Pier 57
Excellence in Adaptive Reuse – Winner
Location: New York, NY
Developers: Young Woo & Associates, RXR
Owner: Hudson River Park Trust
Architects: Handel Architects (Core & Shell, Façade, Rooftop Park), Diller Scofidio + Renfro and HLW (Google Levels 1-4 and Public Spaces), Christopher Warnick Architecture (City Winery, El Bar), S9 Architecture (Market 57, Classrooms, and Public Living Room)
Originally built in 1907 as a shipping and storage terminal, reconstructed in the 1950s after a fire, and later serving as a bus garage, Pier 57 has been reimagined as a unique, mixed-use destination in Hudson River Park through intense collaboration and innovation. Pier 57, with its novel caisson design, is essentially a 500,000-square-foot skyscraper turned on its side that now features a two-and-a-half-acre rooftop park, the 16-kiosk Market 57 international food hall, an enormous public seating area with Wi-Fi, 12,000 square feet of free public classrooms, and several restaurants. Anchoring—as well as helping finance and design the unique public–private partnership—were key tenants Google, which now has 345,000 square feet of mostly client meeting and presentation space, and culinary arts organization the James Beard Foundation, which now houses a training kitchen at Pier 57. But the road from underused asset to a community and commercial hub was far from easy. Extensive meetings between stakeholders including community boards, the Hudson River Park Trust, and nearly 20 city, state, and federal agencies yielded a range of ideas requiring creative engineering and exacting detail to meet city requirements and local needs. Two new floors were added to expand the space. Angled glazing was added to keep out the elements. To enhance resilience, the site now has multiple flood protection systems, including an AquaFence flood barrier and flood curbing; critical utilities were moved up to the fourth floor to prevent damage. The former roof parking lot was transformed into a spectacular garden with a glass pavilion. Since its April 2023 opening, the award-winning site has welcomed 2.2 million visitors to its living room, marketplace, and rooftop. Creative public–private partnerships and the tailoring of uses to local neighborhood needs have made Pier 57 a magnet for the public and businesses large and small in the Meatpacking District.
Sendero Verde
Excellence in Affordable Housing Development – Winner
Location: New York, NY
Developers/Owners: Jonathan Rose Companies, L+M Development Partners, Acacia Network
Public Agency Partner: New York City Department of Housing Preservation & Development
Design Architect, Architect of Record & Interior Designer: Handel Architects
Photo Credit: Albert Vecerka/Esto
Affordable–housing buildings rarely incorporate all of the sustainability, design, and wellness features that market-rate housing can provide. Not so with Sendero Verde in East Harlem. With 709 all-electric units, it is the world’s largest passive-house residential building. The 750,851–square–foot, 100%–affordable–housing complex was built on a site previously occupied by four community gardens. It features beautiful details, including subtle color variation in bricks to blend with the surroundings, abundant tenant amenities, a community garden, a central–courtyard, on–site school, a computer room, supportive services, and a Family Enrichment Center. A resident social services director, occupational therapists, art and dance classes, and housing specialists help meet the needs of formerly unhoused populations. Among Sendero Verde’s sustainability and wellness features are a highly insulated envelope, triple-glazed high-performance windows, low–energy mechanical equipment, solar panels, stormwater reuse, and continuous ventilation. Most noteworthy was the use of off-the-shelf products for the stick-built, site–erected details in a passive–house building within budget. Sendero Verde balances affordable housing, sustainability, and community integration, establishing a precedent for large-scale sustainable housing.
the Fifth Avenue Hotel
Excellence in Hotel Development – Winner
Location: Manhattan, NY
Owner: Flaneur Hospitality
Founder/Proprietor: Alex Ohebshalom
Architects: Perkins Eastman, PBDW Architects, Martin Brudnizki Design Studio
Photo Credit: Andrew Rugge – © Perkins Eastman
The remaking of a NoMad beaux arts building into a stylish hotel in a dense, landmark-protected area faced its share of challenges. Existing floor plates in the Gilded Age mansion-turned twentieth–century bank made carving out cookie–cutter rooms impossible. To preserve its gloried past while adding modern flourishes, the entire skeleton of the prior structure was ripped out and the facade was braced. Today rooms in the new, 140,000-square-foot, 153-guest–room Fifth Avenue Hotel boast terracotta cornices, steel framework, and wood-framed windows. Twenty-foot-high doors grace the street entrance. For more space, a striking, new, 24-story modern concrete, metal, and glass tower was added. Most noteworthy was the hotel’s inspiration, which came from a 1911 New York Times article detailing a proposal for a “tall loft building” on the site. Designed to meet LEED Silver standards, sustainability features include energy-efficient windows, an upgraded HVAC system, and the insulation and enhancement of exterior walls. The hotel’s crown jewel is its Portrait Bar, with book-lined shelves, a grand stone-carved fireplace, and a variety of portraits lining the wood-paneled walls. Collectively, The Fifth Avenue Hotel’s design, art, gastronomy, and hospitality have earned it accolades from Travel + Leisure, Condé Nast Traveler, Town & Country, and Architectural Digest, among others. The Fifth Avenue Hotel transforms a landmark into a new vision of intuitive and imaginative hospitality in the heart of New York.
