SOM’s green terra-cotta facade for Disney’s headquarters takes shape

• Architect
  Skidmore Owings & Merrill
• Location
  New York, New York
• Completion Date
  2024
• Developer/Owner’s Representative
  Silverstein Properties
• Sustainability
  Atelier Ten
• Facade Consultant
  R.A. Heintges & Associates
  
• Structural Engineer
  Thornton Tomasetti
• Facades Maintenance
  Entek Engineering, LLC
• Construction Manager
  Lendlease 
• Curtain Wall Contractor
  New Hudson Facades
• Terra-cotta Supplier
  NBK
• Glass Supplier
  Interpane
• Bird Safe Glass UV Coating
  Arnold Glass
• Storefront
  Universal Precast, W&W Glass

Now under construction, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s (SOM) 4 Hudson Square seems poised to become a new destination in Hudson Square, an emerging neighborhood west of Soho in Manhattan. As the forthcoming headquarters for Disney in New York, the building is the first purpose-built location for the company in the city in decades. The neighborhood formerly supported New York’s printing industry, but today it primarily consists of buildings with massive floorplates, many of which have been transformed into offices and arts spaces. Occupying the block bounded by Vandam, Varick, Spring, and Hudson Streets, SOM’s design reflects the area’s zoning and building code requirements in a classic Manhattan fashion while incorporating a more modern facade.

4 Hudson Square is expected to wrap construction in 2024. The podium of Disney’s new home rises ten stories before sprouting two terra-cotta–clad towers that extend upwards an additional nine stories, topping out at 320 feet above the street. The building will host offices, production, newsrooms, executive spaces, a screening room, and a pair of outdoor terraces. Live production studios are to be located below-grade in an environment that is isolated from exterior sounds and vibrations. Once complete, the complex’s 1.2 million square feet of space will become, as SOM partner Colin Koop described to AN, a “vertical city of all things Disney.”