by a large below-grade animal vivarium. The ASRC will provide new research laboratories for the more environmentally demanding research activities that cannot be accommodated by renovating the existing Science Facility. With forms inspired by gorge formations in the surrounding landscape, the campus provides an oasis in the city. 

Advanced Science Research Center & the City College Center for Discovery and Innovation, CUNY

CUNY Advanced Science Research Center

Hana Kassem, the project Designer at KPF shares some of the program and design goals for the building.

The master plan and new building for NYU’s School of Law reorganize departments for greater synergy. Furman Hall provides academic and student space, café, academic administration, law clinics and faculty apartments. The classroom and social spaces complement those in the existing Vanderbilt Hall, and connect physically to the Library. To cultivate an ‘around the clock’ atmosphere, there are continually available student spaces. The Law School worked to respect the concerns of the Greenwich Village community. The new building incorporates the reconstruction of two historic facades: that of the Judson House and a row house once occupied by Edgar Allan Poe.

Furman Hall, NYU School of Law

 In the first building to be built after the Midtown East Rezoning of 2013 which was supposed to enable the construction of Class A office buildings by transferring air rights from the landmarked buildings in the 73 block area.  Additional access to Grand Central enabled SL Green to build 58 stories atop a 7 story podium arising 1401 feet in total. 

One Vanderbilt

 The master plan for Capital Cities/ABC integrates a number of different facilities including corporate headquarters offices, TV and radio studios, broadcasting, engineering, and support services. Careful studies were initiated in order to determine the most effective layout of the interior spaces, provisions for employee amenities and parking, and the most useful arrangement of the departments into the various buildings. A major issue in the realization of the plan was the incorporation of new buildings and the renovation of existing structures in an &ldquo;edge condition,&rdquo; linking the entertainment-based Lincoln Center on its South side and the primarily residential neighborhood of the Upper West Side on its North end. The designs simultaneously bolster the presence of ABC while respecting their sites in their massing and materials. All together, the virtual &ldquo;wall&rdquo; of structures along 66th and 67th streets and Columbus Avenue create a positive and vital streetscape for the neighborhood. 

ABC World Headquarters

This 27-story Federal courthouse is adjacent to Guy Lowell's Municipal Courthouse and across from Cass Gilbert's U.S. Courthouse tower. The building matches the height of Lowell Courthouse, houses two lobbies, a jury selection room, support space, cafeteria, auditorium, and a ceremonial court under a vaulted roof. The tower, which aligns with Gilbert's courthouse, contains 42 courtrooms and judge`s chambers. A public plaza was created adjacent to the Lowell Courthouse. The modern design takes cues from the rhythm of the surrounding, classically-styled civic structures and keeping the same datum lines, material palettes and points of reference for the new structure.Under the leadership of Edward Feiner, the GSA embarked on the innovative and widely copied Design Excellence Program after Kohn Pederson Fox designed the prototype project.

Foley Square Courthouse

Daniel Patrick Moynihan Federal Courthouse

 On the third stop of the tour, James Kaplan discusses the controversial life of Thomas Paine: his early life, the publishing of Common Sense and The Crisis, the Silas Deane Affair and Paine's downfall, his involvement in the French Revolution, and his death in 1809. 

30 Hudson Yards is located at the southwest corner of 33rd Street and 10th Avenue and will be completed in 2019. The 2.6-million-square-foot tower designed by Bill Pedersen of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) will be the second-tallest office building in New York, taller than the Empire State Building and home to the highest outdoor observation deck in the city. The LEED Gold-designed building will stand 1,296 feet tall and feature river-to-river panoramic views, outdoor terraces, a dramatic triple-height lobby, direct access to premier restaurants and retailers and an underground connection to the new No. 7 Subway station.

