The 1 East 57th Street building is an existing 18-story structure located on the northeast corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue. The renovation program consisted of 4 floors of retail, a fifth floor mechanical level serving the retail space and 10 floors of first class office space. Construction consisted of two phases, which ran concurrently.

Phase 1 consisted of removing structural concrete of the building’s three lower floors. A double floor enabled the restocking of four new structural steel-framed floors for retail, which added 8,000-SF to the building program. The interior scope included the installation of new air conditioning, cooling towers and most of the vertical risers. We also installed new elevator equipment, controls and cabs and added a new retail elevator on floors 1-5.

For phase 2, world-renowned Japanese curtainwall designer, Jun Aoki & Associates, conducted the exterior enclosure design overseas. The design consisted of a low iron, triple laminated, 1-inch-thick light of glass with a frit or perforated pattern on the number two and four surfaces (glass sizes alone are 9' x 19-6"). In addition, the mullions are clad in mirror-polished stainless steel. A simple glass, operable with narrow site lines, replaced the existing windows. The extent of the new glass facades were for four floors along 57th Street, five floors along Fifth Avenue, and ten floors at the southwest corner of the building.