Extell taps Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill to design new 57th Street tower

Gary Barnett has hired Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, the designers of the world’s tallest building, the 2,717-foot Burj Khalifa in Dubai, to design his new 1,550-foot 57th Street tower, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Nordstrom anchored mixed-use building, plans to rise some 300 feet above the Empire State Building when completed.

According to Barnett, it was Nordstrom, which has agreed to lease 285,000 square feet in the building, that recommended  Adrian Smith. Extell had been considering  Swiss designers Herzog & de Meuron, and New York-based SHoP Architects, one of the designers of Barclays Center, for the project, according to the Times.

“We want to have our best Nordstrom store in the best retail city in the world,” Colin Johnson, a spokesperson for Nordstrom, said. “That means being part of a building that we hope will become an iconic part of the Manhattan landscape.”

But since plans are still preliminary and since permits were filed as recently as Thanksgiving, the actual height of building, located on Broadway between 57th and 58th streets, could easily change before breaking ground. However at its current planned height the new tower would easily offer some of the highest residences in the city. [WSJ] —Christopher Cameron