The Standard Hotel is a 19-story boutique hotel across from the Hudson River waterfront in the heart of the Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. The building straddles the High Line, a public city park built on a disused elevated railroad track that runs between (and through) buildings along 1.45 miles of Manhattan’s west side. The facade features 132,000 square feet of structurally glazed curtain wall with floor-to-ceiling vision glass and minimally framed operable windows. An exposed, board-formed concrete structure frames the curtain wall, providing a textural counterpoint to the remarkably clear and taut glass facade that serves as the building’s dominant compositional element.

The curtain wall meets practical needs while underscoring the building’s unique aesthetic signature, which is both sleek and gritty. To increase visual clarity, low-iron glass was used throughout and was combined with a high-performance low-e coating to help achieve appropriate levels of solar comfort in the hotel’s rooms. Thermal breaks were included in all major curtain-wall components to enhance the building’s overall energy efficiency as well as guest comfort. All mechanical systems and structural elements are located inside of the building’s exterior boundary, allowing a narrow strip of exposed, coarse concrete to punctuate the otherwise uninterrupted plane of highly transparent, slightly reflective glass. The hotel’s public 18th floor is a double-height space with a subtly reinforced 20-foot floor-to-ceiling curtain wall that offers visitors impressive views of Manhattan and the Hudson River skyline.

Heintges provided curtain wall and building envelope consulting services during all phases of design and construction.

Photographs 1-5 by Jeff Goldberg/Esto; Photographs 6-9 by Heintges.