Design of the United Nations Headquarters in NYC Term Paper

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UN Headquarters: Formal Analysis

Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer assisted in the design of the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York City with a number of other celebrated architects. He along with Le Corbusier of France served as the main designers of the building.

15 immediate observations that can be made upon first seeing the UN Headquarters are:

1. The main high rise is rectangular, like a giant 2x6.

2. It shines with so much glass.

3. It has flat building structures at the base that lead up to it.

4. The street side base structure curves inward and is lined with flags of the world’s nations.

5. The main structure that rises up has its wide flat face pointed out to sea.

6. The building itself is not deep in terms of depth on the sides.

7. It is longer than it is wide and higher than it is long.

8. It resembles a shiny, glass monolith.

9. It has a forbidding, yet alluring character to it.

10. In terms of scale, it is smaller than the high rises behind it.

11. Its materials are glass, concrete and steel.

12. Its condition is very good.
13. Its composition is flat and narrow.

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14. Its shape is like a monolith.

15. In terms of physical context, it hugs the shoreline and presents itself like a gatekeeper to the world for the rest of the NYC skyline.

The building itself resembles a giant monolith—like the ominous black monolith used by Stanley Kubrick in his film 2001: A Space Odyssey—the object that mysteriously advances human development through the ages. It is tall, rectangular wider than it is deep, and though it has windows and a great deal of glass, its overall shape is very much monolithic and somewhat intimidating.

At the base of the UN headquarters sits a flat, oblong stretch of building that goes out from the monolithic structure above it so that if one were to stand away from the headquarters and look down at the total structure, it might appear as a fat “L”-shaped building, with the tall main structure rising upwards and its flat base extending outwards at only a few stories in height but at a stretch of distance that makes it almost as long as the main structure is high.

While the main structure that extends so many stories into the sky has a flat surface on all four sides, with windows stretching endlessly from.....

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