Architecture News Plus (ANP) – Architecture and Design Magazine

Metal Shutter Houses

This is a project by Shigeru Ban Architects + Dean Maltz Architects and it is located at Chelsea, Manhattan, NY, United States. It was submitted to Architecture News Plus (ANP) by Shigeru Ban Architects. Project's program: Luxury condominium building. There are four images for Metal Shutter Houses.

: © Michael Moran Photography

Project details

Project name: Metal Shutter Houses
Location: Chelsea, Manhattan, NY, United States
Program: Luxury condominium building
Year: Completion: 2011
More details: Stories: 11
Project by: Shigeru Ban Architects + Dean Maltz Architects

Project images

Designer's statement

Metal Shutter Houses, a luxury condominium building designed by architect Shigeru Ban and his New York-based partner Dean Maltz, located in Chelsea’s art district, just west of the High Line. The building is at 524 West 19th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues on New York’s ‘Starchitect Row’ next to Frank Gehry’s IAC Headquarters and across the street from Jean Nouvel’s 100 11th building.

Metal Shutter Houses take its name from two distinct features, the shutters that cover the two major façades of the building and the creation of condos that feel like individual homes within one structure. The building’s façade, with its “retractable skin” of motorized perforated metal shutters, echoes the after-hours shutters of neighboring galleries thereby contextualizing the building within its environment. Its façade represents a uniform minimal cube when all of the shutters are closed and presents a number of dynamic patterns based the arrangement of open and closed shutters at each resident’s discretion. Each apartment has direct access from the lobby through a single elevator and is a floor-through duplex providing abundant light streaming in from both the north and south façades. The double height exterior walls on the north façade apartments can be opened via sweeping floor-to-ceiling bi-fold doors thereby creating continuity between the interior space and outdoor terraces – blurring the boundary between inside and out. To achieve the complete opening of the apartment to the exterior Ban re-designed and newly adapted an industrial bi-fold door, commonly used in airplane hangars, and transformed it into an environmentally sound window wall.

Ban, known for his “poetic” architectural style, fully designed each home’s serene interior spaces. Instead of regular walls separating rooms, interior sliding glass doors create an open “universal floor”. The uninterrupted area, along with sliding glass doors to the rear balconies, creates a home that completely opens up to its surroundings. Other Ban features include cantilevering islands for the kitchens, curved countertops for the bathrooms, floor-to-ceiling white lacquer with matte finish cabinetry and custom designed hardware throughout each home.

The building stands approximately 120’ tall and consists of eleven stories, featuring eight duplex houses ranging from 1,950 sq. ft. to 4,644 sq. ft. and an art gallery.