Reply With QuoteProbably louvered mechanical floors.Originally Posted by BigMac
Great pictures! I've always wondered: what is that darker space about halfway up the building? I was thinking maybe a sky lobby, but didn't know for sure.
Probably louvered mechanical floors.
Jessica Richter on Flickr
November 15, 2010
WNET 13 is going to be showing a tour of Hearst Tower tonight at 8:30 (treasures of NY series). Sorry for late notice, just caught the promo.
Interesting show - lot of great inside views. Loved the Good Housekeeping labs and test kitchens - and they have the original living room/dining room preserved up in the tower!
Also some interesting tidbits - Foster was in town for the final planning meeting the day before the design was to be submitted to the board... on September 12th. They decided to go forward anyway a month later.
Rainwater is collected in the roof - and used for both cooling and the signature lobby waterfall. Probably not shocking, but they needed custom designed window washers for the undulating exterior.
2 Window Washers Rescued From Outside Midtown High-Rise’s 45th Floor By MARC SANTORA
Two window washers who were stranded nearly 500 feet above the streets of Midtown Manhattan after their work platform snapped were rescued on Wednesday by New York City firefighters.
The platform, connected to scaffolding, seemed to have snapped in the middle, although it was not immediately clear what caused it to malfunction. The accident was first reported at 2:39 p.m. at the Hearst Tower on Eighth Avenue between 57th and 58th Streets, and the men were brought to safety around 4:15 p.m., fire officials said.
Rescue workers broke out a window on the 45th floor, two stories below the roof, in order to reach the workers. The window washers, both men, were wearing harnesses at the time of the accident, and firefighters lowered an extra set of harnesses to them.
Chief William Seelig of the Fire Department said they had decided that knocking out the window was safer than trying to hoist the men up onto the roof.
The dramatic rescue was broadcast live by several local television stations, which showed the stranded men trying to remain as still as possible before being pulled to safety. A large crowd gathered below before being pushed back by the police.
Part of Eighth Avenue was shut down, with officials concerned about both the stability of the window-washing rig and the possibility of falling glass when they broke a window.
The Hearst Tower, at 300 West 57th Street, is one of the most modern and distinct buildings in the city, with radically angled panes of glass rising above the original 1928 Hearst International Magazine Building as his pedestal.
Designed by the architect Norman Foster, it was the first skyscraper approved for construction in New York City after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack. When Mr. Foster submitted his unconventional design, according to an article in The New Yorker, the first question the building owners asked was, “How are you going to clean those windows?”
That became the challenge of Tractel-Swingstage, a Toronto-based company and the world’s largest manufacturer of scaffolding and window-cleaning platforms, the magazine described in a detailed article on the equipment.
It took three years and more than $3 million to come up with a model.
“The result, a rectangular steel box the size of a Smart car, supporting a 40-foot mast and a hydraulic boom arm attached by six strands of wire rope to a telescopic cleaning basket, houses a computer that monitors 67 electromechanical safety sensors and switches, and runs around the roof of the Hearst Tower on 420 feet of elevated steel track,” the magazine reported.
Scott Borland, the project’s construction manager, told the magazine that it was “like a ride at Disneyland.”
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