NYC Office Tower

NYC Office Tower

MA2 as Architects

NYC Tower Proposal – Conformal Tectonics


The concept proposal is located in Manhattan’s South Street Seaport as an office tower with an adjacent parking structure. In its inception the tower is a product of preserving angles within a complex plane grid, which has been interfered by a Mobius geometric transformation. By manipulating a two-dimensional grid using asymptotic developments, it generates a series of automorphing patterns and higher dimensional structures. These elements applied to the skyscraper become an articulation of vectorial components that shift in a concave - convex path along the vertical structural members, creating a series of curves within the curtain wall expression. Along with the structural dynamics of curvilinear geometries composed of vector components, the facade treatment is also layered with a secondary structure. The distribution of the primary and secondary tactile frame members synchronizes structural forces and visual impact creating a conformal manifold of structure and surface.


Patterned geometry has many properties that contain elements beneficial for structural performance, historical reference, geometric expression, and spatial configuration. With the current scheme the tower makes use of such strategies and logic, but is condensed within a conformal geometric massing creating a tractor bundle of fluid formation. By utilizing mathematical geometric variants in its configuration, it sets a series of angle preserving parameters which generates conformal transformations on space and surface manipulation. Using this technique or approach can lead to many variations which lead to infinity based curves and forms, radically dense configurations and intersections. In this project the path was more of a Mutatis Mutandis of a conventional tower; that is “changing the elements which need to be changed while acknowledging the differences.”

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