Team: Zongye Lee, Randy Ng, Glen Lee, Mar Granados, Julio George, Richard Jolta

The building has never been completely renovated since its original completion in 1902.  Our work encompasses every area of the project:  the building master plan, re-programming every floor, the detailed design of the most important interior spaces including the entire new ground floor and mezzanine, entrances, and restaurants, and helping guide the design for the restoration of the exterior. In terms of designing a series of different interiors, historic restoration, and space planning, this project is one of the most complex projects in New York City. The project is currently under construction and will open in numerous phases over two years.
 

The design will combine a completely new and contemporary plan for huge sections of the iconic building interior, along with the detailed restoration of the exterior.  It conceives a contemporary interpretation of the original grand retail “hall” on the ground floor with a new mezzanine, reconfiguring all the interior spaces, restoring and re-opening windows to the exterior, creating new entrances, restoring exterior facades, coordinating historic restoration tax credits, and coordinating re-zoning efforts to obtain new floor area.  
 

Innovative design features are created throughout the building.  The ground floor features a massive new retail hall for the “largest store on earth” with dramatically raised ceilings and no visible mechanical or lighting fixtures in the large suspended planes that make up the ceiling.  The original historic wooden escalators are being restored and polished; their tiger grain wood panels and brass pin connections will be restored and reinterpreted in contemporary motifs such as glowing millwork panels at all new store entrances.  

The ground floor will feature two-story high glass enclosed luxury shops with curved floating stone and glass stairs. New openings framed with glass and steel will connect and improve sight lines between different levels of the store. 

The central concept of the design is to create a new sense of grandeur and openness with beautiful overlapping architectural spaces. Removing decades of visual clutter, we have reduced the visual palette to a symphony of white materials and forms including delicately veined Carrara marbles, fluted plaster columns, glass, and dramatic lighting.  The final effect is to create a massive, rich, and contemporary “white box theatre” to display the constantly changing retail offerings of every new season and generation.