
Posts tagged with "Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF)":


Hudson Yards and its Vessel open to the public

First phase of Hudson Yards set to finally open to the public

Open House New York opens 20 downtown Brooklyn sites during AIA weekend

What role do architects have in a driverless future?

The Wharf, D.C.'s massive waterfront development, is now open

Seoul's latest skyscraper utilizes 20 different types of glass

The Lotte World Tower rises from bustling Seoul, South Korea, as a sleek new city icon. For the team behind the 123-story building at global architecture firm Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF), creating this seamless silhouette meant a challenge of engineering ingenuity—and quite a bit of glass.
- Facade Manufacturer Shanghai Yaohua Pilkington Glass Group, Daejin (Guardian, Jin Jing, HanGlas), North Glass (glass suppliers)
- Architects Kohn Pedersen Fox
- Facade Installer Lixil Group (facade subcontractor); Lotte (general contractor)
- Facade Consultants Alt Cladding (facade design engineer); Curtainwall Design Consulting (facade construction engineer); Rowan Williams Davies & Irwin (wind engineer); Leslie E. Robertson Associates (structural engineer)
- Location Seoul, South Korea
- Date of Completion 2017
- System curtain wall
- Products DuPont SentryGlas Plus (laminated glass); mirrored frit; heat-strengthened glass; reflective coatings
“Even though it looks like one big monolithic tower, there are 20 different types of glass on that tower,” explained KPF’s Richard Nemeth, managing principal for the project, which opened earlier this year. The 1,821-foot-tall silhouette was inspired by traditional Korean forms like pottery and paintbrushes, but its multiple functions helped dictate the form as well. Office space is located at the bottom, while the tower tapers in two directions—“think football instead of baseball”—offering smaller spans from core to glass toward the top of the tower, where the residences, hotel, and observation deck are located.
At the base, a 100-foot-tall lobby utilizes a gradient of mirrored frits on the glazing to provide shading while accommodating views at ground level; at the top of the tower, frits were used to highlight the diagrid of the belt trusses. The residences utilize laminated safety glass on the inner lite with heat-strengthened glass on the outer lite, while the hotel and office sections use heat-strengthened glass for both. To keep the building from looking like a “giant patchwork quilt,” Nemeth said, the KPF team ensured that the outer lite is always the same thickness, with the reflective coating on the number-two surface. “Then, whatever you do on your inner lite is much less visible to the outside, because it’s inside the reflective coating,” he explained. While the world’s fifth-tallest building includes a number of innovative energy-saving strategies, for many visitors the tower’s crowning achievement is the glass-floored observation deck—the world’s tallest. Cantilevering out, it offers views some 1,600 feet down—with just three layers of 10-millimeter-thick tempered glass with SentryGlas Plus interlayers separating viewers from the ground.
COOKFOX, Olson Kundig, Morris Adjmi, and KPF are among the firms reshaping Tampa's Downtown

Glass and terra-cotta rise at One Vanderbilt

- Facade Manufacturer Permasteelisa North America, Boston Valley Terracotta, Guardian Industries
- Architects Kohn Pedersen Fox
- Facade Installer Permasteelisa North America; Tishman Construction (construction manager)
- Facade Consultants Vidaris; Severud Associates (core/shell engineer); Permasteelisa (curtain wall engineer)
- Location New York, NY
- Date of Completion ongoing
- System Glass and Terra Cotta Curtain Wall
- Products Specific products cannot be disclosed at this time

Shenzhen's Ping An Finance Center crowned World's 4th Tallest Building
The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) has announced the completion of the Ping An Finance Center in Shenzhen, China, according to CTBUH tall building criteria. At 599 meters (1,965 feet), it is now officially the second tallest building in China and the fourth tallest in the world, behind only the Burj Khalifa, Shanghai Tower and Makkah Royal Clock Tower.
Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF), the Ping An Finance Center is located in the heart of Shenzhen’s Fuitan District. The building contains over 100 floors of office space located above a large public podium, with a multi-story atrium providing retail, restaurants, and transit options to the city and greater Pearl River delta region. The CTBUH describes the form of the tower as a “taught steel cable, outstretched by the sky and the ground at once. At the top of the tower, the façade tapers to form a pyramid, giving the tower a prismatic aesthetic.” The form is further emphasized by eight composite “megacolumns” along the building envelope that streamline the building for improved structural and wind performance, reducing baseline wind loads by 35 percent.The facade of the building is one the project most innovative features; its use of 1,700 tons of 316L stainless steel makes the envelope the largest stainless steel facade system in the world. The specific material was chosen for its corrosion-resistance, which will allow the building to maintain its appearance for decades even in the city’s salty coastal atmosphere.
Read more about the project here. News via CTBUH. Written by Patrick Lynch. Want more from ArchDaily? Like their Facebook page here.

Large raised earth "Lily Pads" by KPF will help stop future floods at NYC's Red Hook Houses
