The safety cocoon at Beekman Tower is a construction innovation that ensures safety

As deep down as 1,500 feet below the street, all the way up to 850 feet in the sky, there are a multitude of groundbreaking techniques, materials, and other innovations afoot on Lower Manhattan projects. Here’s a look at some of the latest technologies -- spanning safety, environmental, cost-savings, and construction-efficiency programs -- being used on construction projects south of Canal Street.

This is the first of two articles on construction innovations. (Click here for part two.) 

Beekman Tower safety “cocoon”

When it’s finished in approximately 2010, Beekman Tower will be one of the tallest skyscrapers in all of New York City. Developer Forest City Ratner is erecting the eye-catching tower at 8 Spruce Street, just east of City Hall. It was designed by prominent architect Frank Gehry, who envisioned a unique, stainless-steel façade made of undulating panels that evoke a sort of stylized, smooth tree bark.

The cocoon panels are 45 feet tall

The cocoon is a 45-foot-tall wrap that encloses the upper three stories and top floor using aluminum columns attached to the structure, and heavy mesh netting between the columns. Because the building’s façade is not flat, “drawers” are built between the cocoon wall and the building floors, while “diapers” made from netting and metal rods form an extra shelf below the cocoon to catch anything that may slip through.

“The benefit is safety -- that's one, two, and three,” said Joe Rechichi, Forest City’s senior vice president for construction design and development. “It’s safer for the workers, it improves the performance of the job, and it’s safer for the people on the street. This is the only system that encloses the top floor of a building -- even a small tool will be caught.”

Geothermal wells provide natural climate control

The “Visionaire,” one of the newest buildings in Battery Park City at 70 Little West Street, is using two geothermal wells to regulate the temperatures of 40,000 square feet of its lower floors. Sourced from the natural temperatures of the earth, the wells extend as far as 1,500 feet below grade where the earth’s temperature is a constant 55 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

Geothermal wells are gaining popularity worldwide, and were first used in New York in 1997. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that they are 30 to 50 percent more energy-efficient than typical heating and cooling systems, and can eliminate use of boilers and cooling towers for a range of building sizes.

At the 36-story Visionaire, the wells will be used to heat and cool the new Battery Park City Parks Conservancy offices in an otherwise all-residential building. The two wells are approximately 16 inches wide at the point of entry, narrowing to eight or nine inches at the lowest point.

They are created by drilling down through soil and bedrock, which at the site is about 50 feet below grade. The system extracts the earth’s natural temperature in a process similar to drinking through a straw. Ground water rises up and is circulated through a network of pipes in the building. The wells are spaced a standard distance apart to avoid changing the “temperature character” of the soil.

The Visionaire is the first residential building to earn the LEED Platinum rating for its climate-control system, as well as for its grey-water recycling, green roof, and by obtaining 35 percent of its electricity through renewable sources.

Last year, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) needed to solve station flooding issues on the 1/2/3 line, and hired Grimshaw Architects inventive designers to help. The firm crafted a unique series of ventilation grates that stand six inches above the sidewalk, helping divert rainwater runoff from flowing into the subway tunnel.

The grates were installed in early 2009

The grates were installed in late 2008 through spring 2009 on sidewalks between Leonard and Chambers Street. More uniquely designed subway grates are expected to be installed in other locations citywide, including Chinatown, as part of the MTA’s flood-prevention measures.

Rooftop Forest Takes Root in Tribeca

Residents of the new 101 Warren Street have the city at their feet and the forest on their roof. In early 2008, as construction there wound down, developer Edward J. Minskoff had 101 mature white pine trees installed on the tower’s 35,000-square-foot third-floor roof. The trees are rooted in about six feet of topsoil, along with riverbed stone and about 300 shrubs.

The green roof was a design decision that brings a glimpse of nature to what otherwise may have been a plain paved roof. Residents with terraces and loggias get to overlook the planted area, which also increases the building’s energy conservation. The pines were chosen because they will stay green all year. These particular trees, some as tall as 25 feet, were domestically grown to insure their ability to withstand northeast weather conditions.

Designed by Skidmore Owings and Merrill, the $450 million residential building is comprised of three buildings that fill the block between West, Greenwich, Murray, and Warren Streets as is home to several new retail businesses. The building opened in summer 2008.

Rethinking construction sites for public art

There are innovations in the physical construction of several downtown structures. And now, with the help of the Alliance for Downtown New York, several developers have spruced up their work zones by recasting construction sites as public-art venues. 

"Concrete Jungle" was a unique variation on regular Jersey barriers

Last year another piece, “Houston Fence,” applied color and pre-fabricated safety materials to transform the look of 60 chain-link fences spanning 480 feet on Houston at Broadway. The fence was created by artists Carolina Cisneros, Carlos Gomez de Llarena, and Mateo Pinto, who also adorned Fulton Fence with industrial caution lights and collaged signage for the first phase of Re:Construction. Both fences enclose street- and utility-reconstruction sites being managed by the Department of Design and Construction.

Also in 2007, at the base of the Corbin Building on Broadway and John, GRO Architects’ built the multi-colored “Best Pedestrian Route” as an artistic take on ubiquitous sidewalk sheds. The GRO version was affixed to the building and could be lengthened or shortened with its pre-fabricated plywood ribs. It also elevated the sidewalk to even out the surface and provided its own lighting. GRO architect Nicole Robertson says that Best Pedestrian Route can be sturdy enough for serious protection, with components easily moved and reassembled to serve various construction sites.

“We’d like people to think of temporary construction elements as something that should be designed to be part of and improve our everyday environment,” said Robertson. “A scaffold doesn’t have to be solely functional. It can be something better that contributes to our neighborhoods.”

Multiple installations have been placed at sites around Lower Manhattan, with more now in the works thanks to $1.5 million in LMDC Community Enhancement Funds. (Read more about the Re:Construction project at www.reconstructionnyc.org, and view a slide show here.)

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