This pushing in and out from the main volume is now turning up in high-rise projects in Texas, creating a striking contrast in downtown skylines populated by towers defined by straight vertical slabs with an occasional setback tapering toward the top. You get a high-tech effect, and one that can mask the mass and scale of a tower, without too much effort.” “If you don’t push it too far and balance things just so, you gain back every square foot pushing out from the volume that you lose from pushing in, and you can use all of an office building’s standard elements with just a little reinforcement. “That is the genius of the Jenga theme,” Betsky says. Though sculpturally dramatic and futuristic, this formal approach doesn’t require innovative technology or highly sophisticated construction methods but just an understanding of cantilevers and adequate waterproofing. ![]() Even if by coincidence, 56 Leonard resembles this, beginning at its base with a simple rectangular glazed shaft, then rising 60 stories with each level featuring balconies randomly projecting outward, then entire units cantilevering out or recessing inward to the point of disintegration and disorder. Popularized by architecture writer and critic Aaron Betsky, the label refers to the game using wood blocks to erect towers that test the limits of stability before inevitably collapsing. But it wasn’t until Herzog and de Meuron’s 56 Leonard condominium tower, designed in 2008 and completed only recently in New York, that such dynamic stacking, though in an extremely vertical direction, earned the label Jenga. ![]() The architects from postwar Japan’s Metabolist movement and Moshe Safdie’s Habitat ’67 have demonstrated the power of prefabrication to build large, programmatically complex structures.Īt the turn of the 21st century, pioneering Dutch firms such as OMA and MVDRV experimented with stacking distinct blocks of program together to create deliberate hybrid spaces and dynamic volumes. Stacking blocks of floors or dwelling units one on top of the other as a massing strategy is nothing new. ![]() The Jenga Tower Rises in Texas: A New Approach to Designing Vertically
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