It’s time to add New York University’s new $1.2 billion mixed-use superbuilding to Manhattan’s pantheon of structural marvels.
Welcome to John A. Paulson Center, a 23-story, 735,000 square-foot building that reimagines the scope and scale of higher education in an urban setting. Imagine, for example, a city block-sized building housing 400 first-year students, dozens of NYU faculty and their families, nearly 60 classrooms, 70 instruction and practice rooms, and a 350-seat theatre.
That’s just for starters. Below grade is a wonderland of athletic and sports facilities, including a six-lane pool, varsity arena, squash courts, track, four-court gym, and wrestling and fencing rooms.
To make this vertical, campus-in-the-sky concept work with New York class and style, the architectural team of Kieran Timberlake and Davis Brody Bond inverted design convention. John A. Paulson Center reverses the expected building vocabulary by pushing foot traffic to the transparent perimeter, classrooms to the core.
Result:
Interior walkways are drenched in natural light and showcase the outside buzz and vibrancy of Greenwich Village. Conversely, outside strollers are greeted to a building animated by color, art, and the energy of NYU in motion. John A. Paulson Center is the architectural embodiment of the college experience.
Making all this transparency and openness possible, of course, is glass:
- Textured Façade. Rather than monolithic planes of glazed cladding, the structure adds a distinctive texture with staggered setbacks and angled wedge panels tailored in shape and placement to amplify daylight harvesting and reduce glare. Inside, wedge panels double as inviting window benches to chat, study, or take in Village life below.
- Bird Friendly Glazing. Environmental considerations are a foremost concern for the LEED Gold-targeted project. Among them: Safeguarding the local bird population. Today it’s estimated that up to 230,000 birds die each year in New York due to glass collisions. John A. Paulson Center may be one of the city’s safest glass clad buildings, thanks to sintered glass with enough frit and pattern design to alert flying birds.
- Fire-Rated Glass … Everywhere. In fire rated areas such as exit corridors, stairwells and occupancy separations, low-iron fire resistive glazing tested to ASTM E-119/UL 263 was used for vision and transparency. Life safety is paramount.
Ordinarily fire resistive ASTM E-119/UL 263 compliance means using opaque materials like sheet rock. However, that’s a disruptive barrier to daylight flow and visual wayfinding. SAFTI FIRST’s director of architectural promotion Mike Augustine worked with design team in the early stages of the project, providing pre-design details and budget numbers. “Achieving maximum transparency with fire resistive glass & framing became a key design feature in these high traffic areas such as corridors, stairwells, vestibules and athletic areas including the pool.” Because aesthetics was also an important design consideration, SAFTI FIRST provided low-iron SuperLite II-XL 120 in GPX Architectural Series Framing for the 2 hour walls and low-iron SuperLite II-XL 90 in GPX Builders Series Doors for the full vision 90 minute temperature rise doors.
The lifting of the ‘opaque veil’ is especially transformative in below-grade facilities, offering surprisingly robust illumination and visual connectivity between spaces. Fire resistive glass manufacturer SAFTI FIRST, a U.S. company, proved instrumental in helping the architectural team achieve their design intent without risking life safety. SAFTI FIRST’s fire rated products are widely used throughout John A. Paulson Center.
Today, John A. Paulson Center stands as a superb example how complex multidisciplinary design requirements can be met with uncommon openness, transparency, and clarity.
Learn more about how to transform your next project with the openness and transparency of fire rated glass.
