The New York Times Printing Plant
Like a giant billboard, The New York Times Printing Plant is immediately legible: dynamic volumes, saturated colors, supergraphics and uncommonly employed materials dramatize the newspaper’s entry into the age of automated color printing.
Expanses of glass expose the inner workings of the plant. Views of the presses and papers threading through the building harken back to the paper’s original facility in Brooklyn where the public could view the complete printing, collating and folding operations.
The site is in a bleak industrial area adjacent to a major six-lane expressway and an airport; the new building is highly visible to thousands of passing motorists and air travelers each day – a palette of intensely saturated colors reinforcing the massing strategy and enlivening the long highway façade.
The New York Times Printing Plant stands out as a bold and confident new landmark...the result is an arresting animated building-as-billboard that both affirms and dramatizes its function on the edge of the expressway.
The result of an intense collaboration among the client, the design architect, engineering firms and the construction manager, the design recomposes the typical industrial shed into a series of dynamic building forms, whose volumes are distilled from and dramatize the printing process.
Defined by the machinery within, distinct volumes, which express the paper storage, printing, sorting and distribution elements of the program, are arranged to maximize efficiency of operation, organize the vast site and optimize views from the outside to the printing presses within.
Details
- Year
- 1997
- Location
- Queens, NY
- Size
- 540,000 GSF
- Program
- Press Room to Accommodate Six Presses, Paper Storage, Employee Amenities, Lunch Room
Team
- Ennead Design Team
- Richard Olcott, James S. Polshek, 1930-2022, Joseph Fleischer, Jihyon Kim, David Wallance, David Bushnell, Minsuk Cho, Alexis Kraft, Margaret Kundert, Francelle Lim, Kevin McClurkan, Thomas Wong, Kyle Yang, Lawrence Zeroth
- Architect-of-Record
- Parsons Corporation
- Photography
- Jeff Goldberg/Esto, Lindsay DeCarlo/Ennead Architects
Awards
- 2001
- AIA National Honor Award for Architecture
- 1998
- American Architecture Award, The Chicago Athenaeum
- Award for Exceptional Architectural Design Excellence, AIA/Queens Chapter
- Business Week/Architectural Record Award, AIA/Business Week Magazine
- Design Award, New York Society of Architects
- Honorable Mention, XI Bienal de Arquitectura de Quito
- 1997
- Award for Merit in Design, AIA/New York State
- Award, AIA/New York Chapter
Press
- 2008
- Davidson, Justin. "Architecture: Where the mightiest towers meet the most delicate details" (New York Magazine, 4/14/2008)
- 1998
- Pearson, Clifford A. "The NY Times Breaks Out of the Industrial Box with a New Printing Plant" (Architectural Record, 10/1998)
- Schmertz, Mildred. "New York Times Printing Plant, Flushing, New York" (Architectural Record, 5/1998)
- "The Times Building: It's Fit for Print" (BusinessWeek, 11/2/1998)
- 1997
- "Sign of the Times" (Architecture, 3/1997)
- 1996
- Petrigliano, Frank. "Steel Enables NY Times to Fast Track New Color Printing Plant in Queens" (Metals in Construction, 1996 Fall)
- 1994
- "All the Presses That Fit Will Roll" (Oculus, 10/1994)
- "The Future Is Now" (Oculus, 10/1994)
- 1992
- Finder, Alan. "Times Plans to Build a Plant in Queens" (The New York Times, 11/6/1992)