599 Lexington Avenue Building

The 599 Lexington Avenue Building is a Modern Style skyscraper designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes, with John MY Lee Architects as lead architect, and built between 1984 and 1986, for a reported $300 million dollars, in New York, NY.

Its precise street address is 599 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY. You can also find it on the map here.

The 599 Lexington Avenue Building has received multiple architecture awards for its architectural design since 1986. The following is a list of such prizes and awards:

• Thomas Jefferson Award for Architecture in 1981
• International Lighting Design Award in 2017

The building underwent a major restoration in 2016. The architect commissioned to undertake this restoration was FXFowle Architects.

Edward Larrabee Barnes, with John MY Lee Architects as the lead architect, was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the 599 Lexington Avenue Building a reality:

• Thornton Tomasetti in charge of Structural Engineering
• BXP as the Main Developer
• Jaros Baum & Bolles in charge of MEP Engineering
• Frank Stella as the collaborating Artist

The 599 Lexington Avenue Building can be categorized as a Modern Style building.

By their own nature, the Modern and International Styles can still look current, even in contemporary buildings. So that's not to say the 599 Lexington Avenue Building appeared old or outdated when it was completed, but Edward Larrabee Barnes certainly did not take many risks when it came to choosing the design style. This made the building look more "classic" and integrated within the city's architecture.

The 599 Lexington Avenue Building uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete and steel slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade uses a non-load bearing curtain wall system. This means the curtain wall modules are anchored to the building's structural frame, typically by being attached to the edge of the floor slabs. The curtain wall system connects to the slabs using brackets, anchors, and mullions, which transfer the loads imposed by wind and temperature changes, to the building's primary structural elements.

This setup allows the curtain wall to accommodate differential movement between the facade and the structural frame, such as thermal expansion, floor deflection, or sway from wind forces. This system's integration with the slab edges also allows for continuous insulation and weatherproofing layers.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features blue-tinted glass panels with metallic spandrels, which create a striped pattern that the building from top to bottom.

By creating several square volumes and rotating them amongst one another, as well as in regards to the street direction, the volumetry becomes a play of angles which gives the building its identity.