Hotel on Rivington
New York City
Grzywinski Pons

A glass façade lets hotel guests check in to New York’s voyeur culture

© Floto + Warner

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Grzywinski Pons won the design commission for this project after the engineer had already determined most of the building’s structure and massing. It was also the same moment in the process when the developer decided to change the building’s program to a hotel. For the architect, therefore, the resulting design challenge combined renovation and adaptive reuse with new construction.

The zoning variance allowed the Hotel on Rivington to rise higher than most other buildings in its Lower East Side neighborhood, affording unobstructed views of the New York City skyline. The architect exploited this by cladding the tower in a glass envelope fenestrated so as to blur and diffuse the building’s orthogonal steel grid. This was no small feat given that the structure was originally designed to receive precast stucco-clad panels. Working with a glazing engineer, Grzywinski Pons designed a proprietary window wall system that solved this challenge.

In addition to concealing structural elements, the façade’s varied opacities relate to the location of interior plan elements such as bathrooms. Throughout the façade’s expanse, the architect pursued a motif of concealing and revealing, allowing hotels guests to engage in the voyeuristic and exhibitionistic experience of living in a Manhattan high-rise. But, for privacy, the curtain wall becomes more opaque in the building’s lower stories. And if guests chose, they may retire into a cocoon of privacy by engaging a motorized blackout curtain system.

At grade level, the architect canted a two-story frameless glass plane in both plan and section, exposing a slice of the structural steel. The plane formally breaks from the orthogonal grid, while visually opening the first and second floor lobbies to engage the street. At the rear of the first floor, which houses the restaurant’s dining room, the façade’s cant is echoed by a multipitched glass atrium. The expanse of glass frames a vignette of tenements behind the hotel, simultaneously celebrating and contrasting them.

Formal name of Project:
Hotel on Rivington

Location:
New York City

Gross square footage:
70,000 sq. ft.

Owner:
Paul Stallings

Architect:
Grzywinski Pons
594 Broadway, Suite 1214
New York, NY 10012
646-536-2716 tel.
646-304-5285 fax
gp-arch.com

Matthew Grzywinski, Amador Pons, Partners in Charge