NEW MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART

In order to fit a vertical space in a highdensity Manhattan setting, SANAA has tacked boxes, shifted offaxis, to create a minimalist structure. The gaps created by the offaxis stacked boxes became the skylight of galleries and the terraces of offices. The New Museum’s strong presence is highlighted by SANAA’s exploration of boundaries between internal and external spaces, a feature of minimalist expression. The numerous attempts that have been made to realize this project, however, offer many implications for the communication between the architects and project collaborators. In order to examine the process of SANAA’s second project in the United States, Space interviewed Toshihiro Oki, who was a project architect for the Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion and the New Museum. We intend to examine architectural attempts to realize a single design concept, ranging from material selection, to solutions to details, to indepth study of thermal energy conducted to construct a glass building.

The New Museum designed by SANAA, a Tokyo architectural firm, was unveiled in New York on Dec.

1 In order to fit a vertical space in a high-density Manhattan setting, SANAA has stacked boxes,

shifted off-axis, to create a minimalist structure The gaps created by the off-axis stacked boxes

became the skylight of galleries and the terraces of offices The New Museum’s strong presence is

highlighted by SANAA’s exploration of boundaries between internal and external spaces, a feature

of minimalist expression The numerous attempts that have been made to realize this project,

how-ever, offer many implications for the communication between the architects and project

collabora-tors In order to examine the process of SANAA’s second project in the United States, Space

inter-viewed Toshihiro Oki, who was a project architect for the Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion and

the New Museum We intend to examine architectural attempts to realize a single design concept,

ranging from material selection, to solutions to details, to in-depth study of thermal energy

con-ducted to construct a glass building <Written by Lim Jin-young>

Kazuyo Sejima +

Ryue Nishizawa

NEW MUSEUM OF

CONTEMPORARY ART

What Completes SANAA’s Design?

Feature 01

Design Architect: Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa(SANAA) Location: New York, USA

Principal use: contemporary art museum

Structure: Steel Frame Design team: Florian Idenburg, Toshihiro Oki, Koji Yoshida,

Hiroaki Katagiri, Yoshitaka Tanase, (former staff-Jonas Elding, Javier Haddad Conde, Junya Ishigami, Yoritaka Hayashi, Fenna Haakma Wagenaar, Jamin Morrison)

Architect of Record (SD1): Guggenheimer Architects Structural Consultant: SAPS - Sasaki and Partners / Mutsuro

Sasaki, Eisuke Mitsuda, Hajime Narukawa

Structural Engineer: Guy Nordenson and Associates Mechanical / Electrical Engineer: ARUP

Lighting Designer: Tillotson Design Associates Curtain Wall Consultant: Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Client: New Museum of Art

Site plan

Not wanting to create an introverted mass in a dense urban setting like Downtown Manhattan, SANAA opened the building up and the museum started to interact with its surroundings

77 76

The New Museum of Contemporary Art is an urban infill in Downtown Manhattan Given such a dense urban setting, stacking museum spaces might easily have led to an introverted mass, but by shifting the volumes in relation to each other we opened the build-ing up and the museum started to interact with its surroundbuild-ings.

This shifting allows for skylights, terraces, and variation, all while maximizing wall space and keeping within the zoned building enve-lope As the relation between core and envelope vary, different lighting conditions and proportions arise.

Written by SANAA | Photographs by Dean Kaufman(except indicate otherwise)

Kazuyo Sejima received a master’s degree in architecture from Japan Womens University, and

is a professor at Keio University Together with Ryue Nishizawa, she established SANAA in 1995,

and has ever since been carrying out active architecture work Born in 1966, Ryue Nishizawa

received a masters degree in architecture from Yokohama National University, established the Office of Ryue Nishizawa, and is running the firm as well as conducting SANAA-related work at the same time Nishizawa is also an associate professor at Yokohama National University Their main works include the Yokayama S House, M House, and K Building Current projects include the Stadstheater Almere “De Kunstlineie” in the Netherlands, an expansion project for the Institue Valencia d’Art Modern in Spain, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York Their awards include the Golden Lion Award at the ninth International Architecture Exhibition in Venice in 2004, and the Armold W Brunner Memorial Prize in 2002

