The Blue Condominium, also known as the Blue Tower, is located in the

Lower East Side The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Traditionally an im ...

neighborhood of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

at 105 Norfolk Street. Designed by

Bernard Tschumi Bernard Tschumi (born 25 January 1944 in Lausanne, Switzerland) is an architect, writer, and educator, commonly associated with deconstructivism. Son of the well-known Swiss architect Jean Tschumi and a French mother, Tschumi is a dual French-S ...

, it is his first residential and first high-rise structure. At 16 stories tall, it opened in 2007 with 32 condominium apartments, a ground floor commercial space occupied by the Thierry Goldberg Gallery, and a third floor roof terrace for residents. Commercial at the ground floor with residential above is a common method of programming space in urban residential projects. The tower is not

LEED Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a green building certification program used worldwide. Developed by the non-profit U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), it includes a set of rating systems for the design, construction ...

certified. The faceted pixelated form, a reaction to the zoning and set back requirements, is clad in a blue panel and window curtain wall system, contrasting with the low rise brick buildings that typify the neighborhood.

Construction

The Blue Condominium opened in November 2007 and was planned, designed, and constructed in two years. It was able to be built due to the purchase of air rights from several neighboring buildings. Developers Angelo Consentini and John Carson commissioned the project, and their company, On the Level Enterprises, was the general contractor. Historically the

was an immigrant neighborhood, including Germans, Jewish, Irish, Italians, and Hispanics, but it has been experiencing a period of

gentrification Gentrification is the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more Wealth, affluent residents and businesses. It is a common and controversial topic in urban politics and urban planning, planning. Gentrification ...

since the late 1990s. Building the Blue Condominium in the Lower East Side has sparked debate among residents, design professionals, and the general public as an example of the growing number of new luxury condominiums in the neighborhood, a phenomenon that has caused concern about the physical and demographic preservation of the neighborhood and the preservation of its character. Construction of the tower involved several milestones. For Bernard Tschumi, it was his first residential building and skyscraper. For the Lower East Side, this was the first building with 24-hour doorman service, along with cold storage for food deliveries.

Site and context

The Blue Condominium is located in the future

Essex Crossing Essex Crossing is an under-construction mixed-use development in New York City's Lower East Side, at the intersection of Delancey Street and Essex Street just north of Seward Park. Essex Crossing will comprise nearly of space on and will cos ...

development, with

Delancey Street __NOTOC__ Delancey Street is one of the main thoroughfares of New York City's Lower East Side in Manhattan, running from the street's western terminus at the Bowery to its eastern end at FDR Drive, connecting to the Williamsburg Bridge and Bro ...

and the

Williamsburg Bridge The Williamsburg Bridge is a suspension bridge in New York City across the East River connecting the Lower East Side of Manhattan at Delancey Street with the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn at Broadway near the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway ...

to the south, public housing and the

East River The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary in New York City. The waterway, which is actually not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates the borough of Queens ...

to the east, low-rise apartments and

Houston Street Houston Street ( ) is a major east–west thoroughfare in Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs the full width of the island of Manhattan, from FDR Drive along the East River in the east to the West Side Highway along the Hudson River in t ...

to the north, and the

Essex Street Market Essex Market (formerly known as Essex Street Market) is a food market with independent vendors at the intersection of Essex Street and Delancey Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City. The market is known for its many local sh ...

and

Sara D. Roosevelt Park Sara Delano Roosevelt Park is a park in the Lower East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan. The park, named after Sara Roosevelt (1854–1941), the mother of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, stretches north–south along seven blo ...

to the west. Blue Condominium Tower

The tower is positioned within the primarily residential neighborhood of the Lower East Side where several urban planning projects have been built. Notable interventions include the Williamsburg Bridge that opened in 1903 and the Essex Street Market that opened in 1940. The

Lower Manhattan Expressway Interstate 78 (I-78) is a part of the Interstate Highway System that runs from Union Township, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, to New York City. In the US state of New York, I-78 extends . The entirety of I-78 consists of the Holland Tunnel ...

, planned by

Robert Moses Robert Moses (December 18, 1888 – July 29, 1981) was an American urban planner and public official who worked in the New York metropolitan area during the early to mid 20th century. Despite never being elected to any office, Moses is regarded ...

but never constructed, would have been a monumental public intervention, including the probable destruction of the Blue Tower site along with thousands of other properties lining Delancey Street. The Essex Crossing, to break ground in 2015, is also planned to be an imposing site; some of the buildings will be high-rise residential buildings. Beginning over a decade ago, Manhattan experienced a boom in development and construction, including the Lower East Side with the construction of high-rise luxury residential towers. The Hotel on Rivington, completed in 2005, was the first high-rise building in the Lower East Side. Just north of the Blue Tower site is the nArchitects Switch Building, also a luxury residential building. In 1996, the site was a parking lot, along with several other lots across the street. These have all been replaced by infill construction consisting exclusively of luxury condominiums. Since the Zoning Resolution of 1961, the site has been zoned as R7-A (residential) with adjacent lots zoned as C6 and C4, both commercial areas. The area is included in the map amendment of 2002, and adjacent to a Business Improvement District (BID). The area is not a part of a designated historic district, nor are any surrounding buildings landmarked. , the site is located within a FRESH program district, along with all of the Lower East Side. Food Retail Expansion to Support Health program (FRESH) is a New York City program providing zoning and financial incentives to establish grocery stores in underserved areas, thereby providing residents with the means to obtain a full selection of food products.

Materials and methods

With a flat plate, cast-in-place concrete structural system, the Blue Condominium is built like many high-rise residential buildings in New York City. What is not similar to other high-rise residential towers is the unconventional massing that required special floor plate cantilevering and curtain wall detailing. For example, floor plates on fourth floor cantilever up to 11'-0" and up to 21'-0" on the twelfth floor. These cantilevered plates are a function of the angular form. The curtain wall system is a Uni-Wall Curtain Wall System by Architectural Glazing Technology. Some of the corners have up to four angled walls connecting to each other and these relationships required 3D modeling. Unlike conventional curtain wall construction, the system employed unitized components that were glazed, sealed, and assembled in the factory, shipped to the site, then assembled in the field. The curtain wall system is composed of clear glass pieces, tinted blue vision glass pieces, and opaque spandrel panels in four shades of blue. Interior materials vary depend on their location, either in standard apartments, premium apartments, or common areas. In the standard apartments, materials include bamboo and stone flooring, white tiled bathrooms, white stone kitchen counters, and metal cabinets. In the premium apartments, materials include palm and stone flooring, glass tiled bathrooms, and Boffi brand kitchens. In the common areas materials include

bamboo Bamboos are a diverse group of evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, bu ...

wall paneling, stone floors, and white back-lit glass panels. The structural and interior materials are not uncommon in high-end residential projects, but the unconventional form necessitated an innovative approach to methods of construction.

References

Notes

External links

* {{Lower East Side, Manhattan Residential skyscrapers in Manhattan Bernard Tschumi buildings Residential buildings completed in 2007 Lower East Side 2007 establishments in New York City