The Metal Shutter Houses condominiums in Manhattan, designed by Shigeru Ban Architects and Dean Maltz Architect with Montroy Andersen DeMarco, have been completed. Photo: Michael Moran Photography

People and Places
by Nancy Novitski

Shigeru Ban Architects and Dean Maltz Architect, with Montroy Andersen DeMarco in New York, New York — The Architectural Team in Fort Myer, Virginia — Benthem Crouwel Architects in Amsterdam, Netherlands — Niles Bolton Associates in Silver Spring, Maryland — C.F. Møller Architects in London, England, United Kingdom — Finegold Alexander + Associates in Methuen, Massachusetts — Dominique Perrault in Madrid, Spain — Superblock in Vienna, Austria

New York, New York — 2011.0720
The Metal Shutter Houses building in the Chelsea district of Manhattan has been completed. Designed by Shigeru Ban Architects, based in Tokyo, Japan, and the firm's U.S. partner, Dean Maltz Architect of New York City, the 11-story building contains eight high-end condominium units, plus a ground-floor lobby and art gallery. New York City firm Montroy Andersen DeMarco served as the architect of record.

The multifamily residential building takes its name from the motorized perforated metal shutters on its north facade. Echoing the after-hours shutters of neighboring galleries, the metal shutters form a uniform facade when closed, and create a changing composition as residents retract them. Behind the shutters, 20-foot- (six-meter-) high bi-fold glass doors can be opened to the outdoors, providing continuity between the unit interiors and decks. For this application, an off-the-shelf operable industrial door commonly used in airplane hangars was adapted with an integrated curtain wall.

Each unit has direct access from the lobby through a single elevator, and each apartment is a floor-through unit, allowing daylight to enter from both the north and south facades. Shigeru Ban and Dean Maltz also designed the building interiors, including the residential units, which feature cantilevering islands for the kitchens, curved countertops for the bathrooms, floor-to-ceiling white lacquer with matte finish cabinetry, custom-designed hardware, and sliding glass doors instead of regular walls separating rooms.

The developer is HEEA Development LLC. Located just west of the High Line, in the west Chelsea arts district, the building stands next to Frank Gehry's IAC Headquarters and across the street from Jean Nouvel's 100 11th building.   >>>

As-built facility models like this can be used to document business process information as well as the physical properties of a facility. Image: Courtesy Finith E. Jernigan

Thinking About BIM
by Finith E. Jernigan

Have you ever dreamed about a time when you could call up the site details for a new project — in real time? Without hiring a surveyor? Without visiting the site? Have you ever dreamed about a time when you could open a file and have all the as-built and as-operated details for the remodeling project that you just won? Have you ever wished that you could really understand how your new client's company works, without doing weeks of diagnostics and fact-finding? Well, now you can.

Building Information Modeling is, as a concept, so universal and so wide reaching that it can (and probably does) include nearly anything that you can think of. If it touches on the built environment, BIM processes can make it better and more efficient.

This complexity has led many of the pioneers to be bogged down in an endless loop of adding detail upon detail. They have a lofty goal — to develop fully functional and user-friendly systems that everyone in the building world can use to interact with each other. They work to capture all of the information that our world revolves around.

You cannot wait for them to finish. If you do, you will be left behind.   >>>

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Curved corner banded with courses of stretcher bricks and sculpted brick or architectural terracotta (WA-190)