Silicon Alley Building Development Study

New York, NY

Since 1853, the building at the corner of Broadway and 11th Street has watched the Greenwich Village neighborhood and the surrounding area, just south of Union Square, explode in popularity around it. Now known as “Silicon Alley,” the area continues to grow exponentially with technology tenants like Peloton and developers continue to enhance their buildings to attract these tenants, much like we did at 125 West 25th Street and 888 Broadway.

Maximizing Development Opportunities

We took a site that is currently underbuilt relative to its zoning and designed a new, ground-up building that surpasses any high-performance office space that also maximizes the buildable square footage. Our team’s proposed design increases the floor area from 97,000 square feet to the maximum of 130,000 square feet. We leveraged our in-depth knowledge of tech tenants and the types of spaces desirable by today’s workforce, the team designed the building to maximize zoning setbacks as terraces and outdoor spaces, among many other building amenities, which these tenants demand.

Capitalizing on an Evolving Area Known as “Silicon Alley”

As the neighborhood has evolved to keep with the needs of the people who live and work around it—most recently to keep pace with the technology company boom in New York—it has seen companies flocking to the Flatiron, Union Square, and Greenwich Village neighborhoods. This boom has resulted in the transformation of many aging buildings, like warehouses and manufacturing buildings, to meet the demands of the 21st Century workplace. The site is in the heart of this new Silicon Alley, and our design realizes its full potential to attract top tech tenants.

Honoring the Historic Neighborhood

Originally designed as a hotel, the building is currently out of character for the neighborhood after a previous remodel stripped it of ornamentation when transforming it into office space. Though it’s not landmarked by New York City, the building has its fair share of history—having been the first New York location where Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated his revolutionary telephone. From the ground up, we took cues from the historic neighborhood setting, using horizontally-aligned cast iron window casements and crisp, gray brick.

Planted terraces climb up the building gradually to give it a captivating geometry. Retail spaces with floor-to-ceiling windows engage the neighborhood at the street level. The building is set back from the street to create an entry plaza and open green space that features a mural on the neighboring building—a perfect canvas for the artists in the area. A penthouse lounge with access to a landscaped roof terrace crowns the building’s 12 floors of office space, offering sweeping views of the neighborhood for employees.