Circa Central Park Condominium

 condominium, Modern (architecture)

140-foot, 12-story Neo-modernist residential building completed in 2017 for Artimus NYC. Designed by FXFOWLE, the building's concave curved facade wraps around to hug the northeast arc of Frederick Douglass Circle. This facade is clad in white-painted cast-concrete, with ribbon bands of windows along the curved section that steps down gradually from 11 floors at the north end to seven floors at the narrow south point. Each of the five setbacks has terrace space with glass railings. The window bands are broken up by two-tone vertical fins; when views from the west the fins appear orange, while from the south they are yellow-green. The building’s south façade has a system of thin, white metal louvers above the windows to control shading.

There are curved windows at the corner where the curved facade meets the west facade on Eight Avenue. The facade system continues for the south half of this elevation; above the 8th floor it slopes the right and narrows toward the roof line, which at this section has 11 floors. At the center of the wide arc is the main entrance. A traditional glass door and glass revolving door opens into a double-height lobby. To the right of the entrance bay the 2nd floor discontinues the pattern of vertical fins seen on the upper floors and also on the 2nd floor to the left of the entry. The ground floor has some retail space, while the rest contains community amenity space, also occupying the south end of the 2nd floor.

On the northern half of the site, the facade shifts to a punch window and brick wall assembly that references the neighboring masonry structures. Two gray tones of brick in random patterns clad the two main volumes of the northern massing, with a darker blend at the 7-story lower volume and a lighter blend at the upper volume on the northwest corner. The darker brick section doesn't quite reach the white ribbon-band section on the west facade; instead there is a narrow recessed area in the center between the two where the lighter brick extends down to the 2nd floor, where there is a secondary entrance (the darker brick section includes cladding on the ground floor).

The north facade on 111th Street has the dark-grey brick all the way up to the 7th floor, above which is a setback, and up to the 10th floor at the east end. There is a mixture of double- and single-windows, some paired together. The ground floor has a mix of show-windows for retail spaces, glass doors into these spaces, and dark-grey metal service doors. Not far from the east end is a loading dock with a metal roll-down gate. The recessed, light-grey upper levels reach the 11th floor. Topping the northwest building section is a 12th floor that consists of a mechanical housing on the west, and a penthouse level on the right, clad in bright white concrete.

On the east side the building wraps around a landscaped courtyard that has a large pergola over the seating area. The building contains 38 market-rate condominium units, plus 10 "affordable" units.

circacentralpark.com/
streeteasy.com/building/circa-central-park
www.fxcollaborative.com/projects/157/circa-central-park...