Shifting the volumes in relation to each other allows for elements such as skylights As the relation

between core and envelope vary, different lighting conditions and proportions arise © Iwan Baan

Section 1F Plan

3F Plan

7F Plan

mechanical roof

terrace

mechanical multipurpose room

multipurpose room

office education gallery

gallery

gallery gallery

gallery

holding

lobby gallery

gallery lobby cafe cafe

shop

hall

2 Program / Section diagram _ The shifting floors create moments where

the building opens up balconies, views, roof lights

3 Moments of urban interaction

1 Zoning Study _ Basic zoning makes massive static bulk

80

4-1 Brick veneer_Full brick system 4-2 CMU System 4-3 Corrugated aluminum liner panel

4-4 High Performance Concrete System

5 Developing clip detail

6 Computer model to map the wind and snow/ice load

27.072 23.214 19.355 15.497 11.639 7.781 3.922 0.064 -3.794 -7.652 -11.511 -15.369 -19.227

Global Mx

(N-mm/mm)

7 Fabrication of expanded metal mesh

Energy flow through the facade

The massing of the building seems to be staggered; boxes set upon boxes - they are jogged, but are also based on proportion studies, as you mentioned before - they reflect how SANAA engaged the volumes programmatically?

Each program element occupies one box The boxes are stacked on top of each other on a tight urban site,

so the progression through the building becomes vertical In order for the user to have a connection back to the city, the boxes shift back and forth and create openings (skylights) that visually connect back

to the sky or become terraces that visually connect back to the city Typically in NYC, buildings are maximized to the zoning envelope This creates a block volume in which the front façade becomes the surface treatment, and the user moves through the building with little connection to the volume of the building By not maximizing the zoning envelope, the boxes were given room to shift This then activated all four sides of the building, creating a volumetric shape that the user can engage <fig 2, 3>

It is very smart to engage the programs as volumetric studies and relate these to zoning requirements How did SANAA choose the materials for the external façade?

We’ve been researching various materials, but originally the façade was thought of as very flat and clean, with hardly any visible joints The boxes had very crisp and defined edges, but we began to realize that this kind of precision did not fit the gritty urban

85 84

Collaborators for the New Museum and the Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion

The role of the project architect is increasingly critical: As architectural practices increasingly rely on geographically dispersed networks of collaborators and consultants, the project architect at the center of the network increasingly must interpret the goals of the team Moreover, this person is charged with finding and acting preemptively to secure experts across a broader geographical industry and from an array of possible options This role must satisfy the needs of the client, but also those of the collaborators and the architect, especially since primary decision-making is increasingly regulated early in the design process by cost in our current industry SPACE interviewed Toshihiro Oki, who worked as a project architect for the two SANAA projects built in the U.S., namely the Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion, which presented solutions to energy problems of glass buildings to great acclaim, and the New Museum with its delicate finishing touches at work to achieve the image of controlled boxes Together they form a controlled architectural aesthetics unique to SANAA In this feature we pay attention particularly to the inside stories of the numerous studies and experiments in the process of completing SANAA’s aesthetics

Eunjeong Seong: Let’s start with the New Museum project in New York City.

You’ve been a project architect for two major projects in States; what differences

do you see?

Toshihiro Oki: SANAA won the New Museum competition in 2003 It was a competition that required a proposed design, so the office had to jump right into the design While Toledo was horizontal and plan-driven on a spacious bucolic site, the New Museum was vertical and volume-driven on a tight urban site The designated zoning envelope was very important because it defined the parameters in which the boxes could shift <fig 1>

Interview Toshihiro Oki (SANAA’s New York Office) + Eunjeong Seong (New York Correspondent) Material provided by Toshihiro Oki

INTERVIEW

In order for the user to have a connection back to the city, the boxes shift back and forth and create openings

(skylights) that visually connect back to the sky or become terraces that visually connect back to the city.

Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion, SANAA, 2006

The spaces, each containing a different function, are arranged and shaped to separate gently but also to connect The "in

between"spaces, a result of the independent shapes, function as a dynamic buffer, sometimes emphasizing closeness,

something strengthening the distance

8 Plan Diagram - Process

9 Energy flow through the facade

Unconditioned cavity, -5 C

Air heated cavity, supply along outer facade

Air heated cavity, air supply along inner facade

Radiation heating by reduced air rate for cavity

Direct glass heating and reduced air rate for cavity Unconditioned cavity,

-5 C

Acceptable glass surface temperatures in the room

Acceptable glass surface temperatures in the room

Acceptable glass surface temperatures in the room

Increased glass surface temperatures in the room Limited losses through

reduced temperature differences and

Maximal losses through transfer coefficient at very cold outer facade

Slightly reduced losses through better resistance along the outer glazing

Reduced losses through reduced air velocities and therefore increased surface

Minimized losses and direct heating of critical surface Works for cooling Works for cooling

Radiative surface can

as radiative heat sink

Limited cooling due

to reduce air flow

Analysis of energy flow through the facade _ Left lite is an exterior glass and right is an interior one And top is ceiling and bottom is floor From unconditioned in interstitial space to conditioned one with heated air changed to work this space as buffer zone without too

much of loss of energy and avoid condensation.

site, nor could such precision be feasibly obtained in the current construction environment We therefore

started broadening the search to rougher and industrial materials that could take on the site and the

environment Eventually, we decided on expanded metal mesh Its roughness and surface contortions had

more depth and variation, thus more possibility of rendering This undefined blurry quality interested us

I went down to the Museum recently and I couldn’t see the connections between the expanded metal panels.

How did SANAA make a detail that does not to show the seam between two panels - each panel must have a

limited size? How did you set your goals and form a mindset to make this understated detail?

A monolithic appearance of the mesh material over the boxes was one of the biggest goals, but mesh panels

cannot be fabricated in such large sizes; therefore, instead of fighting the fabrication system, we had to utilize it

to our benefit However, we also realized that it doesn’t need to be the exact way the industry prescribes it At

the beginning, everyone told us that the mesh panels should be unitized into some sort of a system, so that it is

easy to install in the field The typical way is to mount the mesh into a frame that sets into a grid

under-structure But we felt this defeated our intention, because this system felt so commercial, as if the

economy of the building industry were setting the parameters So we spent a lot of time exploring how this

commercial system could be undone and redone in another simpler system that allows the mesh to be free of

any framing This is where we developed the idea of overlapping the mesh panels at the vertical ends to create a

fish-scale type system This overlap actually worked to the contractor’s benefit, because he could use this

overlap as a field-adjustable tolerance Therefore, if the overall built wall dimensions were slightly off from the

constructions drawings (which happens often), the contractor could adjust each overlap slightly to still cover

from one corner of the building to another corner of the building, without having an effect on the overall

appearance of the mesh Our decision to use the overlap made the contractor happy because he knew it would

make his installation easier, and thus less costly and problematic We were happy because the mesh would

appear monolithic We were both happy, and the construction proceeded smoothly, with everyone set on the

same goal

As you mentioned earlier, New York is such a hard place to work due to all sorts of

requirements by law, difficulties like schedules, very tight working spaces, transportation

logistics, etc - these difficulties also are related to higher costs How did SANAA attempt to

control the costs, and still not lose the designer’s intention?

