Foster takes Manhattan: a tower designed for strength and economy animates the Manhattan skyline.

Norman Foster has made his long-delayed New York debut with a prismatic glass office tower that enlivens the congested skyline of mid Manhattan and reunites the scattered offices of the Hearst publishing corporation. The design was scheduled for presentation on 12 September 2001, and it might have fallen by the wayside--as did the firm's 'kissing towers' at Ground Zero, and their plans to remodel the concert hall at Lincoln Center. But Hearst was determined to bring its magazines under one roof and outshine its rival, Gonde Nast, which built a less distinguished tower on Times Square. The commission allowed Foster to demonstrate his skill in matching audacious engineering to a historical structure: the six-storey block that Joseph Urban built on the eve of the Great Depression. It was designed as a plinth that would support a tower, and two alternative schemes were proposed by other architects, but never realised.

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Urban's precast-stone building, with its bizarre mix of Secession and Art Deco detail, is landmarked and cannot be changed. The Austrian-born architect also designed the rigorous New School for Social Research but William Randolph Hearst (the model for Welles' Citizen Kane) was more impressed by his fanciful stage sets. Foster gutted the podium and raised the 36-storey tower on columns that rise just above the parapet. The balance of height and width was determined by the zoning-allowance of 79 500sqm of new floor space. The architects found that a four-storey diagrid with 4m ceilings provided greater strength (a mandate after 9/11), and required 20 per cent less steel than the rectilinear tower with a moment frame they had first proposed. The structural cage is self-supporting, requiring no corner or interior columns, and the chamfered corners open up diagonal views across the street grid to the Hudson, Midtown, and Central Park. The triangular window frames of linen-patterned stainless steel incorporate tiny light wedges to illuminate the facade, and the geometry amplifies the chevrons on the urns atop the fluted columns that rise above the entrances.

The hollowed-out podium retains its punched window openings and now serves as a skylit atrium. A glass ceiling and clerestory define the separation between the two structures. Escalators run diagonally up from the reception area through a cascade of recycled water running over a mashrabiya of ribbed glass blocks. The sound is a refreshing surprise for visitors and the water is chilled to cool air in summer. James Carpenter designed the glass structure and Richard Long created an artwork of Hudson River mud on the expansive white wall at the upper-level lobby, which extends around the perimeter and houses the 400-seat staff cafeteria. Gensler Associates collaborated on the 32 floors of offices and, since 80 per cent of the staff are women, they employed grace notes like the glass-laminated fabric walls in the lift lobbies, alongside exposed structural beams. Cellular offices for editors are ranged along the north and south sides, leaving the sides and corners open. The upper level is a conference/banquet area that rises three storeys around the service core. Creating an angled blind that would rise to fill a window was one of many challenges the architects had to master in realising this unique design. More importantly, the building is the first in New York to be given a gold rating under the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) programme.

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