Flawed Construction of NYC Tower

An article by Lloyd Alter about the problematic construction of a tall building (NYC) that flexes and bends in the wind. The result of which are cracks in the in the exterior surface of the building which is also load bearing. Too costly for me to live there and I probably would not even if I could afford an apartment there. One has to wonder what the remedy is for the cracking and potential spalling of the exterior. Whatever it is, it will not be cheap fix.

“Schadenfreude Tower in New York City is cracking up”

Carbon Upfront

I have written more about 432 Park Avenue than any other building. Also, I have used its image in posts like It’s Time to Dump the Tired Argument That Density and Height Are Green and Sustainable and It’s Time for an Upfront Carbon Emissions Tax on Building. I described it as “inequality made solid in marble and glass” and “the poster child for much that is wrong about architecture, real estate development, and wretched excess.” I wrote in Why Pencil Towers are Problematic:

“There is really not much good that can be said about these buildings other than admiring the engineering.”

But it turns out that even some of the engineering is problematic. Owners have been complaining for years about the building’s flexing and bending, and I wrote in 2021 that “the very rich buyers of the units in these buildings do not flex and bend—they sue.”

Now they are suing again, as the façade has become a mess of cracks and pockmarks. Although strictly speaking, we shouldn’t call it a façade; Engineering News-Record ran a correction to their story on the building:

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story referred to 432 Park’s exterior as a facade. It is, rather, a load-bearing, concrete exoskeleton.

It is an important distinction. In most buildings, the façade is clipped onto the structure. It hides the structure and is designed to absorb the movements of the structure with elastomeric caulks and gaskets.

At 432 Park Avenue, the structure itself is the external face of the building, what is commonly called the façade. The exterior of the building is made of 3’-8” square structural columns and beams with no exterior cladding. When the building flexes, the concrete cracks. This was discussed at the design stage back in 2012; An engineer suggested adding fly ash to strengthen it, but the developer, Harry Macklowe, wanted it to be pure white. The engineer said there were two options: “Color or cracks.”

The concrete company was proud of its work, writing in their brochure:

“To achieve the white exterior color, the concrete contractor, Roger & Sons Concrete, Inc., and the concrete producer, Ferrara Bros. Building Materials Corp., utilized white cement in place of typical gray cement, which is much more forgiving in terms of mixing, pumping and placing. White cement reacts more quickly and is temperamental.”

The New York Times is on it with a lengthy exposé about the building, with a lot of detail about the concrete. There were arguments about it before construction started, with one architect writing, “They are going down a dangerous and slippery path that I believe will eventually lead to failure and lawsuits to come.”

It’s remarkable that the architect wrote about this specification change in 2012 and had no control over the situation. Cracks started appearing almost immediately. In 2013, one engineer from WSP suggested two coats of an elastomeric coating which “may have appearance impact” but the developer rejected it. Instead, they applied a clear coat that the developer had used on his boat.

The building will continue to crack every time the wind blows; concrete doesn’t like bending and flexing. It is mainly a cosmetic issue now, but eventually, water gets in and can cause the reinforcing steel to rust, or a freeze-thaw cycle can cause spalling. Then the problems really pile up.

“This cycle of degradation affects what experts call the building’s stiffness, or its ability to respond to wind. More cracking could exacerbate existing problems with mechanical systems, they said, and make the building increasingly vulnerable. If this cycle of stress continues, the consequences could be huge, according to engineering experts.”

Imagine paying forty million bucks for an apartment like this and finding that it shakes in the breeze, that pipes burst, that the elevators jam. Also imagine the amount of concrete, white or grey, that went into building. As architect James Timberlake told me:

More: Residents of 432 Park Avenue Find Posh New York Towers Can Be Too Tall and Too Thin

“We are now in a planetary emergency and we have very few years left in which to chart a new and safe course for humanity. The evidence now is overwhelming that tall buildings hinder, rather than assist, our efforts to address key challenges of climate breakdown, resource depletion and biodiversity loss.”

432 Park Avenue may be my poster child for wretched excess, but it is not alone. A few years ago, Architects Declare took up the issue, writing:

Arguably dense given the ratio of building on a small lot, the resources needed per person to build such a tower is excessive and wasteful. The problems associated with such towers to structure and serve them also are disproportionately out of whack to the numbers of persons inhabiting the tower.”

This will not be the last we hear about 432 Park Avenue. I wish it was the last of the super tall, super-skinny towers for the super-rich but it’s not that either. Architects Declare writes, “For those that might still claim that skyscrapers are symbols of progress, the evidence is clear they now represent progress towards societal collapse.” I recently wrote about how the construction industry alone puts out enough emissions to bust us through two degrees of warming; these buildings also represent progress toward climate collapse.

In the title, I called this the Schadenfreude Tower, because it serves these people right; the billionaires who bought these apartments, the developer who thought he knew how to mix concrete. The architect, Rafael Viñoly, died in 2023 and is fortunate to miss all the fun.

But it should be a lesson to everyone: we don’t need these buildings. What we need is a big honking carbon tax so that even billionaires choke on the price.

As taken from: Carbon Upfront, Lloyd Alter