40BOND

40BOND is a complex and contradictory experiment that anticipates a new type of building: a combination of townhouse and apartment building, a so-called diversité d’habitation(Domus 910, 98). Its mix of ingredients includes: dwelling type, artfully applied materials and a ‘close reading’ of the urban context and its graffiti ‘tags’.

The building is a radical reinvention of the traditional cast-iron warehouse that epitomizes the Bowery District in Manhattan. Herzog & de Meuron’s reinterpretation has produced a crystalline structure of specially cast glass wrapped around the façade columns of reinforced concrete. This concrete structural frame allowed the architects to create free plans…