8 Catherine Street NYC
The minimalist design with layers of subtle rhythmic elements creates a serene, light and fluid architecture. This is achieved with its advance curtain wall design: with gradated spacing of the structural mullions synchronized by gradated frit patterns on the glass inlays, the simple volume of the glass appears weightless, and pulsates quietly.
8 Catherine Street is a 7-story office building located on one of the most prominent and visible sites in Chinatown, a quadrilateral lot with full exposure on three sides at the nexus of Chatham Square and the Bowery.
Understanding the importance of the location, the Client committed to create a distinctive building that symbolizes transformation and a forward vision for its community.
The building volume plainly conforms to the property line while the architectonics of the curtain wall create intricate fluidity and rhythm on a site that’s enveloped by open space and movement. The simple geometry and composition poise elegance in this traditionally harried and chaotic context.
The building is conceived to embody the modernity of our time: transparent, light, and a tectonic clarity with sophisticated rhythms. The tectonic clarity and lightness are achieved by the application of floor-to-floor glass with thin structural mullions. The introduction of these perimeter structure members enables the main structural columns to be recessed far from the glass line that perceptually lightens the entire building.
The sophisticated rhythm of the tectonic elements is the synthesis of the structure system and the glass system. Within the two layers of the glass curtain wall, white ceramic frits create a screen for the inside face of the outer glass. At 3/16" diameter these white dots are applied at varied percentages for each panel and create a gradation that alternates at every floor. The mullions echo the gradations of the glass by increasing and decreasing the spacing on each façade. Additional acid etching privacy treatment within 30" above the floor adds a faint rhythm to the vertical order and extra depth to the glass.