Thornton Tomasetti’s 10 Hudson Yards project wins New York City CIB’s highest honor

New York — Thornton Tomasetti announced that the 10 Hudson Yards project in Manhattan has won the New York City Concrete Industry Board (CIB) Annual Award, the organization’s highest honor. Thornton Tomasetti served as the structural engineer for the building, which was developed by Related Companies and Oxford Properties Group. The award honoring superior work in concrete will be presented at CIB’s 55th Annual Roger H. Corbetta Awards Dinner on Nov. 9, 2016 at the Marina Del Rey event space in the Bronx, N.Y.

10 Hudson Yards is unique as one of the first concrete office buildings in New York City. Thornton Tomasetti provided structural and façade consulting services for a 52-story, 895-foot tower. The building is part of the 28-acre Hudson Yards mixed-use development consisting of residential, commercial, retail and public space. The site encompasses six city blocks, the two of which are over active rail yards that will remain operational during construction. The building is designed to achieve LEED Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The 1.8-million-square-foot tower’s structure consists of a high-strength reinforced concrete frame, featuring post-tensioned beams and filigree slabs to accommodate open floor spans. A central concrete core provides lateral stability and stiffness, while the structure itself is founded on caissons socketed into bedrock. This unique floor system provides a clean-looking structure, which can remain exposed in loft-type office spaces. The angled tower, with a 15-story-tall atrium midway up its height on the south face, was geometrically challenging and has set new standards for concrete construction.

Thornton Tomasetti’s façade design includes a 200-foot-by-60-foot atrium cable wall and an 80-foot-by-200-foot lobby cable wall. The initial atrium study, which included cable-net systems and long-span truss systems, aimed to understand the structural implications and façade issues involved in building a multi-story atrium. The studies led to a one-way vertical cable system with intermediate beams supporting laminated glass panels through glass fittings.

Among the project’s many challenges were executing the complex architectural expression and implementing the various transfers to bridge the site conditions, which included transfer walls, sloping columns and column kinks supported by the lateral system.