This is a good point We knew from previous projects that a design is only as good as its

execution, so we needed to make sure that all of our designs were feasible in the New York

building environment But again, we didn’t want to do the standard procedures, so in order to

meet design, cost, schedule and feasibility parameters, we had to analyze everything in a

matrix format, where all possible options were gauged against the parameters For example,

with the backup wall, we were looking for a monolithic background material for the mesh, but

it needed to be simple to apply, cost-effective as a material, fire-resistant according to code,

and able to accommodate all the penetrations from the mesh attachment clips We analyzed

many different wall options, such as high-performance concrete, insulated metal panels,

curtain wall metal panels, smooth monolithic spray membranes, concrete masonry units, and

even brick Upon all this research, we concluded that custom extruded aluminum panels with

a small corrugated surface pattern would best perform to our criteria The real impact came

from the fact that extrusions can be made

in any shape, since the cost is in making the original dye After that, you only pay for the amount of material that is extruded

We saw that with a little more money used up-front to make the dye, we could make the extruded panels that exactly fit out specifications, without any up-charge for the rest of the order All the other wall systems required a lot of effort to even slightly modify the system, since each wall panel would need to be modified, so the custom-extruded panels were most cost-effective <fig 4>

After several in depth research phases, it was decided to do the rear supported panel system with

a corrugated panel What about the connection between the back panel and expanded aluminum mesh?

So now we had to develop the clips to hold the expanded mesh panels The clip evolved from a flat steel clip with slip connections to a round thin diameter rod After the full scale façade mockup was done, we really saw that the flat steel clip was just too much of a presence The flat area cast shadows

on the backup wall It gave too much of a mechanical feel to the idea of floating mesh, so along with McGrath (façade contractor) and James & Taylor (engineer and supplier for the mesh), we started to rethink the clip design Again, cost was the biggest parameter, but James & Taylor developed a design that used a standard 10mm-diameter stainless steel rod and coined the ends to make a flat surface for riveting to the wall and mesh The rod was much less visible than the flat plate, and it also fit within the budget We also tweaked it further by placing the clip

at an angle to reduce the profile from below <fig 5>

What other aspects of the exterior material did you seek - or add?

We had a number of criteria that were important to

us They included the shape of the mesh diamonds, the size of the diamonds and panels, fabrication tolerance of the panels, and bright, consistent anodizing And of course, there was schedule and cost We did a world search and the only fabricator who could supply mesh that met our criteria was Expanded Metal Company teamed up with James

& Taylor They were able to pull together their network of people whom they’ve worked with in the past, so their team was “well-oiled.” For the shape and size of the mesh diamond, they fabricated a custom-sized dye to stamp the mesh to the module size that fits the building For fabrication tolerance, they had enough experience with this size mesh

to know how to handle the variables Also, the anodizing was a special method they had developed This method produces bright anodizing without the expensive and toxic process that the conventional method requires <fig 6, 7>

I would like to talk about the other SANAA project, the Glass Pavilion, in which you participated As an architect myself, I can see that this project is very significant not only for the materiality of the glass and the reflected landscape inside of the building, but also because it gives us a new paradigm, or form, for the plan drawing The cavity space in the Glass Pavilion expands and contracts to organize the main spaces It allows

us to read the drawing in a completely opposite way, meaning we pay attention to the cavity space in a way that we never would have in the conventional drawings The effect of this is a very enigmatic spatial quality that we’ve never experienced before You are almost always faced with two or more layered surfaces of straight and curved glass The different distances between the surfaces and the different degrees of curvature of the glass continually expand and contract the cavity space Can you describe how SANAA approached this project, in brief?

In 2001, the Toledo Museum of Art selected SANAA to design a new building to house their extensive glass collection The selection process was unique in that the museum’s criteria were based on the type of office they would like to work with, as opposed to a presented competition scheme By doing this, the design developed and evolved, with the museum as a partner from the very beginning The Toledo museum complex includes a Beaux-Arts style art museum built in the early 1900’s, as well as the University of Toledo’s Center for Visual Arts, designed by Frank Gehry

There are also some connecting green areas with tall old growth trees that create a rather bucolic setting We selected the site of the Glass Pavilion by combining one of the existing parking lots and

a grove of this tall, centennial oak tress The Pavilion actually sits where the parking lot used to be, and slides right under the leaf canopy of the oak trees None of the trees were disturbed And by keeping the building as a one-story structure, the neighbor’s sight lines to the museum were kept intact The intention was to ease naturally into the site, without much disruption

The site could make it difficult to produce order during an architectural process Can you describe how SANAA organizes the spaces and this type of a unique plan?