Viewed from the No. 7 Subway Station

30 Hudson Yards

 The Hudson Yards Project is a transit-oriented mixed use development scheme. It is envisioned to be an 11 acre public landscape in New York City built into a residential and commercial development of 30 acres that is constructed over the top of existing and highly active rail yards. It includes an extension of the No.7 subway line from the Times Square terminus towards 34th Street and 11th Avenue. The development focuses on creating new public parks and open spaces in the Hudson Yards area. 

 Courtesy Hudson Yards Courtesy Hudson Yards  Courtesy Hudson Yards

Hudson Yards

Originally the CUNY School of Law at Queens College located in Flushing, Queens. It moved to 2 Court Square in Long Island City at the end of May 2012. CUNY purchased a six-floor condominium interest in the 14-story environmentally green building. Citigroup will retain ownership of the remainder of the building. The move gave the school nearly 70,000 additional square feet of space. The building is within walking distance of seven subway lines (two within one stop of Manhattan), the Long Island Railroad, and eight bus lines. It is only a few blocks away from the Long Island City Courthouse. The move enabled CUNY School of Law to develop a new part-time program, which started in 2015. The building at 2 Court Square is LEED Gold certified, which means that its construction had a reduced environmental impact and its design increases occupants' health and well-being. 

CUNY - School of Law

The City University of New York School of Law

 Located within walking distance of the Metropark train station, the project took an ordinary lackluster 1960's era suburban office building and renovated it. The challenge was to add 'architectural value' to the existing building rather than tear it down and build a new building. The goal was to use it as a model for other similar aging facilities. The exterior wall was removed and replaced with a glass facade. Additional space was added to the Fourth floor which was supported by a 'tree column' so that it wouldn't add any increased load to the existing structural system. To make the basement spaces usable for offices, a courtyard lightwell was carved out so that they would get natural light. A landscaped plaza was also created from the parking lot. Additional buildings are planned for the site to create an office campus. 

 Michael Moran, Michael Moran, Michael Moran, Michael Moran

 the Architect the Architect   the Architect

Centra at Metropark

 Greg Mell, an associate principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox talks about the site and the initial steps that were taken in its transformation. 

 Greg Mell, an associate principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox, talks about the materials used in Centra's design. 

 Greg Mell, associate principal at KPF, talks about his favorite part of Centra's design, the "Tree Column" structure. 

 Devin Ratliff, KPF project manager of Centra, talks about the project in terms of renovation. 

 Devin Ratliff, project manager for Centra Metropark, talks about Centra in terms of its broader context, and how it has established a new paradigm for future office development. 

 Hugh Trumbull, a principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox, and the lead designer of Centra, talks about the setting of the site as a suburban workplace, and how it influenced the design and program of the space. 

 Hugh Trumbull, principal at KPF, talks about some of the goals of the design as a way to foster a more socially active suburban workplace. 

 Hugh Trumbull, principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox, talks about the use of trusses and diagonals to both solve structural challenges and lend an aesthetic to the character to the building's form. 

 Hugh Trumbull talks about the team that worked on Centra, and how crucial the craft and material of Centra was to its success. 

 Hugh Trumbull, principal at KPF and designer on Centra Metropark, talks about design principals at work in the architecture. 

Located in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, One Jackson Square is a 30-unit luxury residential development that responds in dramatic fashion to its celebrated locale. This historic district is home to the highest concentration of early architecture in New York City, and introducing new structures to this intricate fabric must respect its existing architecture, the artistic life within its boundaries, and the history that permeates its streets. The district, however, is not frozen in time, as its recent transformation into an affluent enclave has demonstrated. Formerly a surface parking lot, the six-sided, split-zone site above two subway tunnels poses significant challenges, which the design negotiates through its massing, material expression, and robust foundation. It also provides a long-missing north edge to Jackson Square Park, a wedge-shaped space formed by the convergence of Greenwich and Eighth Avenues. The building volume steps down from 11 stories to seven stories, from north to south, accommodating the zoning laws and mediating the varied scales of the neighborhood. Undulating bands of glass identify individual floors, creating a ribbon-like series of convexities and concavities along the street wall. The predominantly masonry structures of the immediate surroundings, along with the park, are “played back” in the glazed façade, creating an intimacy of scale congruent with the local context through juxtaposition. The fluid form of the façade is reprised in the lobby, where a bamboo-clad volume is conceived as a block of wood eroded over time by the ebb and flow of residents, much like a river erodes its banks. A series of green roofs extends the private realm of the building into the public domain of the park. The planted decks also signal the project’s environmental agenda, which includes sustainable materials, rainwater harvesting, and daylighting.

