The 360 Madison Avenue building is a critical blend of steel and concrete. The 360,000-SF structure is composed of a new 26-story concrete tower attached to an adjacent existing 17-story steel structure, the base of which is the original Abercrombie & Fitch department store (c. 1910). The project team stripped the store down to its steel frame and then intertwined with a new concrete superstructure. Due to previous reinforcement, building on top of a previously enlarged building always presents a challenge. The new, Italian-manufactured Permasteelisa curtainwall successfully ties both buildings together.

This clearly modern, transparent-skinned tower brings a renewed presence to a prominent site. Careful massing that balances the dense urban fabric and landmark buildings of the area reinforces the historical echo of the original structure, exemplified by the modern re-interpretation of the original shop windows from the turn-of-the-century department store and the linear markers on the façade. Concrete is the main structural material for the new tower for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which was speed of construction and cost-effectiveness. However, the need for greater interior ceiling height with few interior columns and the necessity of matching the adjacent steel structures relatively low floor-to-floor elevations made concrete the obvious choice. The flat-plate concrete construction maximizes possible interior ceiling heights while allowing considerable flexibility in locating and minimizing interior columns. Simultaneously, the flexibility of concrete led to a highly complicated connection between the two different structural systems. The combined buildings result in a structure that is over one-third larger than the total of the previous buildings and out to the maximum allowable FAR.