The Egg

The Egg – named for its iconic design – is the Empire State Plaza’s Center for the Performing Arts. The A|r Vertical Transportation studio was invited to provide complete elevator modernization for the facility. The unique building required six custom-designed elevators, including four circular passenger elevators, a hydraulic platform lift that services six floors, and a one-of-a-kind hydraulic stage lift with a travel distance of over 100 feet.

Some fun facts about this historic building and our elevator modernization:

Although the “stem” holding up the Egg seems to rest on the platform of the sidewalk, it actually anchors the building by going down six stories into the ground.
There are virtually no straight lines throughout the entire building construction (including our rounded elevators!)
The Egg’s stage lift is adaptable to the size of the performance. For larger equipment and set designs, the opening height can be increased to over 22 feet.

Vertical Transportation

Early in our firm’s history, we understood the value of a dedicated vertical transportation (VT) design studio to seamlessly blend VT and architectural design into our projects.

Making Place

There is no placemaking without people. As we move together toward a post-covid era, what new factors will impact our sense of place? The tools of placemaking were important before, and now they are crucial to how we experience our environment.

Understanding Place

One of the earliest steps in our design process is illustrating the forces that will affect a future design. It is imperative for us to understand how a new project will interact with its surroundings, make us feel, appear throughout the season, and accommodate the needs of future occupants.