Calatrava-Designed Residential Tower for New York

Fronting each cube's exterior, an expansive terrace garden will be formed by the roof of the cube directly below it. Mr. Sciame said, "This terrace will generate the visual effect of having, literally, a townhouse in the sky. If one wanted even more of a townhouse feeling, the design could incorporate a grand exterior stair leading from the apartment's terrace to an entrance at the cube's first level."

The design of 80 South Street Tower evolved from a theme that Mr. Calatrava began investigating some 20 years ago through a series of sculptures, in which marble cubes are stacked or suspended in space, held in place by taut wires.

Mr. Calatrava has varied the number of cubes and their arrangement, creating different sculptural expressions out of the same basic elements. Watercolor drawings of the human body have also contributed to the series.

Mr. Calatrava's studies of a turning torso yielded a sculpture in which marble cubes spiral around a steel support; and this sculpture gave rise to a design for a high-rise apartment tower in Malmö, Sweden, scheduled for completion in summer 2005.

The design of 80 South Street Tower is a new idea within this theme. Twelve glazed cubes are cantilevered in ladder-like steps up the building's slender vertical core. The core and a pair of slim vertical spines stabilize the structure.

Carl Weisbrod, President of the Alliance for Downtown New York, Inc., stated, "Downtown has the richest collection of architecturally distinctive structures of any place in our country. Frank Sciame's and Santiago Calatrava's exciting and dramatic building will immediately become one of the major icons on the city's skyline, but it will also be an important part-and a vivid example-of Downtown's emergence as the first great urban center of the 21st Century."

Madelyn Wils, Chairperson of Community Board 1, commented, "Those of us who are advocates for Lower Manhattan have called repeatedly for residential use, cultural amenities, and exciting and beautiful design. This building does it all."

Sciame: the development company

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