One Jackson Square

Bill Pedersen talks about some of the design impacts in the building, the fact that it sits on top of the subway, only became viable when the real estate market changed, the zoning envelope and the desire to allow as much light as possible into the apartments.

                                            
                                            
                                            
                                                This short video includes beautiful images of Greenwich Village's One Jackson Square.
                                            
                                        

Trent Tesch, Design Principal at KPF talks about One Jackson Square and the design relationship between the facade, interior, and Greenwich Village.

55 Hudson Yards, a 1.3-million-square-foot office building located at the intersection of Hudson Yards, the High Line and Hudson Park & Boulevard, is the newest addition to the collection of towers to be located at Hudson Yards. The LEED Gold-designed building will stand 780 feet tall with the entrance located just across from the new No. 7 Subway station. The building is under construction and will be delivered to tenants in 2017 with move-in’s in mid-2018.

The conceptual design of the building was an unprecedented joint venture of A. Eugene Kohn of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) and Pritzker Prize-winning architect Kevin Roche; KPF served as the Design Architect.

55 Hudson Yards is the southwestern anchor of the new Hudson Park and is one of the only office buildings in the entire city to have a lobby that opens directly onto a park. The architects further enhanced the appeal of this great outdoor space by designing a dramatic outdoor terrace overlooking the park on the building’s tenth floor. The building’s design also provides future tenants the opportunity to carve private, double-height terraces into the tower in flexible locations.

The unique façade of 55 Hudson Yards is inspired by the revitalized High Line district, the manufactured cast iron façades of the Soho buildings and the best of early modernism. The matte metal and stepped articulation of the window frames present a strong and solid exterior appearance, which is modern but uniquely New York in character. While the building references the solid exterior of the city’s classic cast iron buildings, it also shares their expansive floor to ceiling windows to maximize interior light

55 Hudson Yards

Goodwin's inclination towards the traditional Beaux-Arts style and Stone's more modern approach came together to create a building of six stories made of sleek white marble and a type of insulated glass called Thermolux. This glass helped in diffusing the light in the galleries of the museum.The building stands true to its vision of popularising and democratizing modern art, with modern and contemporary architecture styles blending together with international styles. The sculpture garden of the museum was designed by the MoMA director Alfred H. Barr Jr. and MoMA architecture curator John McAndrew.

In the late 1990s, Yoshio Taniguchi, a popular Japanese architect, submitted his design for renovating MoMA architecture. After its completion in 2004, it was reopened to the public on its 75th birthday.Taniguchi added granite and glass facades to the entrance of the MoMA museum. He added minimal solutions to the museum’s design while maintaining its modernist roots. Yoshio restored the International style building and enlarged the Sculpture Garden. The architect achieved a minimal aesthetic look with the help of precision. Glass panes were added that surrounded the Sculpture Garden and the curtains walls were detached from the floors to ensure that the glass doesn’t deflect when there are lots of visitors. Taniguchi’s design made the garden the focus while the other buildings acted as the side characters. His design allowed visitors to enjoy NYC’s streets and skyline as they passed through the galleries. Several windows in the galleries and the stairways allow the visitors a look outside. Visitors would find contemporary works on the ground floor and older artworks on the higher floors. A huge sky-lit space for temporary exhibitions was made available on the top floor. An atrium was also added that connects the lobby to the Sculpture Garden. KPF was executive architect for this restoration, renovation and expansion, which included work on the MoMA’s galleries, east wing and education building. KPF restored the original curved canopy and courtyard, added theater, library, and office spaces, and increased the exhibition area by 30%.

