Cantor Seinuk receives awards

Real Estate Weekly, May 12, 1993

The Cantor Seinuk Group won a Grand Award in the 1993 Engineering Excellence Awards Competition, sponsored by the American Consulting Engineers Council (ACEC).

The firm was cited for its innovative structural engineering design of the John D. Jr. and David Rockefeller Research Building in New York City, it was announced at the ACEC's Annual Convention held May 4 in Los Angeles. The Cantor Seinuk Group had already received a first prize for the project in the regional competition, as well as a second prize for its structural design of the skyscraper, 450 Lexington Avenue, also in New York City.

Design of the Rockefeller Institute laboratory building required bridging a 15-story structure over the FDR Drive along Manhattan's East River. Four funicular arches were employed to carry the structure over the highway. They were constructed on four consecutive nights to avoid disruption of the traffic below, from a 120-ton capacity barge-based crane in the river. Spaced 30 feet on center, they span 90 feet, and stand 33 feet high from spring line to crown.

The funicular shape was created in order to limit the forces to axial compression only in the segments of the arch with very limited moment forces. The arches are supported on two V-shaped columns spaced 60 feet apart between the highway edge and the river. The top of each leg of the "V" acts as support for one arch.

The 'relatively light' arches were fabricated in Quebec, Canada, of segmented conventional rolled steel sections. The bottom tension chords doubled as the first supporting steel floor above the highway providing a totally free column space floor.

The Cantor Seinuk Group's second prize NYACE regional award for the innovative structural design of the one million square foot, 34-story building at 450 Lexington, involved the challenge of placing a new building through the center of an existing structure, in this case, the Grand Central Post Office, built in 1906. Because the post office lay entirely on top of solidly packed rail lines, the construction of a conventional foundation was impossible.