Citicorp Center
From Archiplanet
 | Citicorp Center |
| Designer | Hugh Stubbins |
| Location | New York, New York, USA |
| Date | 1976 to 1978 |
| Building Type | skyscraper, commercial office tower |
| Climate | temperate |
| Context | urban block |
| Architectural Style | Modern |
| Street Address | Lexington Avenue between 53rd and 54th Streets |
| Notes | Hugh Stubbins and Associates. Tower raised above plaza on four great columns. Angled roof on top. Now called "Citigroup Center" due to corporate name change. |
| At Great Buildings | http://www.GreatBuildings.com/buildings/Citicorp_Center.html |
Contents |
Discussion
The Citicorp Center employs an elegant chevron-shaped steel superstructure to solve a unique site design problem. In order to preserve one corner of the full city block site as the continued home of St. Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church (ultimately rebuilt as part of the larger tower project), the tower rests on four huge, stilt-like columns positioned at the midpoint of each side of the building. A central elevator and service core also provides some structural support. This leaves the site largely open up to a height of 114 feet for a plaza, church and tower base. The chevron component of the superstructure runs at a 45-degree angle carrying the load of several building floors from their floating corners back to the midpoint columns.
The building's engineering crisis of 1978
"Changes during construction led to a finished product that was structurally unsound. In 1978, prompted by a question from a student, LeMessurier discovered a potentially fatal flaw in the building's construction: the skyscraper's bolted joints were too weak to withstand 70-mile-per-hour (113 km/h) wind gusts at specific angles.
"While LeMessurier's original design and load calculations for the special, uniquely-designed 'chevron' load braces used to support the building were based on welded joints, a labor and cost-saving change altered the joints to bolted construction after the building's plans were approved.
"For the next three months, a construction crew welded two-inch-thick steel plates over each of the skyscraper's 200 bolted joints during the night, after each work day, almost unknown to the general public." - Citicorp Center article at Wikipedia
External Links
Hugh Stubbins, Modern Tower - ArchitectureWeek, 2006.0809
Citicorp Center at PBS Building Big Database
A Potentially Disastrous Design Error - Damn Interesting, 2006.0412
Citigroup Center at Wikipedia
Images
Discussion
Commentary
"One of the most successful urban schemes in New York in the 1970s, 'Citicorp' brought new life to a downtown Manhattan city block that had been largely filled by a popular but far too big Lutheran Church. It created an exciting new internal plaza for people with shops, restaurants and performance spaces on a number of levels at the base of a rather uninteresting square-format, smooth-faced office tower, chopped off at 45 degrees at the top, ostensibly to facilitate solar collection devices. On the second storey, the old church has found a spacious comfortable new home devoting its services to God and jazz."
— Dennis Sharp. Twentieth Century Architecture: a Visual History. p346.
"Here's a towering office building that stands out not only because of its diagonal roofline—slanted as if for a solar collector but not bearing one—but also because of the popular appeal of The Market, its 7-story atrium entered at street level and designed for leisurely shopping, eating, and browsing. Built on the site of St. Peter's Lutheran Church, Citicorp shares its space with that congregation's new quarters also designed by Stubbins."
— from Sylvia Hart Wright. Sourcebook of Contemporary North American Architecture: From Postwar to Postmodern. p135.
"Changes during construction led to a finished product that was structurally unsound. In 1978, prompted by a question from a student, LeMessurier discovered a potentially fatal flaw in the building's construction: the skyscraper's bolted joints were too weak to withstand 70-mile-per-hour (113 km/h) wind gusts at specific angles.
"While LeMessurier's original design and load calculations for the special, uniquely-designed 'chevron' load braces used to support the building were based on welded joints, a labor and cost-saving change altered the joints to bolted construction after the building's plans were approved.
"For the next three months, a construction crew welded two-inch-thick steel plates over each of the skyscraper's 200 bolted joints during the night, after each work day, almost unknown to the general public."
— Citicorp Center article at Wikipedia
The Creator's Words
"I think of architecture not as individual buildings but as the whole fabric of our physical environment. Architecture is the man-made world in its totality. It is everything we have built around us - our cities, our suburbs, our sidewalks, highways, buildings, parks, signs, street-lighting, right down to the houses we live in, and the chairs we sit in - all our physical aids to living."
— Hugh Stubbins. from Paul Heyer. Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America. p217.
Details
Address
Lexington Avenue between 53rd and 54th Streets.
Maps
References
"Hugh Stubbins, Modern Tower", by Michael J. Crosbie, ArchitectureWeek No. 298, 2006.0809, pN1.1.
Howard Davis. Slides from photographer's collection. PCD.2260.1012.1702.056. PCD.2260.1012.1702.057. PCD.2260.1012.1702.055
Paul Heyer. Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America. New York: Walker and Company, 1966. LC 66-22504. ISBN 0442017510. discussion p300-301. — Revised edition available at Amazon.com
Dianne M. Ludman. Hugh Stubbins and His Associates, the first fifty years. The Stubbins Associates, Inc., 1986. Black and white rendering of exterior, p92.
Lawrence A. Martin, University of Oregon. Slides from photographer's collection, September 1993. PCD.3235.1012.0545.087. PCD.3235.1012.0545.089.
Leland M. Roth. A Concise History of American Architecture. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1979. ISBN 0-06-430086-2. NA705.R67 1979. discussion, p341-342, exterior photo, f290, p341.
Dennis Sharp. Twentieth Century Architecture: a Visual History. New York: Facts on File, 1990. ISBN 0-8160-2438-3. NA680.S517. exterior photo, small plan and section drawings, p346. — Available at Amazon.com
External Links