The museum program was laid out in concordance with the adjacency requirements serving as a guide This caused the layout to gravitate to a certain configuration Thinking about movement

between spaces, we realized that diagonal connections at the corners allowed more flexibility in circulation This diagonal connection led to curved corners, which in turn led to the idea that each space would have its own walls Typically, two adjacent spaces share a wall in-between, but this locks the spaces together, since the dividing wall dictates the division By giving each space its own independent walls, the spaces could then slide past each other in a more fluid manner Also, you could actually move from one space to the next without actually leaving the room, through doors The resultant cavity space became a thermal buffer zone, like an expanded IGU (Insulating Glass Unit) This thermal buffer was critical in allowing the use of all glass walls Without it, the concept of all-glass walls could not work It is funny, but the plan drawing showing the cavity walls confused some publications A few editors wrote back, asking us to show the wall thickness because they couldn’t find the typical thick wall lines (laugh) <fig 8>

Are you saying the cavity space wasn’t thought about from the start?

SANAA didn’t start with a preconceived form The process of figuring out the program produced the form as you see it now It was process-driven

The entire exterior wall is, of course, glass Can we talk about the material itself in more detail?

There were two important engineering aspects about the reality of using glass One was to make the thermal buffer cavity zone work with all glass walls, and the other was to create a thin roof supported by invisibly thin columns, so that it makes the roof appear to float above the glass walls The exterior walls are all glass panels made up of + low-iron laminated annealed glass with a PVB (polyvinyl butyral) interlayer The joints between the

There was a lot of research and testing done

to integrate the curtains into the mechanical

system while still keeping

to the design intentions

of the building

10 Energy flow through the facade

11 Study of location of shading device for reducing amount of heat gain along the idea of radiant heat and low velocity airflow analysis

12 Daylighting Sun study 13 Curtain mock up 14 Mock up Test

Environmental design/CFD Thermal Analysis(Provided by Transsolar, Stuttgart, Germany) _ While the pure air solution increased the heat losses due to the increase surface losses, an alternate solution with heat supply by radiation through the floor and ceiling surfaces, should allow to temper the facade buffer without huge air rates Temperature on floor and ceiling in cavity: 35°C, reduced supply air in cavity: 1 m/s or 5 ac/h The heat supply by radiation heats the glass surfaces not by the air, but in a direct path.

Therefore the air temperature in the cavity can be reduced to 12.5°C and with the only minimal reduced surface resistances, the heat losses through the facade drop to 180 W/m 2 or by 40% The inner surface temperatures facing the room keep the level of 15 -25°C, out of the condensation range

Aside of the balance method the CFD evaluations confirmed the approach to reduce the air flow rate through the radiant system

by factor 4! -, with strong consequences for the size of the ducts, solving strong conflicts with the structural concept As a side effect, the radiant heating system can be used in summer as a radiant cooling system, absorbing radiation before it heats the air and has to be removed by an air flow

provided by Transsolar provided by ARUP Lighting

without shading

with internal shading with cavity shading

89 88

glass panels are wide silicon joints, with a clear gasket spacer inside to keep the silicone and

PVB separated Silicone can cause PVB to become delaminated The flat glass panels follow the

8 -0 building grid, so one size fit all straight wall locations The curved panels were categorized into

set radii and perimeter lengths, keeping the number of slumping molds to a minimum in order to

control cost

As you mentioned earlier, the cavity space is making a significant contribution as a thermal buffer Can you

talk about the cavity space in terms of mechanical engineering? How did you address the thermal issues of

the interstitial space?

While the transparency of glass allows the visitor to see from one space to the next, it also allows thermal

energy and sunlight to enter into the building; therefore, an engineered analysis needed to be done to

understand the parameters and what options were available to control these For example, the cavity space

was analyzed with different thermal concepts These five diagrams show these concepts, with calculated

thermal movement between the exterior and the interior <fig 9>

A series of options seem to have been very carefully done with this expertise Matthias Schuler of Transsolar stated that the building was impossible to execute without this kind

of engineering support It is truly a great collaboration with consultants who seem far more like full-fledged collaborators What is the general mechanical concept?

