With its atypical floor plates, many cantilevered floors and irregular balcony spacing and locations, 56 Leonard has been dubbed the Jenga building, since it resembles the children’s tower block game.
Seeking to provide education, recreation and training services to residents of Newark, the city’s housing authority wanted a facility where people could gather, exercise and boost skills in a rapidly transforming digital-based economy.
The 650,000-sq-ft Bristol-Myers Squibb Princeton Pike project sought to achieve LEED Gold certification by putting in place several unique design solutions that include a central ice storage plant, a supply air grid that allows for the lowest horsepower fan operation for each of its four buildings, charging stations, a roof-mounted photovoltaic array system, a daylight harvesting control system for LED light fixtures and groundwater collection for the cooling tower.