A two-phased renovation, the first part involved the MoMA architecture and new walls whereas the second part focused on the new art that is getting installed on those new walls.

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

Barry Bergdoll, Phillip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA talks about the intellectual origins of the museum building and the development of the sculpture garden. 

 Located in the heart of Las Vegas Boulevard, Crystals is the 500,000-square-foot retail and entertainment space, which is the connective center of the MGM MIRAGE City Center project. It is a vertical city within a city that includes 2,400 private residences, two boutique hotels, and a 61-story resort casino. The crystalline &amp; metal-clad fa&ccedil;ade signal to visitors well in advance of arrival that Crystals is not a traditional retail environment. An entryway into the retail area from the Strip will draw pedestrians into the public arcade, covered by a spiraling roof structure. From the interior, the roof`s dramatic angles and skylights become a backdrop for the luxury retail and dining it houses which include Louis Vuitton, TIFFANY &amp; CO., and Bulgari as well as concept restaurants from Wolfgang Puck and Todd English. The public spaces allow for a variety of urban experiences: a water feature at the entry, cafes and a grand staircase leading to Casino Square at the end of the arcade, animating the entire space. The design and construction of Crystals employed the most environmentally conscious practices and materials. In November 2009 it was announced that Crystals achieved LEED&reg; Gold Core &amp; Shell certification from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), making it the world`s largest retail district to receive this level of recognition. 

Crystals at City Center

Heron Tower

One Astor Plaza

Lincoln Square

Hamm Plaza

Between East 72nd Street East 71st Street 

Sotheby's World Headquarters

University of Minnesota Science Teaching and Student Services Center 

Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF), an architectural firm responsible for several world-renowned buildings, provides architectural, interior and urban design as well as programming and master planning services for clients in both the public and private sectors. KPF is one of the largest architecture firms in the world and is currently the largest in New York City, where its headquarters are located. The firm’s portfolio includes corporate, hospitality, residential, academic, civic, cultural, and mixed-use projects located in more than 35 countries.

Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates Headquarters

Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates

In Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York, Samuel Zipp sheds new light on the state of New York’s urban renewal after World War II. Focusing on four iconic “Manhattan Projects” – the United Nations headquarters at Turtle Bay, Stuyvesant Town, Lincoln Square and the great swaths of public housing in East Harlem - he unearths forgotten stories and characters that flesh out the conventional history of urban renewal.&nbsp;

Creating a vertical campus for a 5000 student university building is highly unusual for a school as most universities are laid out horizontally.  The envelope was a product of the New York City Zoning Code as well as a desire to create social spaces for the students and a supportive client.  

Jackie Ferrara explains the selection process, collaborating with Bill Pederson the Architect, and selecting the stone.

Blll Pedersen talks about how his competition winning scheme integrated the original buildings with the new design and draws from the existing building.  This allowed the Headquarters building to be completed sooner. 

Bill Pedersen talks about his design for the skyscraper.

The Architect talks about designing the Corporate Headquarters as his 'fling at Post-Modernism', about the L-shaped form of the building.  His intention was to make the building fit into its place.

Bill Pedersen talks about the limited competition and about designing the then tallest tower in the city.  He shares the zoning issues that affected the form of the building, namely the narrow depth required for the offices.  It tries to mark the significant heights of the buildings in Frankfurt.  

Bill Pedersen talks about designing what was the Tallest Building in the World for some years.  The client was Japanese; the site was in China and he shares the real and perceived symbolism in the shape of the skyscraper and its top.  

                                            
                                            
                                            
                                                Focusing on the Financial District, this audio tour highlights the revolving relationship between the built environment and the people and natural resources that sustain it.
                                            
                                        

Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates

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