A sliver building is a tall slender building constructed on a lot with a narrow frontage, typically 45 feet (14 m) or less. Since the mid-1980s, one of the most remarkable advances in tall building design has been their construction to unprecedented slenderness ratios.[1]
The now defunct New York City Board of Estimate banned sliver buildings from many residential zoning districts in New York City in 1983, after residents objected to their construction. The resurgence of the city's real estate market prior to the economic downturn of 2008 led to new sliver buildings being constructed in commercial districts. The city's zoning laws permit builders to purchase air rights—empty space above roofs—from adjacent commercial properties whose owners do not wish to heighten their buildings. The new buildings are sometimes cantilevered over adjacent buildings, and built higher than a typical building in the area by adding purchased air rights, sometimes from multiple nearby properties, to the new building's total height.[2][3]
One Madison, a 50-story building with a 12:1 ratio, was completed in 2010 in the Flatiron District of Manhattan,[4] followed by more than a dozen additional pencil towers completed between 2014 and 2022, the tallest of which include One57 in 2014, 432 Park Avenue in 2015, Central Park Tower, 220 Central Park South and 53W53 in 2019, and 111 West 57th Street, along with The Brooklyn Tower, both in 2022.[5]
See also
editNotes
edit- ^ Cruvellier, Mark R.; Smith, Bryan Stafford (1995). "Framing sliver buildings". The Structural Design of Tall Buildings. 4 (3): 185–198. doi:10.1002/tal.4320040303.
Over the past decade, one of the most remarkable advances in tall building design has been their construction to unprecedented slenderness ratios.
- ^ Bortolot, Lana (2007-05-17). "Are slivers on the rise?". AM New York. Tribune New York Newspaper Holdings, LLC. p. 03. Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2007-05-18.
- ^ Wainwright, Oliver (5 February 2019). "Super-tall, super-skinny, super-expensive: the 'pencil towers' of New York's super-rich". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 15 January 2024. Retrieved 18 March 2024.
- ^ "One Madison Park, New York City". Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. August 2011. Archived from the original on January 28, 2018. Retrieved April 6, 2020.
- ^ "New York's Super-Slenders". The Skyscraper Museum. Archived from the original on 2023-12-09. Retrieved 1 December 2020.
External links
edit- "Plots & Plans" article on The Austrian Cultural Forum on 52nd Street, New York, NY, USA.
- Curbed blog article on proposed sliver building at 785 8th Av., New York, NY, USA.
- "Tall and Thin, Back in Fashion"—The New York Times article on sliver buildings from March 18, 2007
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