Deutsche Bank Center

Apr 25

Architect: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Installer: Advanced Systems Inc & W&W Glass
Location: New York, New York

Formerly the Time Warner Center, this facade is one of the largest cable net walls in the world at 130’. Each cable is pre-tensioned to very high forces to limit the maximum wall deflection to L/50. For this wall geometry that converts to +/-3’ or a total amplitude of +/-6’. As with all cable-net structures, considerable planning went into designing the boundary structure to accommodate the high cable forces. This project also developed the next generation entrance portals: the vertical cables run through hollow stainless steel columns and anchor to the floor slab below. The lower lateral cable loads at the top of the entrance portal were resisted by moment connections at the column bases. (First generation cable net portals actually had an outer portal that rotated with the cable net facade and an inner portal that was fixed to the floor; a gasketed joint achieved weather integrity between the two portal frames.) Unique to the DBC project is that a 45 ton header truss actually supports two cable net walls: the main exterior wall and an angled interior wall that serves as the end wall of the Jazz at Lincoln Center performance hall. To compensate for the impact of the outer wall’s loads on the truss’s deflection springs were incorporated into the angled cable wall’s anchors to assure constant tension values in the cables.