Gordon Bunshaft and SOM at Nueva York, Lever House
09/05/2016.
[NY] USA
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA, BRANLY ERNESTO PÉREZ
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA, BRANLY ERNESTO PÉREZ
The 29th of April of 1952 it was opened in Midtown, Manhattan, the first building in New York with complete glass architectural surroundings, the Lever House. It aspired to amaze a metropolis where the skyscrapers were the prevailing typology, and it achieved it.
New York that at that time had constructive systems, in which the architectural surroundings was made of walls drilled by large windows, shown off an elegant skyscraper covered by green-blue glass then.
The innovation of placing a gondola to keep the window panes in perfect condition, made the building an attractive sight to the citizens.
New York that at that time had constructive systems, in which the architectural surroundings was made of walls drilled by large windows, shown off an elegant skyscraper covered by green-blue glass then.
The innovation of placing a gondola to keep the window panes in perfect condition, made the building an attractive sight to the citizens.
Vista de la Lever House por Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (Vista desde el pilar del Seagram Building de Mies van der Rohe y Philip Johnson), Nueva York, 1959. Fotografía © Julius Shulman.
Exterior view. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © David Shankbone.
Vista exterior. Lever House por Gordon Bunshaft y SOM, Nueva York, Estados Unidos. Fotografía © Skidmore, Owing & Merrill (SOM).
Exterior view. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Beyond My Ken.
Exhibition. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Jesse David Harris.
Exhibition. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Jesse David Harris.
Detail of the façade. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Jesse David Harris.
Exterior view. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Skidmore, Owing & Merrill (SOM).
Detalle de fachada. Lever House por Gordon Bunshaft y SOM, Nueva York, Estados Unidos. Fotografía © Cortesía de Lever House Art Collection.
Detail of the façade. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Cortesía de Lever House Art Collection.
Detail of the façade. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Skidmore, Owing & Merrill (SOM).
Ground floor plan. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Image © Skidmore, Owing & Merrill (SOM).
First floor plan. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Image © Skidmore, Owing & Merrill (SOM).
Second floor plan. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Image © Skidmore, Owing & Merrill (SOM).
Type plant and section. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Image © Skidmore, Owing & Merrill (SOM).
Section and "wedding cake". Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Image © Skidmore, Owing & Merrill (SOM).
Detail. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Image © Skidmore, Owing & Merrill (SOM).
Detail. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Image © Skidmore, Owing & Merrill (SOM).
Exteiror view. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Ezra Stoller.
Exteiror view. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © J. Alex Langley.
Exteiror view. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Skidmore, Owing & Merrill (SOM).
Exteiror view. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Ezra Stoller.
Courtyard. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Ezra Stoller.
Terrace. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Tom Murtaugh.
Interior view. Lever Brothers office building, New York, 1959. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Ezra Stoller, National Archives, Records of the U.S.
Interior view. Lever Brothers office building, New York, 1959. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Ezra Stoller, National Archives, Records of the U.S.
Interior view. Lever Brothers office building, New York, 1959. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © National Archives, Records of the U.S.
Interior view. Lever Brothers office building, New York, 1959. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Jerry Cooke, National Archives, Records of the U.S.
Detail of the façade. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © J. Alex Langley.
Night view. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Ezra Stoller.
Night view. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Jerry Cooke.
Night view. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Jerry Cooke.
Night view. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Ezra Stoller.
Detail of the façade. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Skidmore, Owing & Merrill (SOM).
Night view. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Cortesía de Lever House Art Collection.
Night view. Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft and SOM, New York, United States. Photography © Jesse David Harris.
The Lever House, located in Midtown Manhattan, denoted a paradigm inside the corporate architecture in the USA when its construction finished in 1952. It was designed by the architect Gordon Bunshaft and Natalie de Blois, partners of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM). Together with Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building are the most important ones of New York Modern Architecture.
The Project was put in charge by the Lever Brothers Company in order to find a new corporate identity. Bunshaft answered his client’s wishes with a building of prismatic form of 21 storeys with similar tiles, a horizontal podium that is separated from the floor by piles and creates a patio on the ground floor and a terrace on the top. The structure of the building hides behind a squared polished glass façade –a symbol of the corporate rationalism-.
