262 Fifth Avenue

At 860 feet tall and barely 2,200 square feet at its base, 262 Fifth Avenue is a building that shouldn't work. Designed by Moscow-based Meganom in their first American project, with interiors by Danish studio Norm Architects, the NoMad tower is among the slenderest in the city, its mechanical core pushed to one side and expressed on the exterior so that all 26 residences read as column-free full floors and duplexes. Clad in thousands of custom aluminum "bricks" with photovoltaic panels wrapping the core and Passive House principles throughout, it folds the neighboring 12-story limestone facade at 260 Fifth Avenue into its base, fusing prewar Manhattan with something entirely new. It has not been without debate, drawing criticism for altering long-held sightlines to the Empire State Building and reopening questions about how the city regulates height, though the engineering behind it remains among the most ambitious in New York.