SHoP's new copper-clad tower on Manhattan's East River

New renderings and construction photographs were released of the latest SHoP–designed Manhattan tower, located on First Avenue between East 35th and 36th streets. SHoP partnered with SCAPE Landscape Architecture and JDS Development Group to design American Copper, a pair of 900,000-square-foot residential buildings whose most prominent feature is a 100-foot-long, three-story tall, skybridge, suspended 300 feet aboveground, that connects the two towers at a jaunty angle. The skybridge, according to the developers, is the first major one constructed in New York in over 80 years.

The steel trusses that connect the bridge weigh almost 421,000 pounds, while the facade is clad in over 5,000 copper panels, each measuring about six-by-ten feet. On terra firma, two lobbies with 25-foot ceilings open up onto a park with a water feature.

While the towers are diminutive (the west tower is 540 feet tall, the east, 470) compared to the firm’s 1,438-foot-tall 11 West 57th Street, its features are not. The building’s 761 units will have access to 60,000 square feet of amenities, many of which double down on the quotidian luxury offerings: Residents can slough off dead skin in a Turkish-style marble hammam; work out in a fitness center that includes a rock climbing wall; bring their children to the playroom, lounge, and juice bar; grill on the roof; chill in the hot tub; or splash around in the 75-foot-long lap pool in the skybridge (from where swimmers can probably see, though wall-to-wall glass the plebes schlepping to the Metropolitan Pool over in Williamsburg).