For Lewis Mumford (1895-1990), the Lever House is the fist office building in which the modern materials, the modern construction and the functions of the modernity united in just one being. Immediately after its opening, the building was already an architecture symbol, not only for its image but also for its diverse technologic innovations: firstly, it was one of the first buildings in incorporate a full air conditioning system deliberately to close completely the building and be able to create a thin wraparound. Secondly, it has a cleaning gondola to maintain the wraparound, so all the enclosure was totally hermetic, and finally, a correspondence transporter, which join all the storeys, was installed.
In the miesian curtain wall, the external position of the mullions had a sense not exclusively tectonic, giving relief and machining tectonicity to the glass facades. The dematerialised image of the building is created by hiding the mullions behind a thin glass skin, so they pretend to float, without weight, as the structure does not exist. That allows offer to the exterior qualities of the pan de verre, as flatness in the pure prims declared by Le Corbusier and reinterpret by Gordon Bunshaft (Skidmore, Owing & Merrill, SOM) in this buildings and others, as for example: Pepsi-Cola Headquarters (New York, 1958-1959). Even having one pane glasses.
The Bunshaft’s buildings show this way an alternative flatness to the fine volumetry of the miesian curtain wall, image that adopted his contemporaries, in a period in which the formal links of the skyscrapers move from the machining universe to the abstraction of the contemporary plastic arts, in particular to the reductionist abstraction of the minimal-art.
The plan that was made in one of the most exclusive places of New York, corresponded with an urban gesture, putting aside the economic criterions, Bunshaft decided to liberate an area near the building, putting the tower back to the façade and letting only the storeys of the podium to reach the end of the building site, obeying this way the Zoning Law of 1916. Mies van der Rohe makes something similar to Bunshaft for the Seagram in 1957, in a plot opposite to the Lever House, with the difference that Mies moves back all the building and created a public square emphasizing the building and separating himself of the tender of pushing to the limit the skyscrapers construction, to urban growing credit.
In 1982, after a long battle in order to not demolish the building, the Lever House was designated as Historic Place in New York and registered in National Register of Historic Places in New York City in 1983. The building, which was erected with a 7 million dollar budget, was restored with a 25 million dollar budget in 1998.
More information
Architecture
Architecs
Gordon Bunshaft (principal), Nathaniel Owings, Charles Luckman and Raymond Loewy.
Floor count
21
Height
94 m.
Construction date
1951.
Completed construction
29 april 1952.
National Register of Historic Places (NRPH), EE.UU.
2 october 1983.
Dirección
390 Park Avenue, Manhattan, New York City.
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP SOM
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) is one of the leading architecture, interior design, engineering, and urban planning firms in the world, with a 75-year reputation for design excellence and a portfolio that includes some of the most important architectural accomplishments of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Since its inception, SOM has been a leader in the research and development of specialized technologies, new processes and innovative ideas, many of which have had a palpable and lasting impact on the design profession and the physical environment.
The firm’s longstanding leadership in design and building technology has been honored with more than 1,700 awards for quality, innovation, and management. The American Institute of Architects has recognized SOM twice with its highest honor, the Architecture Firm Award—in 1962 and again in 1996. The firm maintains offices in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Abu Dhabi.
Gordon Bunshaft
Gordon Bunshaft was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1909, educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a BA and MA in architecture and came under the influence of Lawrence B. Anderson, who fostered an appreciation of modernist design.
Bunshaft worked briefly for Edward Durrell Stone and Raymond Loewy before beginning his forty-two-year career at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. In his early years at the firm, he designed buildings for the 1939-40 New York World's Fair and Hostess House, a cadet hospitality center at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Illinois (1941-42). After serving in the Corps of Engineers during World War II, Bunshaft rejoined SOM in 1947. Later that year he moved to the firm's New York office; he became a full partner in 1949. As Lever House's chief designer (1950-1952), Bunshaft was recognized for the first time. In the words of architecture critic Paul Goldberger, this twenty-four-story office tower was "New York's first major commercial structure with a glass curtain wall (preceded only by the United Nations Secretariat), obscuring the solid wall of stonework on Park Avenue, like a vision of a new world.
