33rd penn station entrance

a special cable façade for the new 33rd street penn station entrance in new york

Penn Station is considered one of the most important train stations in New York City. Approx. 650,000 people use the junction at the famous Madison Square Garden every day. A new main entrance on 33rd Street/7th Avenue was built to accommodate the high passenger frequency.

SOM's design included a 277sqm and 12m high canopy with an anticlastic cable façade. The primary supporting structure is a steel structure in the form of a 14.6m high, A-shaped frame inclined at 45 degrees which creates the entrance. Another component is a circumferential, oval edge beam of approx. 30m length and approx. 13m width for the floor connection.

High demands on the steel construction

Due to the architecturally desired shape of the façade, the longitudinal cables had to be pretensioned in order to achieve sufficient pretensioning in the transverse cables. As a result, the steel frame had to be manufactured with a precamber. During assembly, the cables were first extended with adapter pieces and then tensioned to bring the frame into its final shape. On site, the individual components were connected to each other at joints using solid screws and end plates. Due to the high demands placed on the design of the steel structure (AESS 4), the surfaces and weld seams required high-precision machining. The inlets for the stainless steel cables, which were difficult to access, posed a further challenge: In addition to these, other components such as cable ducts for lighting, which run inside the steel structure, also had to be taken into account.

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