The tallest office tower in New York hides a very fashionable attraction: a set of viewpoints that visualizes, in different ways, all of Midtown.
New York is the queen of the prom, something very American, but that is well understood in the rest of the world, thus, the rest of the cities of world importance naturally assume the leadership of the Big Apple. Every year, the city offers us new shows, new areas for leisure, tourism, business or culture, new spaces designed by the most renowned artists.
So it is not surprising that New York always appears as one of the destinations marked in red on the agendas of all kinds of companies. Since 2020, the Midtown neighborhood has been home to the tallest office tower in the city, no more and no less than 427 meters high, with an interior space of 162,600 square meters of constructed area, designed by the studio of Kohn Pedersen Fox architecture.
The tower is owned by New York’s largest real estate holder
But on this occasion we will say little more about the slender silhouette that amplifies the useful space of the city; proving once again that putting limits on urban planning is something of the past. No, this time we will talk about the spectacular attraction that crowns the skyscraper, which is called Summit One Vanderbilt, and which is becoming a real source of income for the owners.
By the way, the owners are SL Green Realty Corp, according to themselves, the largest real estate holder in New York (almost nothing), they hired a very well-known architecture firm for the Summit, their star attraction, the firm is called Snøhetta (so we don’t forget), and generated an interior design on the top floors of the building that has a lot to do with the exterior.
Summit One Vanderbilt’s infinity room is its main attraction
Occupying the last four floors of the tower, the observation deck covers 6,000 square meters. A huge number of meters for a single use: the visual enjoyment of the city. The first attraction of the Summit One Vanderbilt is called «Infinity Room», it occupies the first two floors of the Summit space, and is made up of a configuration full of two-height mirrors, with ceilings at 12 meters!!
This configuration of mirrors is distributed throughout several rooms, being responsible for the design a famous artist named Kenzo digital, his name could not be more intuitive: Air (or air). Combining different locations and types of mirrors, Kenzo lets us see the world through his eyes, modifying the environment through sound, lighting and the design of objects, quite an experience, for sure.
It is a must visit if you go to New York
Another hair-raising attraction are fully glassed-in balconies, sky boxes, that let you feel what it would be like to fly over the Big Apple. Under the glass, more than 324 meters high and views that take the breath away and even the conscience (I would say). The house calls this experience «Levitation» (levitation, of course) and its name is also quite intuitive. The third, but no less exciting attraction, is called «Ascent» (ascent, with a double meaning).
These are two elevators that take you to the top of the tower, with transparent pavement and walls of the same material, with the highest views that can be achieved in this building… a true sensory madness that is worth doing, if not , imagine at least. To end the experience, the last attraction called «Après» (after). It is the place where we will all go to discuss what we have felt and experienced. A cozy terrace more than three hundred meters away, in the open air, where you can have a coffee looking at the horizon and breathe the fresh air generated by the garden plants that have been prepared for us.
Summit One Vanderbilt is quite a sensory experience
This L-shaped space has dark-toned natural granite bar tables, stone flooring, and solid wood benches on which to sit to enjoy the scenery. Inside, a culinary experience too, with a cafeteria to clear our minds and eyes. Summit promises to be quite a sensory experience, with prices between 39 and 73 dollars (36 and 67 euros).
New York has many high points of view, such as the also novel The Edge at 30 Hudson Yards, which we already saw in our magazine, and others such as the classic Empire State Building, the powerful One World Trade Center, the one of the unrepeatable Rockefeller Center and, soon to be joined by one in the iconic Chrysler building, a building, by the way, that had one and was closed in 1945… How times and tastes change!!