It creates a modernist sculptural image set amongst distinguished architectural neighbors such as the New York Life Towers.It’s a very slender residential skyscraper at the south side of Madison Square Park that was developed by Slazer Enterprises of New City, New York, and designed by Cetra/Ruddy. The 47-story tower contains 90 residential condos. This tower has seven, four to six stories, “pop-out” elements at its north and east façades. The award-winning building rises 50 stories above the southern tip of New York’s historic Madison Square Park — a striking highlight to the New York City skyline.

A tower of bronze

620 feet high, One Madison Park has an incredibly small footprint of only 5,175 square feet on an overall site of 10,730 square feet that runs from 22nd to 23rd Street. The building’s form is composed of dark bronze glass respecting the limestone and brick fabric of the surrounding buildings within neighborhood context, and featuring five 6-story pods of clear and white glass that add articulation to the tower while providing residents with 270 degree views. CetraRuddy designed both the building form and the apartment layouts to take advantage of One Madison Park’s unique site, and to showcase the spectacular park and water views in all directions. Due to its slender form and height, CetraRuddy’s design also incorporates sophisticated rooftop dampers, consisting of computer-operated 36,000-gallon slosh tanks to provide greater stability and to minimize the swaying of the tower for residential comfort.

Recent high-profile Cetra/Ruddy commissions include residential ground-up construction projects such as 77 Hudson, which has received the New Jersey’s 2009 Project of the Year award. Other recent projects include the Barbizon, Hugh O’Neill Building, and 40 East 66th Street.

This strikingly tall and narrow 60-story condo tower is to be known as One Madison Park and will smartly have its entrance at the leafy block of 23 East 22nd Street in Manhattan's Flatiron district. Only 100 feet shorter than the nearby Clock Tower building, One Madison Park will have just 70 condominium apartments (no more than two per floor). Units will range from one to four bedrooms, with a triplex penthouse. The glassy curtain wall will be divided into discreet sections as it rises, almost like stacked cubes. Views up Madison Avenue and towards the midtown skyline will be unobstructed. A second condo tower designed by Rem Koolhaas will sit at 22nd Street. After the jump, another view of the condo tower in context from the busier 23rd Street side, and a look at that amazing Madison Avenue view.

The slimness of the buildings leaves sparse room for the structural features that most architects conceal in thick walls. So the shear wall that stabilizes a building, usually hidden in a thick core beside an elevator bank, becomes part of the design. One Madison Park’s shear wall stands between apartments on floors that contain two units and separates rooms in full-floor apartments.

At Sky House, the load-bearing wall becomes a room divider, providing balance to the heady view. “This nice strong column anchors it,” said Veronica Hackett, a managing partner of Clarett. “It doesn’t feel like, ‘Oh, my God, I’m going to fall over.’ ”

Stability through water

The Engineer of One Madison Park, the Cantor Seinuk Group, anchored the building without placing concrete columns around the perimeter. As John Cetra, a principal of Cetra/Ruddy explained, three enormous tubs of water on the roof function like an anvil. One holds 20,000 gallons; the other two hold 22,500 gallons each. When the wind blows in one direction, water moves the opposite way in the tubs, breaking the building’s tendency to quiver. “The weight is the water,” Mr. Cetra said. “We didn’t have to lug up steel plates or pour excessive concrete to anchor the building.”

The lobby will feature an extraordinary permanent installation by one of the world's most celebrated artists. Residents have access to the building's private screening room, developed in cooperation with a Hollywood powerhouse. At the lobby level there is a five-star restaurant by one of the best culinary minds in the world. Some observers were a bit concerned that this tower might be impinging upon the "space" of the majestic Metropolitan Life Insurance Company tower at One Madison Avenue on the southeast corner of the avenue and 24th Street, other observers were impressed by its sleek facades and vertiginous verticality.