Yes, we were lucky to have Transsolar Matthias is like a mad scientist, but his creativity of thinking is what allowed new thermal concepts to develop, thus allowing our design to become a reality Also, we were operating under a tight budget, so the design not only had to

be feasible, but also cost efficient Using the cavity concept, Transsolar used CFD (computational fluid dynamics) <fig 10> thermal analysis to conclude that a combined system of radiant heating-cooling and low velocity air flow was the most efficient way to utilize the buffer between the all glass walls This system allows the interior spaces to remain at the required temperature, while eliminating condensation on the glass and the need to pump a lot of heated air into the cavity In other words, the cavity can act as a buffer, instead of a siphon In addition, the Hot Shop spaces - where visiting artists blow glass and hold classes or demonstrations - provide a lot of excess heat that is in turn pumped back into the building systems for reuse The gallery spaces are zoned separately from the Hot Shops due to different temperature and humidity requirements The galleries have floor air supply diffusers towards the middle of the spaces and 1” wide return air gaps between the glass walls and the ceiling, along the perimeters This allows for proper air circulation

There is a now relatively new book titled “Inside Outside” by Petra Blaisse She showed the Glass Pavilion

project in a significant way, not only for the energy issues and solutions, but also the client’s need to separate

the programmatic spaces on demand From an engineering aspect, are these curtains related to heat

transfer?

There was a lot of research and testing done to integrate the curtains into the mechanical system while still

keeping to the design intentions of the building Transsolar’s thermal analysis showed that the position of the

curtains within the cavity space had a critical impact on heat gain through the glass <fig 11> Also, the overall

locations of the curtains were based on ARUP Lighting’s sun-shading studies, showing how direct sunlight enters into the building over the four seasons <fig 12> Furthermore, the transparency level of the curtain fabric was informed by the level of sunlight (measured in foot candles) that entered into the various spaces Also, the curtain fabric was specially chosen - an aluminized fabric made by a Swiss company, called Verosol This fabric helps direct thermal gain back out of the building, creating

an appropriate ambient environment for the museum’s glass artwork The combinations of these techniques were necessary to meet the museum’s requirements Then, as the curtains went into the execution phase, we looked at many different seaming and attachment methods to find the right feel to the curtains All of the vertical curtain seams were aligned to the glass wall joints to reduce the amount of visual lines <fig 13, 14>

What is the general idea of structure, since there are two significant elements prevalent, such as thin columns and roof? (This question was answered by Brett Schuneider of Guy Nordenson Associates.)

Brett Schuneider: Two things The first is to understand that we collaborated with Sasaki Structural Consultants (Masohiro Sasaki), who have

a long relationship with SANAA and helped develop the concept for the project Second, the project can

be defined initially as a simple cartoon consisting of a single line of the roof and single line of the

floor/ground with glass between - the concept is simple, and therefore open to interpretation and development (as initiated by SANAA) Sasaki’s idea was to apply a structure similar to that of the Sendai Mediateque in Japan - a stiffened steel plate to provide as thin a roof structure as possible Some initial ideas that we pursued were to use the perimeter glass for partial gravity support So while the implied goal was the minimization of the columns, it was clear that the main goal was the thinness of the roof In order to achieve this in

America (where the Sendai system would be considered radical construction), we began a systematic development of applicable framing systems for comparison - all based on the principle of approaching equivalent flat plate two-way behavior These systems included top steel plate stiffened by wide flange sections below, and more typical wide flange framing at varied spacing with metal deck above The economics of the systems studied resulted in the flat frame of wide flange steel sections used in the final design The entire frame is moment-connected to make both the girders (East-West) and joists (North-South) continuous allowing reduced depth of the framing overall The girders follow snaking lines connecting the columns, with the joists straight and regularly spaced between The kinks in the girders occur at locations of joists framing in, so that the resulting torsion of the kink is resolved cleanly in bending in the joists

