FXFOWLE’s design for Eleven Times Square, the new western gateway of the celebrated 42nd Street, is a carefully modulated sculptural tower that extends and enhances the district’s unique environment on a crucial site. The tower preserves sightlines along one of the world’s busiest urban corridors in Manhattan, and its form is designed to maximize solar orientation within its dense context. Eleven Times Square’s signature design feature is a split parti that has three sections: a six-story plinth that serves as the base for two interconnected vertical forms — a rectilinear south-facing slab along 41st Street, and a glass “crystal” along 42nd Street. Because the “crystal” is narrower at the base (an inversion of the typical Manhattan paradigm for tall buildings), it maintains views of three landmark towers in the surrounding neighborhood — the former McGraw-Hill Building, the Candler Building, and the New York Times Building. The parti likewise embodies solar responsiveness. The southern and western facades of the tower are composed of projecting sunshades, fins, and reflective glass that control glare and insulation, while the north- and east-facing “crystal” is more sheer and transparent. Eleven Times Square’s design goes beyond mainstream strategies to achieve LEED Gold Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council . The tower’s holistic architectural concept, calibrated to solar orientation, is a first for a major New York high-rise.

“I think was makes Eleven Times Square so unique compared to other new glass towers in New York City is the care, craft and creativity that went into the design of the glass façade,” said Dan Kaplan, AIA, LEED AP, Senior Partner at FXFOWLE. “This is no "ordinary" glass wall. The tower’s glass façade is very detailed; there are light and shadow projections, innovative sunshades, various glass shades and tones, and a fritting application that reduces solar heat gain and glare. It all adds up to an elegant and interesting architectural expression.”