Manhattan West: Converting Site Challenges into Design Opportunities

<p>As cities worldwide are increasing in density, building departments and municipalities are allowing construction using the air‐rights above transportation infrastructure to maximize use of valuable real estate. One Manhattan West (1MW) and Two Manhattan West (2MW) are supertall office towers recently designed and engineered by Skidmore, Owings &amp; Merrill (SOM) that rise above the underground train approach to New York City’s Penn Station. Although the towers are neighbors and have a similar program, they are undercut by the train tracks in different ways. The disparate below ground conditions result in two distinct structural solutions.</p><p>The structural system of 1MW is a concrete core and a perimeter steel moment frame. The site conditions prevent the perimeter of the 304‐meter‐tall tower from reaching the foundation. This challenge is addressed by transferring the perimeter to the core above the ground, thus making 1MW one of the slenderest structures in New York City. The structural system of 2MW consists of a central braced steel core with outrigger and belt trusses and a perimeter steel moment frame. Here the perimeter reaches the foundation with a few lateral transfers however only half of the core reaches terra firma. This paper presents a side‐by‐side comparison of the structural solutions for the two towers.</p>

Meeting at Penn Station

This chapter discusses coordination problems in relation to cooperation. Coordination problems are essentially problems of information: although people would benefit from coordinating their activities, they lack common knowledge about how to do so. Even worse, they may actually have common knowledge about how to solve the problem but not know it. Thomas Schelling recognized one way to overcome this problem: focus on prominent, salient focal points that others are also likely to focus on. The chapter first examines the so-called “Theory of Mind” or “mentalizing” before explaining how collective action dilemmas can become coordination problems. It also explores trust and conflict in coordination games such as Stag Hunt Games and the Battle of the Sexes Game, concluding with anti-coordination games and how coordination operates in the real world.

Guest Column: Why Animals Now?

Myrtle Wilson, Tom Buchanan's working-class lover in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, wants “one of those police dogs” as an ornament “for the apartment,” because “they are nice to have” (27). Tom, Myrtle, and our narrator, Nick Carraway, have just arrived at Penn Station and gotten into a taxi, in the novel's second chapter. Myrtle boarded the train in Queens, site of her home in the Eliotic “valley of ashes,” joining Nick and Tom on the rail commute from their respective class-bound Long Island Eggs, upper East and nouveau West, into the city that is “built with a wish out of non-olfactory money” (69).