The columns are located generally in the cavities between rooms (where possible) - locating the columns generally came after the design of the rooms (for the most effective functioning of those rooms) It was never clearly discussed, as such and early schemes show a much more regular arrangement, but the final location of the columns is not on any regular grid This is important because there is no discernable pattern to their placement to be perceived, and thus they tend to disappear I often refer to them as "hiding in plain sight." In addition, the columns have pins at their tops to allow rotation along the axis of the girders, so as to prevent the transmission of bending and allow the columns to be smaller, and the majority of the building’s lateral stiffness

is in the exposed steel plate walls of the Lampworking Room (steel plate shear walls where flat and effective columns where the wall is curved) - another example of structure in plain sight that you might not easily recognize (even though you see its thickness clearly where the window is inset into it) The coordination of the systems was the most difficult part of the technical process and required extraordinary coordination and collaboration between designers The roof framing at its deepest is 15" (375mm), and the structure shares depth with the mechanical systems below (air, roof drainage, and sprinklers) and the roof insulation above The girders are 12-15" deep and extend up into the roof insulation when greater than 12", and the roof framing as a

whole is penetrated and hunched to allow the passage of air, sloped drainage pipes, and sprinklers as necessary The interaction is so complex that every beam was elevated to accurately document all of the penetrations <fig 15, 16, 17,

18, 19, 20,>

Everything is thought out; there is not a single item left out.

Brett Schuneider talked earlier a little bit about two aspects

of engineering for this building What are the specific engineering aspects that you want to talk about? There was

a goal to keep the roof very thin, but SANAA also located major mechanical systems heating, ventilation, plumbing -that made this difficult What was the experience to design such a roof structure like?

We felt we needed to fully understand all the components of the system in order to make sure everything possible was done to lighten the appearance of the roof Everything was double and triple checked then re-questioned until the engineers turned blue in their faces I supposed people thought we had gone mad, but

we wanted to make sure it was not 99.99% but really 100% To further keep a thin roof, all mechanical piping, roof drains, sprinkler lines etc were pushed up in-between the structural roof members, and beam

penetrations were employed to move the piping from one structural bay to the next Then a further layer of coordination was required between the structure, MEP, roofing, and glass walls While sprinkler lines are pressurized and thus can all run at one elevation, roof drains require a certain slope to allow collected rain water to run in the correct direction But this meant that every time a drain penetrated a beam along its sloped run, it would penetrate at a different and lower elevation; therefore, all the penetration holes needed to be marked with specific elevations, so that each drain line could maintain its required slope This was a very difficult exercise to control while keeping in mind the fabrication and installation tolerance of steel

The scope of global industries that have been engaged at both Toledo and New York is relied upon

as a network of specialists that SANAA helped find and coordinate Also, as mentioned earlier, the relationship with the consultants seems like a very coordinated give and take; SANAA’s coordination is far more extensive than the normal, and it is very much at the core of the project’s potential The development of Internet communications and globalization has allowed your teams to work together without having easy geographical proximity.

At SANAA, we spend a tremendous amount of time researching, but also engaging enthusiastic and intelligent consultants/engineers/fabricators gives

us new motivation for design, too

The consultants all mentioned that the architects gave them new challenges in new realms of work Thanks so much for your time and hopefully we’ll see you with a different project in future SPACE magazines.

At SANAA, we spend a tremendous amount of time researching, but also engaging enthusiastic and intelligent consultants/ engineers /fabricators gives us new

motivation for design, too.

15 Superstructure Finite-Element Analysis Model

provided by Guy Nordenson and Associates

provided by Guy Nordenson and Associates provided by Guy Nordenson and Associates

16 Superstructure Construction Photograph 17 Typical Roof Section and Construction Photograph of Typical Roof Girder 18 Typical Column Head Detail and 3d Solid Finite-Element Analysis Model of

Bearing at Pin Through Top of Column

19 Pipes penetrate through beams 20 Glass Installation