Interview about Urban Symbiosis Mix Use Towers, winner of the A' Architecture, Building and Structure Design Award 2025
Urban Symbiosis is a mixed use supertall development above the 7 Train station in New York City, integrating condos, serviced apartments, and offices. Celebrating the great underground, the subway entrance is placed at the center, offering natural light and 24/7 public access. The design optimizes energy loads by combining office and residential programs, reducing grid pressure. Unlike traditional vertical stacking, a horizontal split forms two towers, creating shared public spaces with amenities like restaurants, co-working areas, and gyms for constant interaction.
View detailed images, specifications, and award details on A' Design Award & Competition website.
View Design DetailsThe decision to horizontally divide the tower—placing residential and office programs in two separate volumes joined by a shared core—emerged from a desire to rethink the conventional logic of mixed-use skyscrapers. Typically, these programs are vertically stacked, with offices occupying the lower half and residences above. While this stratification is efficient in zoning terms, it often isolates communities and exacerbates the disconnection between different user groups. By placing these two functions side by side and bridging them with shared infrastructure, I was able to create opportunities for real social overlap, not just physical adjacency.From an environmental standpoint, this arrangement also enhances energy performance. Residential and office uses have different peak energy demands—offices peak during the day, while residential peaks in the evening. By aligning these contrasting temporal patterns horizontally and sharing mechanical systems and façade strategies between the two, I was able to smooth out energy demand cycles and reduce the overall load. This results in a more balanced, efficient use of building systems and opens up new possibilities for shared energy storage and passive design.
The subway station is not an afterthought in Urban Symbiosis—it is the heart of the project. In many cities, infrastructure is hidden or relegated to the background, treated more as a service node than a civic space. I wanted to challenge this paradigm by celebrating public transportation as the central connective tissue of urban life. Embedding the subway entrance directly between the two programmatic towers is a symbolic and spatial gesture that reflects our belief in transit-oriented development and urban equity.This move ensures seamless integration between daily life and mass mobility. Commuters, residents, and workers intersect at this point of convergence, creating spontaneous urban interactions. It turns what would typically be a private boundary—the space between two towers—into a vibrant public corridor. This central transit hub becomes a civic anchor that reinforces the tower's identity as not just a building, but a piece of city-making infrastructure.
One of the central challenges of designing Urban Symbiosis was orchestrating the delicate balance between constant public flow and residential seclusion. Our solution emerged through both spatial hierarchy and programmatic choreography. I established a clear gradient of accessibility—from the most public, like the transit plaza and commercial arcade, to semi-public co-working and amenity zones, and finally to fully private residential quarters.Circulation was a critical tool in this balancing act. I developed dedicated cores and access points for each major user group, while still allowing for controlled zones of overlap where interaction is meaningful and intentional. For example, residents can access amenity spaces such as the gym or co-working lounge without passing through the public retail corridor. Conversely, office workers and visitors experience the vibrant ground-level ecosystem without disrupting the privacy of residential life above.The architecture facilitates coexistence without friction—enabling different communities to share space while maintaining their own rhythms and boundaries. It’s a choreography of movement and access that allows the building to function as a shared organism without compromising individual comfort.
Amenity spaces in Urban Symbiosis are not peripheral; they are the social backbone of the entire project. I intentionally placed them at the seams—where office and residential volumes meet, and where the public realm transitions into private space. This strategic positioning turns transitional areas into opportunities for cross-programmatic engagement.For instance, the co-working lounge sits at a vertical threshold between the towers, with panoramic views that are equally accessible to office tenants and residents. This makes it a natural magnet for activity throughout the day. Similarly, the restaurants and fitness centers are located along circulation paths that invite both passersby and long-term occupants, fostering micro-communities anchored by shared use.Rather than isolating amenities in each program, I designed them as shared resources that are spatially and visually connected. This promotes serendipitous interaction and a stronger sense of community—qualities often missing in traditional high-rise developments.
The energy optimization strategy in Urban Symbiosis was informed by a close analysis of diurnal and seasonal usage patterns in office and residential programs. What became evident was the complementary nature of their peak demands. Office spaces typically require more cooling and lighting during working hours, while residential units see spikes in the early morning and evening. By co-locating these uses horizontally, I was able to create a more consistent and predictable energy load profile across the building. This smoother demand curve reduces strain on HVAC systems and opens the door for shared battery storage and thermal regulation solutions.Moreover, I integrated passive shading devices and a responsive façade system that modulates daylight and heat gain according to the occupancy pattern of each zone. These strategies were not just conceptual—they were supported by iterative simulations using real climate data and occupancy projections, ensuring the building performs at a high level while remaining comfortable for all users.
