Central Park Tower

The Central Park Tower is a Contemporary skyscraper designed between 2010 and 2014 by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, in association with AAI Architects, and built between 2014 and 2020, for a reported $3.00 billion dollars, in New York, NY.

Its precise street address is 225 West 57th Street, New York, NY. You can also find it on the map here.

The Central Park Tower has received multiple architecture awards for its architectural design since 2020. The following is a list of such prizes and awards:

• 2021 CTBUH Awards in 2021
• AIA Chicago, Architecture XL, Honor Award in 2022

As is common in many New York buildings, several floor numbers are skipped, with the top floor labeled as 136, even though the structure physically has 98 floors above street level.

Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design, in association with AAI 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 Central Park Tower a reality:

• WSP in charge of Structural Engineering
• Lendlease as the Main Contractor
• James Carpenter Design Associates and Permasteelisa Group in charge of Facade Consultancy
• Otis Elevator Company as the company in charge of the elevators system
• Extell Development Company as the Main Developer
• AKF Group in charge of MEP Engineering
• Rottet Studio in charge of Interior Design

The Central Park Tower can be categorized as a Contemporary building.

The Central Park Tower uses a frame structure made of reinforced concrete columns and poured concrete over metal decking 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 the street level to the 12th floor, the structural frame is made of reinforced concrete, steel, and composite concrete. From the 13th floor onward, construction continues with cast-in-place reinforced concrete.

At the upper floors, setbacks were incorporated to redirect wind loads and reinforce the counterweight system located at the top of the structure, consisting of two tuned mass dampers suspended in place

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features an aluminum-and-glass curtain wall featuring vertical steel and steel-and-zinc strips on the fins of the east facade, where the cantilever over the Art Students League Building is located. This design is meant to reduce solar glare.

The tower emerges from a base that uses a different type of facade material. The base features laminated, insulated, fluted glass panels, set within aluminum frames and interlocked with steel plates.