The difficulty in designing the building was that it was necessary to visually link a monolithic base containing an electrical substation with a height of 24 m and 42 office floors on top.
The curtain wall of the upper tiers is constructed of low iron glass - minimizing the usual greenish cast. It will not only attract light, but also reflect it - the blue steel window sills separating the floors should help in this.
Light will also connect the lower and upper parts of the tower: 10 technical floors below will also be covered by a curtain wall, but of a different kind: consisting of two layers of long glass prisms, triangular in cross section. All of them are combined in panels measuring 4.57 mx 1.52 m, each weighing 680.39 kg.
During the day, 130,000 polyhedrons are called upon to make the surface of the facade of the skyscraper as active as possible: thanks to the 15-degree displacement between the rows of prisms, they will reflect the sky and the citizens passing by at different angles. The designers promise a moire effect.
In the dark, 220,000 blue and white LEDs will turn on, illuminating the prism wall from the inside. The lighting method will vary from an ornamental combination of colored fields to the repetition of pedestrian movement: 12 photocells will adjust the LEDs so that randomly selected people will be followed by columns of blue light on a white background.
The building has a height of 225 m (52 floors) with 158,000 sq. m of usable area (starting from the 11th floor) there will be another glass-light "bait", but already inside. A huge, 4.27 m by 21.34 m, glass wall with diodes enclosed inside will be installed in the lobby. Artist Jenny Holzer will program it to display a scrolling line of poems about New York history.