After Lever House, Bunshaft was involved in the design of several prominent buildings, including the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company headquarters (1957) in Bloomfield, Connecticut; the Pepsi-Cola Building (1958-60) on Park Avenue; the United States Air Force Academy (1959) in Colorado Springs; Chase Manhattan Bank Headquarters and Plaza (1960-61) and 140 Broadway (1964-67) in lower Manhattan; the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (1963) at Yale University; the W.R. Grace Building (1973) at West 42nd Street; the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library (1971) at the University of Texas, Austin; the Hirshhom Museum and Sculpture Garden (1974) in Washington, DC; and the National Commercial Bank (1983) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
He was also awarded the Brunner Prize from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1955, and his gold medal in 1984. He received the Medal of Honor from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. He was awarded the Pritzker Prize, often called the architectural equivalent of the Nobel Prize, in 1988, two years before his death.
Bunshaft worked briefly for Edward Durrell Stone and Raymond Loewy before beginning his forty-two-year career at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. In his early years at the firm, he designed buildings for the 1939-40 New York World's Fair and Hostess House, a cadet hospitality center at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Illinois (1941-42). After serving in the Corps of Engineers during World War II, Bunshaft rejoined SOM in 1947. Later that year he moved to the firm's New York office; he became a full partner in 1949. As Lever House's chief designer (1950-1952), Bunshaft was recognized for the first time. In the words of architecture critic Paul Goldberger, this twenty-four-story office tower was "New York's first major commercial structure with a glass curtain wall (preceded only by the United Nations Secretariat), obscuring the solid wall of stonework on Park Avenue, like a vision of a new world.
After Lever House, Bunshaft was involved in the design of several prominent buildings, including the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company headquarters (1957) in Bloomfield, Connecticut; the Pepsi-Cola Building (1958-60) on Park Avenue; the United States Air Force Academy (1959) in Colorado Springs; Chase Manhattan Bank Headquarters and Plaza (1960-61) and 140 Broadway (1964-67) in lower Manhattan; the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (1963) at Yale University; the W.R. Grace Building (1973) at West 42nd Street; the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library (1971) at the University of Texas, Austin; the Hirshhom Museum and Sculpture Garden (1974) in Washington, DC; and the National Commercial Bank (1983) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
He was also awarded the Brunner Prize from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1955, and his gold medal in 1984. He received the Medal of Honor from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. He was awarded the Pritzker Prize, often called the architectural equivalent of the Nobel Prize, in 1988, two years before his death.
Natalie Griffin de Blois
Natalie Griffin de Blois (April 2, 1921 – July 22, 2013) was an American architect. De Blois began her career in 1944 at a New York firm, Ketchum, Gina and Sharpe, from which she was fired after "refusing affection" from one of the firm's architects, who asked that she be fired. Shortly thereafter she joined the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM). While working at SOM, De Blois was known as a "pioneer" as an architect in the "male-dominated world of architecture". In 1962 she moved to the firm's headquarters in Chicago, where she was soon made a partner at SOM in 1964, working with the firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill until 1974.
Notable projects include the Pepsi Cola headquarters, Lever House, and the Union Carbide Building in New York City, the Equitable Building in Chicago, the lower portions of Ford's world headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, and Connecticut General Life Insurance Company. Headquartered in Bloomfield, Conn.
De Blois joined Neuhaus & Taylor (now known as 3-D International) in Houston in 1974. In 1980, he began teaching at the University of Texas School of Architecture and was a faculty member until 1993. He died at 92 years in Chicago.
Notable projects include the Pepsi Cola headquarters, Lever House, and the Union Carbide Building in New York City, the Equitable Building in Chicago, the lower portions of Ford's world headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, and Connecticut General Life Insurance Company. Headquartered in Bloomfield, Conn.
De Blois joined Neuhaus & Taylor (now known as 3-D International) in Houston in 1974. In 1980, he began teaching at the University of Texas School of Architecture and was a faculty member until 1993. He died at 92 years in Chicago.
