712 Fifth Avenue Building

The 712 Fifth Avenue Building is a Postmodernist skyscraper designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, in association with SLCE Architects, and built between 1988 and 1990, for a reported $399 million dollars, in New York, NY.

Its precise street address is 712 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY. You can also find it on the map here.

The 712 Fifth Avenue Building has received multiple architecture awards for its architectural design since 1990. The following is a list of such prizes and awards:

• Concrete Industry Board Award for Excellence in Design and Construction in 1990
• NYCE First Prize for Engineering Excellence in 1991

The building integrates into its design the iconic facades of two smaller, older buildings on Fifth Avenue, the Rizzoli building and the former Coty building, both New York City landmarks that form the base of the new tower.

The building underwent a major restoration between 2023 and 2024. The architect commissioned to undertake this restoration was Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates.

Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design, in association with SLCE Architects.

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 712 Fifth Avenue Building a reality:

• Severud Associates Consulting Engineers in charge of Structural Engineering
• Otis Elevator Company as the company in charge of the elevators system
• Solomon Equities, and A. Alfred Taubman as the Main Developer
• Jaros Baum & Bolles in charge of MEP Engineering
• Thierry Bruet, and Amy Rassinforf as the collaborating Artist

The 712 Fifth Avenue Building can be categorized as a Postmodernist building.

The 712 Fifth Avenue Building was completed in 1990. By 1990 the Postmodernism movement was experiencing a transition. Critics argued that Postmodernism, initially a rebellious and innovative style, had become formulaic and commercialized, and so the trend started moving away from blending historical styles, irony, and playful ornamentation, and begun to give way to emerging architectural trends concerned with more present matters such as technology, ecology or sustainability.

The 712 Fifth 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 of the building however, is load bearing. This doesn't imply that it is a traditional load-bearing wall. Rather, it means that the structure's exterior pillars have been pushed to the very edges, becoming integrated with the facade, and therefore, technically, a part of it.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features Indiana Limestone and white Vermont marble, with bronze medallions, polished black granite, and thermal green granite accents, creating a striking contrast with the historic elements of the original facades of the Rizzoli building and the former Coty building, which where incorporated into the new tower's design.

The windows are arranged in a grid, with the central part highlighted in light-colored stone and the corners in darker granite. Near the top, the tower has two uneven setbacks, one 8.2 meters and the other 15 meters.