Edge by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates: 2020 Best of Year Winner for Outdoor
Manhattan has multiple observation decks looking out across the skyline. But until Edge opened last year, none offered views beneath your feet. Cantilevered 80 feet from Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates’s 30 Hudson Yards—one of the city’s tallest buildings—the outdoor perch includes a 225-square-foot glass floor that lets visitors peer 100 stories down to the Midtown streets. Angled, mullion-free glass panels surround the triangular steel platform, giving thrill-seekers the chance to lean into the sky; illuminated bleachers provide an even higher vantage point on the twinkling panorama. “We had to think of a way to construct the cantilever without building a lot of scaffolding, because that would have been impossible,” KPF design director Marianne Kwok reports. She and design principal William Pedersen conceived of a 15-section module that was fabricated in Italy, bolted together on-site, and anchored to the building 1,100 feet up. Visible from the sidewalk, the 382-ton structure offers New Yorkers something rare: an enviable terrace that they can actually visit.
Project Team: William Pedersen; Marianne Kwok; Claudia Cusumano; Brendan Lim; Robert Scymanski; Terri Lee; Devon Loweth; Blanche Nunez; Ephraim Lasar; Sean Ostro; Michael Kirshner; H Clarke; Justin Whiteford; Joe Michael; Anthony Mosellie.
> See the full list of winners and honorees from Best of Year 2020
