50 Gramercy Park North
Ian Schrager Company
New York
Phased completion 2006/7
The
design centres on the creation of a series of simplex, duplex and
triplex apartments in the former Gramercy Park Annex on Gramercy Park
North. The block was completed in 1930 by Thompson & Churchill as a
complementary extension to the neighbouring Gramercy Park Hotel,
erected five years earlier to a design by Robert T. Lyons.
The scheme refines and simplifies Thompson & Churchill’s original brick elevations set above a two-storey stone plinth, paring away surface distraction to reveal an underlying formal clarity. The enlarged envelope includes entirely new architecture inserted between the two original structures. This new slice of accommodation is predominantly a glass composition articulated in bronze which adds landscape as well as architecture to the elevation, in direct reference to its park setting.
Inside the focus of the design falls on innovative layouts which organise living space as a series of fluid gathering places. Rare north-south aspects bathe the open floor plans in natural light, with expansive, full-height windows allowing each apartment to open as an eye onto the green magnificence of Gramercy Park.
The scheme refines and simplifies Thompson & Churchill’s original brick elevations set above a two-storey stone plinth, paring away surface distraction to reveal an underlying formal clarity. The enlarged envelope includes entirely new architecture inserted between the two original structures. This new slice of accommodation is predominantly a glass composition articulated in bronze which adds landscape as well as architecture to the elevation, in direct reference to its park setting.
Inside the focus of the design falls on innovative layouts which organise living space as a series of fluid gathering places. Rare north-south aspects bathe the open floor plans in natural light, with expansive, full-height windows allowing each apartment to open as an eye onto the green magnificence of Gramercy Park.