Fun fact about the UN building in New York: it’s considered the very first glass skyscraper in the world, where most of the façade is made entirely of glass.
Even though a star-studded team of architects worked on it (Oscar Niemeyer, Le Corbusier, Wallace Harrison, and others), it was Le Corbusier who managed to turn an already existing idea into a real, built structure — a 39-story building standing 154 meters tall.
Of course, glass towers had already existed on paper, and there were some real buildings too, but on a much smaller scale. It was the French architect who minimized the structural beams on the façade, creating a true dominance of glass, which was revolutionary for 1952.
The challenge of such a design wasn’t just about the then-new technology of producing façade glass panels that had to bear loads and be securely mounted while handling temperature changes and deformation.
One of the main challenges was solar heat gain and air conditioning on such a massive scale (construction began in the late 1940s). That’s why the UN building has a slightly greenish tint, it comes from a special heat-reflective coating with iron oxide, which helps reduce infrared radiation.
Unfortunately, the technology was still in its early stages, so UN staff still complained about heat and blinding light. Blinds and curtains helped somewhat, though they disrupted the clean visual pattern of the glass façade. In addition, the original single-pane glass had poor insulation, leading to significant energy loss in winter.
Despite these drawbacks, the glass façade of the UN Secretariat proved that glass skyscrapers were possible. In the following decades, curtain wall systems became the global standard for office buildings, shaping the modernist International Style we all know, perhaps a bit too well.
Six years later, in 1958, the architectural duo Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson completed the legendary Seagram Building, often considered the first office building in the world to feature floor-to-ceiling windows.
📍UN Headquarters, New York / 405 E 45th St, New York, NY 10017
Tour of the United Nations Headquarters in New York:
