LUXURY WATCHES BUILDING
NEW YORK
The most famous luxury watch brand in the world, has decided to replace the historic 12-storey headquarters, occupied since the 1970s, with a very modern 30-storey tower.
Designed by David Chipperfield, in compliance with LEED Platinum, it aims to be the most environmentally sustainable new construction tower in New York.
The 15,329-square-meter building, which will house the US Headquarters offices, features a series of stacked rectangular volumes with a pleated façade of uniform floor-to-ceiling glass panels.
Staggered setbacks give way to several outdoor terraces, and the lower levels will feature a multi-story podium with soaring ceiling.
The high-performance double-layer windows with built-in sunshades also exceed 16 meters and are clad in aluminium, for a coverage of 13 thousand square metres.
LOCATION: Fifth Avenue, Manhattan – New York
STUDIO: David Chipperfield Architects, London
COLOR: Silver
FINISH: Polished LP
CLASS: 20 µm
CERTIFICATION: AAMA
ANODIZED MATERIAL: panels, sheets and accessories 40/10 mm, alloy 5005 certified for anodization
The request from David Chipperfield Architects, one of the major international design studios, to NECE was to obtain aluminum panels of enormous dimensions (up to 6500 x 1500 mm) with a very shiny but not mirror effect, and which respected the American AAMA standards.
NECE, for over 50 years, has had LP finishes in its range with this particular characteristic on extruded 6060 alloy: the challenge was to be able to produce, on a large scale, the same effect but on an aluminum alloy different in terms of composition and totally different dimensions.
The Research and Development phase, which took place through multiple physical and chemical tests and the creation of numerous samples, lasted over six months.
The peculiarity of this project was that, starting from an industrial raw material, the processes and controls, applied and studied ad hoc, created architectural components with a level of finishing such as to be assimilated to jewelery products: obviously the New York headquarters had to present itself with a level of quality of absolute value.
The initial study had also established that the manufacturing process also needed to be modified so that the finished panels would not show any signs of hooking.