By Claudie Benjamin
Look through the glass walls of Apple Upper West Side. See for yourself. Holiday shoppers are browsing and shopping nonstop.
Among very few things that might draw you away from the convenience of ordering anything online is the option of experiencing an exhilarating brick-and-mortar – or glass emporium.
“Marketplace” was the term used by Architect Peter Bohlin of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (BCJ) to describe the Apple Upper West Side’s open space selling room and many of the other marketplaces whose design he conceived in tandem with Apple founder Steve Jobs (1955-2011).
These exceptionally innovative, all-glass Apple buildings owe their existence to the convergence of three factors: the inspired vision shared by the architect and client, structural engineering prowess, and the availability of a technologically advanced construction material that was up to the challenge of the building’s design requirements for glass steps, walls (including glass fins) and roof.
In 2011, Bohlin commented to The New York Times regarding his collaboration with Jobs. “’The best clients, to my mind, don’t say that whatever you do is fine,’ Mr. Bohlin said last week, a few days after Mr. Jobs’s death. ‘They’re intertwined in the process. When I look back, it’s hard to remember who had what thought when. That’s the best, most satisfying work, whether a large building or a house.’”
The glass Apple building at 1981 Broadway, like its slightly older and more famous sister, a glass cube on 59th Street and 5th Avenue, and others designed by BCJ in this style, is about orchestrating structural geometry and symmetry in glass. The deceptive simplicity is an illusion created by the engineering of steel supports designed in a way that they vanish. The glass spiral steps, first used in Apple SoHo, at Apple 5th Avenue and later at Apple Upper West Side – all make you feel you are floating – these are like no other stairs. Like every single element in these Apple buildings, the glass steps were meticulously designed to enhance the acquisition of what, in contemporary life, have become daily essentials such as cellphones, computers, electronic accessories and offshoots like e-watches and specialized viewing devices.
“The work of Mr. Bohlin and his colleagues for Apple…is sleek, transparent, inviting, technologically advanced — and expensive. In many ways, the retail architecture is simply the largest box in which an Apple product is wrapped.” (Genius of Store Design, Too, New York Times, 2011)
The wondrous, glass Apple stores have been described voluminously in awestruck detail. For example, “The all-glass roof is an exercise in bravura minimalism, engineered by James O’Callaghan, of London-based Eckersley O’Callaghan. He mounted fritted, insulating- glass panels on thin metal purlins that incorporate lighting and (invisibly) sprinklers and security systems. Elegant trusses cross under, with tension cables picked out in machined stainless steel. All that glass bathes the room in sunlight. Shadows move slowly across the uninterrupted expanses of marble. The room feels as diaphanous as a bubble.” (Archpaper.com)
Bohlin speaks for himself in one of many YouTube videos.
He talks about them in terms of the emotion architecture is capable of evoking – the invitation to touch a rounded banister and the access to changing natural light – a distinctive feature of Apple Upper West Side.
Of course, glass is an ancient building material. Its origins go way back, “archaeological evidence suggests that the first man-made glass was made around 3500BC in Eastern Mesopotamia and Egypt, and the first glass vessels were made around 1500BC in Egypt and Mesopotamia.” (historyofglass.com)
Glass is composed of several extant and natural ingredients, from recycled glass to soda ash, silica sand, limestone and dolomite. The ratios of the individual parts impact the overall look of the finished material.
Unsurprisingly, the glass Apple stores are made of no ordinary glass. The challenge undertaken in engineering the spiral glass stairs alone is impressive: “The architects for the Apple Stores worldwide, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson of Berkeley (CA) USA, worked with a ‘cast of thousands’ of laminated glass specialists…” (trosifol.com)
Alberto Alarcón is a spokesperson for AIS division of Kuraray, manufacturer of SentryGlas®. He said his understanding is that the lamination containing SentryGlas® ionoplast interlayer, the laminator for Upper West Side was the German company Sedek.
Alarcón clarified that “SentryGlas® is a structural interlayer used in laminated glass; it’s not the glass itself, but a crucial component that enables the creation of special types of glass. We work closely with engineering firms and glass processors to make this possible.”
As Alarcón described in more detail, “SentryGlas® is engineered to provide enhanced strength, safety, and durability to glass, making it ideal for applications where structural integrity, impact resistance, and post-breakage performance are critical—such as architectural facades, railings, floors, and glass roofs. Interestingly, SentryGlas® was originally developed in response to the need for hurricane-resistant glazing following Hurricane Andrew’s devastating impact on Florida in 1992 as a Category 5 storm. While it remains a key material for hurricane protection, it also gained prominence when Steve Jobs, with his vision for sleek, glass-enclosed Apple stores, became one of the first to use SentryGlas® for structural glass applications now is used as a structural element all around the globe.”
Alarcón added that today there are hundreds of projects in NYC using SentryGlas®.
Even glass strengthened by hi-tech, is vulnerable and needs to be protected. This challenge came to the fore in 2013 when the management of the Bel Canto, a 27-story condominium building that adjoins the Apple store, needed to perform repairs on its facade to address hazardous conditions. As described by Habitatmag.com “it needed permission – a so-called “access agreement” – to work over the roof of the five-story Apple Store. “It took us three years of negotiations to come to an agreement” recalled the president of the management company.
Pre-holiday season promotions of merchandise are always expected to bring shoppers into Apple stores along with year-round, frantic computer users needing Genius Bar advice for something that’s gone on the fritz. Beyond the possible stress of having to wait for service, enter, look around, try out a bigger, smaller, or lighter, faster computer, and savor a bite of the Apple.