56 Leonard Tower by Herzog & de Meuron, New York, USA
The project is conceived as a stack of individual rooms, where each room is unique and identifiable within the overall stack. A careful investigation of local construction methods revealed the possibility of shifting and varying floor-slabs to create corners, cantilevers and balconies – all welcome strategies for providing individual and different conditions in each apartment. At the base of the tower, the stack reacts to the scale and specific local conditions on the street, while the top staggers and shifts to engage with the sky. In-between, the staggering and variation in the middle-levels is more controlled and subtle, like in a column shaft.