Empire Building Challenge Award Winner Beginning at 59th St., the most celebrated stretch of New York’s Fifth Avenue—the leafy, museum-studded gambol on the east side of Central Park—runs two-and-a-half miles to the north, stopping at 110th St in Harlem. At either end, its course is marked by a pair of major buildings: downtown, it’s the Plaza Hotel, one of the city’s most recognizable landmarks; uptown, it’s The Heritage. Though less…
East 79th St Retrofit
This 160-unit residential co-op, constructed in 1961 in New York City’s Upper East Side neighborhood, was an early example of the white glazed brick buildings that came to characterize the area’s development projects of that era. The original building design prioritized comfortable units with large, spacious rooms in keeping with the upscale neighborhood. But the economy of means also dictated a purely functional design of the façade. As the building…
Scalable Solution for High Performance Building Envelope Systems Implemented in East Harlem
The Project NYCEEC provided a $700,000 loan to Dextall, an innovative company that produces unitized prefabricated exterior wall systems with the goal of accelerating decarbonization by creating affordable and efficient solutions for retrofitting buildings. NYCEEC’s loan helped to finance the costs to manufacture and ship Dextall’s panels for installation at a retrofit project at The Heritage in the East Harlem neighborhood of New York City. The Heritage is owned by…
THE CHESTNUTS ENERPHIT CASE STUDY – A SCALABLE APPROACH TO RETROFITTING
It is no secret that retrofitting an existing structure to a high standard is more challenging than building a new one. In part, retrofitting is challenging because of the diversity of obstacles faced by designers when considering insulation, airtightness, and thermal bridge mitigation strategies – every house is different. With unprecedented retrofit targets outlined by both Irish and UK governments, it is important to develop scalable retrofit approaches, that can…
NYC Enacts Legislation to Promote All-Electric Buildings
NYC is now the largest city in the U.S. to enact legislation relating to the electrification of buildings. On December 15, 2021, the NY City Council voted in support of Int. 2317A-2021, which effectively mandates the electrification of most new buildings by prohibiting the on-site “combustion of a substance that emits 25 kilograms or more of carbon dioxide per million British thermal units of energy.” Former Mayor Bill de Blasio, a…































