Brandon Donnelly

Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

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One big tower split into two

The OMA-designed Greenpoint Landing Towers in northern Brooklyn recently topped out. Photos and announcement over here. If you aren’t familiar with the project, it’s very OMA. What I mean by that is that there’s a kind of simple rationality to it. (I just made up this architecture speak.) Big bold moves with a certain logic behind it. Here’s the story and thinking behind Greenpoint Landing:

Supposedly this project is in a part of Brooklyn that stipulates a maximum tower floor plate size of 11,000 square feet. Following this rule, you get a two-tower design that looks something like image number one in the top left hand corner of the above diagram. The resulting tower separation would be 40 feet, or just over 12 meters. (Are you seeing these numbers, Toronto?)

What OMA did was taper one tower (diagram image #2) and then create an inverted ziggurat form for the second tower (diagram image #3). The effect is two towers that look like they were almost one giant tower that had been simply pulled apart. The resulting tower separation distance in this final scenario is 60 feet, or just over 18 meters.

I am assuming that there’s some area loss in this design because of the increased tower separation, though maybe the larger podium makes it up. Either way, from what I can tell, there are two main benefits to this design: (1) you get a tower with stepbacks facing the water (so places for outdoor spaces) and (2) it breaks up the visual monotony of two equally extruded towers.

If any of you are more familiar with this project, I would welcome your thoughts in the comment section below.

Image: OMA

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2 responses to “One big tower split into two”

  1. Sloping columns and columns in tension – BRANDON DONNELLY

    […] had an interesting meeting today talking about the structural approach behind this OMA-designed project in Brooklyn (pictured […]

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  2. Scott Baker Avatar
    Scott Baker

    I’ve watched this go up for some time. It’s now complete and the waterfront esplanade/bike lane is grand – and elevated against future sea level rise too, as are all Long Island City & Greenpoint waterfront properties. The towers do indeed look like they were “pulled apart” and frankly look a bit unstable but only from a certain angle. The setbacks are triangular at the base, so only partial, which is a trick optically only from the north looking south.
    One other thing you may not be aware of: along the East River waterfront, you are not supposed to have any building wider than 100′ so as not to block the views of whatever’s behind too much. Developers have found various ways around this. This is one, but there is also 325 Kent Avenue in Williamsburg, which is a two-tower building with a multistory bridge between them at top. I guess there is a bit of walking away from the elevators there, and they must have gotten a zoning variance to have more than a 100′ wide bridge across the top of the two towers, presumably because there’s no other buildings to block the view of that high up. The descending setbacks away from the river are interesting and provide a lot of outdoor space too. There is some permanent shade for the units under the bridge, however. I wonder if those units are cheaper.

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