Norman Foster Wins Competition for Park Avenue Tower

In May we reported that four Pritzker Prize-winning architects—Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, and Richard Rogers—were shortlisted for an invited competition to design a new office building at 425 Park Avenue, a few short blocks from two modern masterpieces: Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building (1958) and SOM’s Lever House (1952). Developers L&L Holdings and Lehman Brothers Holdings selected Foster + Partners’ design, which at first glance is closer in spirit to the glassy building that now occupies the site rather than his earlier Hearst Tower, whose diagrid structure stands out among its taller, more traditional neighbors. Nevertheless, sculptural bracing occurs at the setbacks, highlighting the landscape terraces that will be an amenity for the building’s occupants.