The “switching” concept opportunistically maximizes difference while maintaining the efficiencies of repetition.  In a reinterpretation of a traditional New York bay window, an angled front facade switches back and forth, allowing each floor-through apartment unique views up and down Norfolk Street. 

 While amenities and services such as bay windows, air conditioners and balconies often retain their identity as prefabricated products that are added onto normative facades,. Phoenix Metal Designs worked hand in hand with the architects and contrctors of the project to manage the unique chalanges that arise with such a nontypical approach to incorporate them into the cladding.

 The building’s standard through-wall Packaged Thermal AC units (PTACS) are disguised with custom grilles situated between the Galvalume panels that alternate in direction from floor to floor. The grilles appear as modulations of the cladding, somewhat similar to fish gills: the panels narrow incrementally and pivot outward as they pass over the mechanical units.

 The underside of the balconies are clad in the same galvalume panels, and the cladding of the bay window continuous in plan to cover adjacent areas without projections.

 

These normally separate entities are therefore redistributed as primary attributes of the building’s form.