Integrating with the High Line was not just a design decision—it was a philosophical one. The High Line, with its layered public accessibility and urban biodiversity, represents a rare moment where infrastructure, ecology, and culture converge. When I began shaping the street-level experience of Urban Symbiosis, I didn’t want the project to be an isolated object; it needed to contribute to and extend the public realm. The sunken garden became the architectural and conceptual bridge.By carving the garden below street level, I allowed for a natural descent into the building’s public zone while maintaining permeability to the High Line above. This move introduced multiple strata of interaction—pedestrian at-grade, garden immersion below, and elevated transit and leisure above. It created a vertical urban landscape where movement is continuous and multidirectional, echoing the dynamic nature of New York’s pedestrian ecology. This approach reshaped the entire site strategy, compelling me to think of the project not as a pair of towers, but as a responsive terrain of flows and experiences.
Sustainability in Urban Symbiosis wasn’t treated as an afterthought or checklist; it was embedded in every architectural move. The choice of an all-electric system came early on, informed by the increasing decarbonization of New York City’s grid and legislative shifts such as Local Law 97. I designed the systems with the future in mind—anticipating that clean electricity will become the dominant urban energy model.Material selection followed a similarly rigorous logic. I leaned toward low-embodied carbon materials, including high-recycled-content steel and prefabricated concrete panels where applicable. The façade uses triple-glazed curtain walls with integrated shading fins, tuned through iterative simulations to minimize solar heat gain while maximizing natural daylight. The roof areas are equipped for photovoltaic integration, and stormwater is captured through a green roof and cistern network to support landscape irrigation.The holistic sustainability strategy aligns with the building’s social goals: by reducing mechanical footprint and energy demand, I created more space and resources to dedicate to communal functions. To me, good environmental design is not just about metrics—it's about architectural generosity.
Parametric tools were essential in reconciling the project’s many layers—public/private access, programmatic diversity, energy performance, and vertical circulation. I used Grasshopper and Rhino to model and simulate multiple variables at once, creating a dynamic platform where the building could “learn” from the data I fed into it.For example, pedestrian flow simulations revealed pinch points around subway access, which led me to redesign the core-to-entrance alignments for better permeability. Energy usage patterns were fed into optimization algorithms that shaped floor heights, window-to-wall ratios, and system zoning. I also tested solar exposure on various tower orientations to fine-tune the staggered layout of the residential and office wings.This technological fluency allowed me to work not just reactively but proactively—forecasting performance outcomes before they became problems. The final design is the result of this iterative, data-rich process, one that balanced intuition with quantifiable intelligence.
I was very conscious of scale from the beginning. Super-tall buildings often become impersonal, and I wanted to resist that tendency by embedding small-scale social spaces throughout the vertical stack. I introduced a series of “neighborhood nodes” at regular intervals—double-height communal terraces, shared kitchens, work lounges, and play zones—that break the monotony of the tower and allow for casual interactions.At the ground and mid-level podiums, I emphasized tactile materials, warm lighting, and greenery to counterbalance the sleekness of the high-rise envelope. The sunken garden and the public atrium were scaled with pedestrians in mind—balancing openness with intimacy. Even the circulation zones—elevator lobbies, corridors, stairwells—were treated as design opportunities, with natural light, seating niches, and artwork integrated into their fabric.This attention to micro-experiences within a macro-form allowed me to create a building that feels personal despite its scale. Architecture, at its best, serves the individual just as thoughtfully as it serves the city.
The journey from 2017 to 2024 was transformative—not only for the project but for me as a designer. The initial concept of Urban Symbiosis was rooted in critique: I was frustrated by how mixed-use towers often segregate functions vertically, missing opportunities for synergy. As the design evolved, that critique matured into a constructive proposal—one that used integration as both form and function.Over the years, the project absorbed changes in urban behavior, energy codes, construction technology, and even pandemic-related shifts in how people use space. Each shift forced me to adapt. For instance, remote work trends influenced the expansion of co-working and semi-private lounges. Public health concerns inspired better ventilation strategies and more generous outdoor terraces. These were not compromises—they enriched the project.Most importantly, I came to see the project not just as a design but as a system of ideas: about time-sharing, access, coexistence, and resilience. Urban Symbiosis became a testing ground for architectural empathy—how to design for many lives moving through one space, all while holding the city together.
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