NY LOBBY ASSIGNMENT_28/11/12

New York Lobbies

Seagram

 

The Seagram Building is a modern office tower designed by german architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, in collaboration with Philip Johnson in New York, 1958.

This office skyscraper is in some ways the culmination of the purification process of expression, started decades earlier by functionalism. The high-rise building is a sign of the rationalist mentality of Mies van der Rohe. It illustrates the architect’s motto "Less is more", showing that a simple building can be just as surprising as a building with more composite designs. The Seagram Building is a refined synthesis of rationalist architecture, the socalled International Style and the american high-rise building composing the modern office building.

As usual in functionalism, the concept of the design was to develope form defined by function, reducing ornaments and everything else that was considered unnecessairy to minimum. Preferably the design was constructed from industrial massproduced parts using materials such as steel, glass and concrete. It constitutes an open architecture filled with light.

An opening, like a window in the wall, permits light the transition between the outside and inside of this wall. A lobby is a metaphorical window, a spatial opening, as it in itself is a space of transition between two spaces.

OPENING in relation to the physical connections – site/program/cirkulation

The Seagram presents itself as a bronze glas cube of simple elegance, which is slightly moved backwards from Park Avenue to free an open space, a kind of plaza in front of the building. This open space, which formes a kind of void, a pocket of air, between the tight skyscrapers of Manhattan, functions as a physical and mental transition between the street and the lobby. The fact that it is elevated three steeps from ground- and street level, makes one aware about the entering of a new kind of space.

Since the facade of the first level is fully glassed, it leads automatically across the plaza to the lobby and the clearly through steelframes marked entrancedoors. Entering the lobby and the otherwise empty entrance zone with a small front desk placed in the center, one immediately faces four white huge cubes which seem to penetrate the building from the groundlevel upwards. The cubes constitutes the transportation/cirkulation system of the building, deviding the space into three tall and slim passages whith four elevator shafts on both sides. In the farest part of the lobby there should be two doors leading to the staircases, but they aren’t visible unless passing the elevators. As the Seagram is a tall building, most of the cirkulation will be of vertical character and occure through the elevators, making the lobby the only link between the base floor and the other floors.

OPENING in relation to the visual connections

This connection of the lobby and the other floors is only spatial. There are no visual connections across the different levels, which makes them kind of isolated and private. As the bearing structure is inside the building it allows the use of a non-bearing facade, an open curtainwall. To make the construction still readable, the structure is only inferred by an I-beam steelframe in the facade giving the whole building a uniform harmonious look.

The more public area of the lobby is clearly emphasized through a slightly change into a fully glassed fasade creating visual connections between the outside groundlevel and the inside slightly elevated base level.

OPENING in relation to the atmosphere

Architecturally seen this building creates an open and public lobby space with a serious businesslike atmosphere knowing that it leads to other more private spaces. The structure expresses openness and the materials used on the ex- and the interior are clearly part of consideration towards the user. But in the experience it feels like an unachievable place with an elevated, exclusive and very private atmosphere.

Actually I’ve only experienced it from the outside, since it is intimidating to have to climb three stairs, cross an open space, enter through one of the two entrances and pass the security just to face the front desk.