Seagram Building is a skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. That is located at 375 Park Avenue, between 52nd and 53rd Streets. While the lobby and other interior features. The structural engineering consultants were Severud Associates. The exquisite curtain wall of bronze and tinted glass. That encircles the world’s first entirely modular modern office tower.
Structure
A masterpiece of corporate modernism. With the active participation of Phyllis Lambert, the daughter of Samuel Bronfman, the company’s CEO. Who was instrumental in its design.
With assistance from Philip Johnson, and completed in 1939. While working as an architect in the mid-20th century, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was most known for his renderings of Classical and Gothic architecture in his work. As he progressed, he began to include more contemporary materials and styles in his work. This shift in aesthetics played a significant role in the design of the Seagram Building by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Window blinds
The homogeneous appearance of the structure is one of the characteristics of the International style. Mies selected window blinds that could only be operated in three positions. Fully open, halfway open, and fully closed. In order to eliminate the unattractive and disorganized irregularity that occurs when window blinds are drawn to varying lengths.
Interior
The use of pricey, high-spec materials and rich ornamentation in the interiors contributed to the Seagram Building’s status as the world’s most expensive skyscraper at the time of its construction.
Plaza
Another groundbreaking feature of the design was Mies’ choice to place the building back 100 feet from the edge of the street. Resulting in an open plaza for pedestrians. Designed as part of his response to Manhattan’s dense population density. This building served as an indictment of traditional business models in the construction industry and urban planning.
The plaza includes two big fountains as well as outdoor seating. Which promotes socialization in the space while also serving as a ‘threshold’ connecting the city with the skyscraper.
History
The Classical architectural aspects of his earlier works had influenced him much. Overall, the desired to design and construct a structure that would draw attention to itself by utilizing the actual construction parts themselves. With the Seagram Building, Rohe enlisted the assistance of Philip Johnson in order to achieve his goal. In the end, Rohe was able to construct a 516-foot structure that utilized the bare facade of physics and engineering to demonstrate what he termed the intrinsic beauty of the structure, rather than the beauty of the material itself.
The completed structure stood 39 floors tall and has since become one of the most commonly referenced masterpieces of Modern Architecture in the world. In part because of its emphasis on functionality over decoration, it has been the subject of a great deal of research and analysis throughout history.