Justin currently works on the 270 Park Avenue team, who are helping to design a 60-storey skyscraper that will provide a state-of-the-art headquarters for JPMorgan Chase. The building is set to be New York City’s largest “all-electric” tower, with net-zero operational emissions. Sitting above Grand Central Subway Station, the construction of the tower has been a monumental achievement in civic planning and engineering.

For a building of this complexity, the on-site team includes contractors, engineers, craftsmen, local architects, and legal and civil teams who are together planning, building, and documenting the tower’s construction. Foster + Partners’ New York team help to execute the design concept by maintaining the conceptual goals of the design and by providing practical, feasible solutions to technical problems. This requires careful consideration of how each component is fabricated, transported, and installed so the end result is true to the original vision.

The technical requirements of building 270 Park Avenue are manifold. For the facade, the team went to great lengths to research and test various alloys, finishes and protective coatings before ultimately selecting the final bronze material for the exterior cladding. This included working with metallurgists, fabricators, and artisans to understand the unique material characteristics and how it would perform over time. This was conveyed to the client and their facilities team so there was a clear understanding of how the metal would patina and change in appearance due to the local atmospheric conditions and the nature of the alloy.  The team also worked with the fabricators to develop the complex geometrical shapes and to develop a robust plan for cleaning and maintaining the material over the lifetime of the project – and on a building that stands over 425 metres (1,400 feet) tall.

Construction, then, is a key opportunity to make how a building works legible to its owners and caretakers. This is evident within project meetings, where architects frequently sketch details to figure out how different systems or materials will interface with one another. ‘Drawing live’ – often in the same room as the client, consultants, and technical experts – requires awareness of the overall design objectives, the performance goals and various construction or fabrication strategies.

Providing technically fluent answers to questions that arise during such meetings is key to successfully constructing a building – to ‘landing the plane,’ as Justin puts it. This capability, he affirms, is essential to garnering the client’s trust.  ‘It’s very inspiring to work with a team of people who have different expertise and collectively find the simplest solution to a complex problem,’ Justin reflects.

Full article: Construction and the On-Site Architect