VIΛ 57WEST Apartments (New York City, New York)

 apartment building, 2016_construction

VIA 57 West is a 467-foot, 32-story futurist residential building completed in 2016 for Durst Fetner Residential. Designed by Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) as their inaugural North American project, the building consists of 709 apartment units of different scales situated on a podium with cultural and commercial amenities.

The building resembles a distorted pyramid with a steeply sloped facade, rising steeply to a peak at the northeast. The triangular structure has been described as a hybrid between a European perimeter block and a traditional Manhattan high-rise, as it encloses a 22,000 square foot courtyard in the center. Technically a tetrahedron in shape, its facades are clad in silver steel and green-tinted glass.

The north and east façades of the building feature a number of balconies skewed at a 45-degree angle, creating a fish-scale-like pattern, as does the south-facing wall on the north side of the courtyard. The sloping south and west exterior facade walls have a random pattern of recessed window openings of varying widths. Near the base, the steep slope of the upper parts of the facade taper out to a flatter slope. The pyramid-like structure rises from a 1-story base of metal and glass that has a number of angled indentations along the south and east facades; the main entrance is via a pedestrian walkway at the east end. The ground floor at the west elevation, facing the highway, is mostly clad in opaque glass panels, and the north facade's ground floor is largely covered in grey metal vents; it has two loading docks near the west end, and an entrance and exit to the underground parking garage near the east end, along with several service doors.

LOOK Dine-in Theatres operates an eight-screen movie theater spread across two levels at the west end of the base of the building. Other retail spaces in the ground floor are occupied by Hopscotch Montessori School, Pupculture dog services, and Le Cafe Coffee.

www.via57west.com/