The Standard, New York, with its unobstructed views and creative engineering straddling the High Line, has become a landmark in the ever-changing Meatpacking District.
This new 337-room hotel is located in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, a vibrant neighborhood just east of the Hudson River and west of Greenwich Village on the City’s edge. The eighteen-story, concrete and glass structure defines the identity of the Standard Hotel New York and engages its context through contrast. The building is elevated fifty-seven feet above the street and straddles the High Line, an abandoned section of a 75-year-old elevated railroad line, which passes over the buildings of the district and is currently being developed as a new linear, public park. The hotel is undeniably of its place; it blurs the distinction between public and private in a city whose identity is as much about neighborhoods and intimacy as it is about anonymity; and it immerses itself in the activity of the street at the same time as its hovering form disengages it. Heralded as the kind of straightforward, thoughtfully conceived building that is all too rare in the City today, The Standard New York has become a landmark in the ever-changing Meatpacking District and newly activated city fabric of the West Village.
Identity / Visibility: The Meatpacking District is constituted of two-story 19th- and 20th-century industrial buildings and manufacturing lofts, which currently supports a range of uses from meat packing to high-end retail and restaurants. The building is situated at the intersection of two urban geometries: the street grid and the High Line, which meanders north from Gansevoort Street to West 34th Street. The building responds to its context through contrast: sculptural piers, whose forms clearly separate the building from the orthogonal street grid, raise the building fifty-seven feet off the street, allowing the horizontally-scaled industrial landscape to pass beneath it and natural light to penetrate to the street. The two slabs are “hinged,” angled to further emphasize the building’s distinction from the city’s grid and its levitation above the neighborhood. The low-scale environment affords the building unique visibility from all directions, and unobstructed 360° views of the city are ensured from the building.
Engineering Achievement: To clear the easement 30 feet above the elevated railroad bed a transfer structure was required to span nearly 90 feet between exposed concrete super columns and the East Pier. As the owner of the High Line would not allow shoring from the historic structure, the erection of post-tensioned concrete transfer girders would be onerous and prohibitively expensive. Instead, two 65-ksi steel trusses support the eastern half of the hotel tower. A multi-step cantilevered shoring procedure was employed to install the two-piece trusses. The top chords of the trusses are embedded in a 37” deep concrete transfer slab, creating a large double-tee profile. The composite action greatly reduced steel tonnage and optimized the efforts and efficiency of both materials.
Materials / Transparency / Openness: The juxtaposition of the building’s two materials – poured-in-place, board-formed concrete and glass – reflects the character of New York City: the gritty quality of the concrete contrasts with the refinement of the glass. The concrete grid provides a delicate frame for the exceedingly transparent water-white glass, the two materials unified in the continuous plane of the curtain wall. This exterior wall breaks with the traditional architecture of hotels, replacing opacity with transparency, privacy with openness and defining a new paradigm. Distinct from the main structure of the building, the hotel includes other programmatic spaces beneath the High Line, including a bar, restaurant and meeting spaces. To accommodate the client’s desire that this structure reflect the historic feel of the neighborhood, reclaimed brick, steel frame windows and a metal canopy similar to the existing Meatpacking plants and other warehouse buildings were utilized. The language of these spaces contrasts greatly with the rest of the building and feels as though it is a renovated existing building. The structure at this portion of the building consists of steel frame with slab-on-grade Note: This form must be completed in its entirety, signed, dated and returned as a Word or editable PDF document. Questions & Concerns Email: [email protected] foundations. In some instances, concrete plank was used as the roof construction in order to minimize the depth and maintain the High Line easement clearances.
The building is a destination, both visually and experimentally, realizing the client’s conceptual goal to create a “living room for the neighborhood,” a public place where hotel guests and pedestrians can commingle in a variety of spaces. Ground floor square footage was sacrificed in order to provide an open air public plaza with picnic tables, and the bar, restaurant and beer garden on the ground level, which are open to the public, help reinforce this sense of community. The meeting room and terrace at the level of the High Line are used as event spaces.
The synergy between public and private is reinforced in the building’s formal and material qualities. The crisp, clear ultratransparent glass skin unifies inside and outside. In each room, floor-to-ceiling glass metaphorically expands the space into the City, allowing the City to become a defining feature of every guest’s experience at the hotel. From the street, the permeability of the glass expresses accessibility, openness and invitation.
Program: 337 guest rooms; ground floor: bar, restaurant and extensive outdoor public plazas served by the hotel; third floor: divisible banquet space; seventeenth floor: health spa; eighteenth floor: two clubs; extensive roof deck.
Sustainable Features: Rehabilitation / densification of post-industrial urban site; Negotiation with Highline, an existing infrastructure recently transformed into an elevated park; Daylighting and views, direct line of sight to vision glazing for 95% of all regularly occupied spaces; Insulating glass units with high performance low-E coating on #2 surface, typical; Four-pipe heating and cooling system with individual thermostats in each room; Operable windows to allow fresh air, typical in all guestrooms; Carpet made with wool, a renewable natural resource, in all guestrooms and typical corridors; Exposed concrete structure; reduces exterior cladding material and uses 30-35% slag to replace cement; Reclaimed brick at ground level exterior, bar, restaurant and meeting room; Reclaimed wood flooring at meeting rooms; Vintage marble on bar and tabletops; vintage table bases and light fixtures; Vintage light fixtures, planters, furniture and reclaimed wine storage sleeves.