The A Towers

History

In 2019 Amazon announced its interest in setting up a large corporate center in New York, in tune with another major technology, Facebook, that had just signed a lease for more than 1.5 million square feet space in Hudson Yards area(1).

In early March 2020, Amazon bought the Lord & Taylor building on Fifth Avenue from WeWork for a reported $1.15 billion(2), and different architecture offices proposed other new spaces for them. LAIA Architecture in collaboration with Landboxes and LML Systems, made this joint proposal for Amazon in a land reclamation area of Lower Manhattan.

Finally, Amazon announced an agreement to lease 335,000 square feet of new office space in Manhattan's Hudson Yards neighborhood, for its establishment in 2021(3).

Approach

The A Towers is an off-shore mix-use development to adopt the growing technological industry of New York while improving the logistics and resiliency of the future Lower Manhattan. The incoming FAANG technology giants to the city, namely Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google, are leading the growing technology hub of New York. However, this trend increases current concerns regarding gentrification, parcel logistics, sustainability, and the contribution of new developments towards the existing community. The A Towers seek to a) reduce gentrification pressures, b) improve the local coastal resiliency, and c) improve logistics to the existing grid. This is possible by applying a modular, land reclamation system that enables construction to anchor the seabed as soon as its deployed. It plugs with any infrastructure that the development or the region needs.

Technology

Caisson technology is the method used to reclaim land, through which The A Towers brings new landmass to serve as a buffer zone for storms, expected to increase their effects due to sea-level rise. The buffer zones are parks that increase the green areas of the area, thus its community resiliency. These caissons are hollow extruded hexagons to hold added infrastructure, such as a fully automated last-mile logistics network connected to warehouses, indoor farming, and recycling units. This network extends towards the existing mainland to provide services to the current city. In this sense, The A Towers is an urban planning and an infrastructural complex that adds direct and indirect value to the existing area.