Far Rockaway Library
Excellence in Institutional Development – Winner
Location: Queens, NY
Developer: New York City Department of Design and Construction
Owner: Queens Public Library, City of New York
Architect: Snøhetta
Photo Credit: Jeff Goldberg/Esto
In a building befitting its history and service to the community, the new Far Rockaway Library hits all the right notes in design, sustainability, and functionality. The prior library, built in 1968, served as disaster relief site during Hurricane Sandy, providing food, a meeting point, and supplies. Its replacement at twice the size is equally welcoming. A luminescent facade with sculpted words referencing daily life in New York aims to draw local communities into the building’s glass entrance and sun-filled rooms. A central atrium shaped like an inverted pyramid lets light stream in and offers sky views. Its vibrantly colored facade reflects the diverse local community and beautiful sunsets. But equal pains were taken to make the library a community hub, with private meeting rooms, a teen room, and a small business center. A public garden provides dedicated space for communal meetings, study, play, and repose. Developers also shored up the LEED Silver library’s resilience and added sustainability features such as a stormwater retention system, the ability to bring in an emergency generator for keeping the building operational, a blue roof, and a concrete raised–floor, forced–air system for radiant heating and cooling. The remade Far Rockaway Library continues to be a beacon of light, hope, and resilience for the local community, with sustainability features fit for all weather.
505 State Street
Excellence in Market-Rate Housing Development – Winner
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Developer: Alloy Development
Public Agency Partner: New York City Educational Construction Fund
Architect: Alloy Design
Photo Credit: Pavel Bendov
A 44-floor mixed-use residential and retail tower in downtown Brooklyn, 505 State Street is the first all-electric tower in New York to be powered entirely by local renewable energy. The building is part of the first phase of the larger Alloy Block development, Brooklyn’s first LEED community (LEED Gold for Communities), which also includes the city’s first two passive-house schools. Notably, the 416,475-square-foot project was completed without subsidies on a dense triangular site while preserving two historical structures. Much of the block’s design and amenities grew from extensive input from the local community on how to remake a block near New York’s second-largest transportation hub that contained a pawn shop, several buildings, and a high school—the latter then in a rundown, nineteenth-century building. As a result of some 120 meetings and feedback from a newly formed Community Advisory Group, with stakeholders ranging from the Brooklyn Partnership to community boards, the area was rezoned, and planned parking and loading docks were eliminated. Creative engineering was required. The building sits on a podium of four stacked triangular volumes that twist and set back. Today the tower holds 441 apartments—45 of which are affordable—featuring exposed concrete ceilings, large and energy-efficient triple–paned windows, smart thermostats, and water source heat pumps. Crowd–pleasing amenities include a gym, a screening room, and even the Grow Room, a plant-filled meditation space. The exemplary design and sustainability features of 505 State Street grew from intense listening to the local community and a commitment to quality.
St. John's Terminal
Excellence in Office Development – Winner
Location: New York, NY
Developer: Oxford Properties Group
Design Architect: COOKFOX Architcts
Architect of Record: Adamson Associates, P.C.
Interiors Architect: Gensler
Photo Credit: Image courtesy of Google
The transformation of St. John’s Terminal from a 1930s freight structure supporting up to 227 railcars and into the office of the future speaks to what is possible in the office sector. The new St. John’s Terminal development stands out for the creative engineering and design that made the remake possible, as did new wellness and sustainability features. The project saved the equivalent of 78,400 metric tons of carbon dioxide by converting rather than destroying the structure. A nine-story overbuild was added to accommodate up to 3,000 employees in 1.3 million square feet, and new precast cores constructed with an innovative posttension bridge technology were used for faster and less–climate-intensive work. The LEED v4 Platinum building boasts on–site terrace solar arrays, water retention systems, and a double-wall curtain wall with integrated shading for 1 million kilowatt–hours of annual energy savings. As for design, the terminal’s brick facade, limestone detailing, and masonry base were carefully restored. Newly exposed railbeds host some 95% of plants native to New York State. In total, the building has 33,700 square feet of open space at street level, on terraces, and on rooftops. Wellness features include daylit interiors and biodynamic lighting for panoramic views. All of that led to the office complex’s becoming the largest single-office sale since 2018, when anchor tenant Google purchased the property for more than $2 billion. The building has also received coverage in prominent publications such as The New York Times as well as several awards. St. John Terminal’s triumph shows how blue–sky thinking, intricate design, sustainability, greenspace, and wellness planning can transform a defunct structure into a highly coveted office space while revitalizing a neighborhood.
Manhattan West
Excellence in Urban Open Space – Winner
Location: New York, NY
Developer – Manhattan West: Brookfield Properties
Developer – High Line – Moynihan Connector: Empire State Development, Brookfield Properties, Friends of the High Line
Architects: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Field Operations
Photo Credit: Dave Burk © SOM
The area west of Penn Station has been a greenspace desert. The arrival of 2.6 acres of open space between 9th and 10th Avenues and West 31st and 33rd Streets—an area that is part of the broader, 7-million-square–foot Manhattan West mixed-use development—has changed that. Manhattan West brings plazas, native–plant gardens, benches, and a range of programming to the Western Hemisphere’s busiest mass transit hub. Given the density and complexity of the area, this open space’s arrival was an engineering feat: Plazas and walkways were built on a 2.6–acre precast concrete segmental structure above active railroad tracks on what was previously an open railyard, a parking lot, and two existing buildings. Guiding the project aboveground was a master plan with fluid pathways to increase walkability around the area. Today, among many programs offered are art installations, movie premieres, dance contests, food festivals, and ice–skating. In addition, pedestrians now have car-free east–west access from the Manhattan West plaza to the High Line via the pedestrian bridges of the new, 600-foot Moynihan Connector, which 12,500 commuters use daily. The creative injection of green and open space into an area where minimal buildable land previously existed in a dense, transit-rich corridor has transformed the Penn District from a pass-through stretch into a vibrant destination with ties to existing walkways, retail stores, and parks.