The integration of terraced plazas into mixed-use building design represents a significant shift in how urban architecture engages with public life. The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) South tower in New York’s cultural district exemplifies this approach, using a porous ground-level design and stepped plaza to draw pedestrians into a previously underused section of the city. At the core of this project lies an innovative approach to building envelope materials, particularly the use of crystallized glass ceramic panels for the podium facade. This article examines the design strategies, material specifications, and construction methods that made BAM South a landmark project, and considers how building professionals can apply these lessons to their own mixed-use developments.
The Design Philosophy Behind the Terraced Plaza
The BAM South tower, designed by Ten Arquitectos with executive architect Ismael Leyva, rises 32 stories in the heart of Brooklyn’s cultural district. Rather than treating the building as a vertical extrusion from a flat sidewalk, the team conceived the base as an extension of the public realm. A stepped plaza follows the building’s form, rising from street level to connect pedestrians with a 50,000-square-foot cultural space on the lower floors. This space houses a museum, dance studio, public library branch, and room for BAM cinema expansion.
Porous Ground Floor Design
The key principle driving the design is porosity. Instead of a hard building wall at the sidewalk edge, the ground floor provides multiple entry points into retail areas, creating a seamless flow between street and interior. The stepped plaza functions as both circulation route and outdoor event space, allowing for programming that draws people upward toward the cultural amenities above. This approach contrasts with the traditional model of separating commercial and cultural uses behind distinct entrances.
Mixed-Use Programming Strategy
The tower’s mixed-use program distributes functions vertically with careful attention to interaction patterns:
- Ground level: Retail and public entries, creating street-level activity and visual interest
- Lower floors (2 through 5): Cultural spaces including museum, dance studio, library, and cinema expansion
- Upper floors: Rental apartments, with 20 percent designated as affordable housing
This stacking of uses creates a building that serves the full spectrum of community needs, from daily retail to cultural enrichment to permanent residence. The terraced plaza serves as the connective tissue that binds these uses together, inviting casual passersby to explore upward into the cultural zone.
Foot Traffic and Urban Activation
BAM South generates a high volume of pedestrian traffic on and around its grounds. The design team recognized that any cladding material selected for the building’s base would need exceptional durability to withstand constant human contact, exposure to New York’s freeze-thaw cycles, and the risk of graffiti and staining. These practical considerations shaped every material decision for the podium facade.
Crystallized Glass Ceramic Panels: Material Properties and Performance
The defining material of BAM South’s podium is the crystallized glass ceramic panel. The project uses 15,000 square feet of 5/8-inch (15 mm) white crystallized glass ceramic panels, installed as an open-joint rainscreen system. This material choice bridges the aesthetic gap between natural stone and engineered glass, offering properties that benefit both designers and building owners.
Physical and Mechanical Properties
| Property | Characteristic | Benefit for Building Envelope |
|---|---|---|
| Thermal expansion rate | Low | Minimal dimensional change with temperature swings; reduces stress in panel joints and anchors |
| Weight compared to natural stone | Lighter | Reduces structural loading on the podium frame; easier and safer to handle during installation |
| Strength relative to thickness | Higher strength-to-thickness ratio | Allows thinner panels (15 mm) while maintaining impact resistance |
| Stain and pollution resistance | High | Non-porous surface resists absorption of airborne pollutants; easier to clean |
| Graffiti resistance | High | Dense surface prevents paint and marker from bonding; most graffiti can be wiped off |
| Color consistency | Uniform throughout | Unlike natural stone, color does not vary between batches; replacement panels match originals |
Comparison with Natural Stone Cladding
Crystallized glass ceramic panels offer several advantages over traditional stone cladding for high-traffic urban applications. Natural stone, while beautiful, is porous and susceptible to staining from urban pollutants, bird droppings, and oils from human contact. Sealing is required periodically and degrades over time. Glass ceramic panels, by contrast, have a near-zero absorption rate that eliminates staining at the material level rather than relying on surface treatments.
The lower weight of glass ceramic panels also simplifies the support structure. At 15 mm thickness, these panels can be installed using standard rainscreen anchoring systems without the heavy-gauge subframe required for stone panels of equivalent durability. This reduces both material costs and installation time, while also lowering the dead load on the building structure.
Thermal Performance and the Rainscreen System
The panels were installed over a 15 mm reveal, open-joint rainscreen using a back-cut anchor mounted on an engineered strut support system. This configuration provides several performance benefits:
- Pressure equalization behind the cladding, preventing moisture drive-through
- A continuous drainage plane that removes any water that penetrates the panel joints
- Ventilation that allows the panel cavity to dry completely between wetting events
- Thermal break potential where the support system is designed to minimize heat transfer through the assembly
The open-joint rainscreen is particularly well-suited to crystallized glass ceramic panels because the material’s non-porous surface ensures that any water on the panel face sheets off without absorption, and the drained cavity behind handles incidental moisture without compromising the insulation layer.
BIM Integration and Facade Engineering
The complexity of the BAM South podium facade demanded advanced digital modeling. The engineering team, in partnership with the design team, modeled and constructed the podium facade using building information modeling (BIM) software. This approach was essential given the faceted geometry of the panel layout and the integration of multiple systems within the envelope assembly.
Panel Geometry and Layout Coordination
The crystallized glass ceramic panel facade is not a simple flat plane. The stepped plaza geometry and the building’s massing create a three-dimensional cladding surface with multiple facet orientations. BIM allowed the design team to:
- Model each panel individually, accounting for its exact position and orientation in three-dimensional space
- Coordinate anchor point locations with the underlying structural support system
- Generate accurate shop drawings directly from the model, eliminating manual take-off errors
- Simulate panel installation sequences to identify potential conflicts with scaffolding and access equipment
- Verify thermal and moisture performance of the assembly at critical junctions, especially where the facade meets the stepped plaza surfaces
Integration with Other Trades
The rainscreen facade intersects with numerous other building systems at the podium level. BIM coordination ensured that the facade anchors did not conflict with embedded conduit, structural steel reinforcement, or plumbing rough-ins. This level of coordination was particularly important at the ground floor, where the retail entrances and plaza steps create complex interface conditions between the cladding, glazing, and hardscape elements. For professionals working on translucent wall facade systems for community-centered buildings, the BIM-driven approach at BAM South offers a proven workflow for managing geometric complexity.
Practical Applications for Building Professionals
The lessons from BAM South extend well beyond this single project. Building professionals working on mixed-use developments, civic buildings, or any project with a significant public face can apply several of the strategies demonstrated by Ten Arquitectos and their engineering team.
Selecting Cladding Materials for High-Traffic Urban Projects
When evaluating cladding materials for buildings that will experience heavy pedestrian traffic and urban environmental exposure, consider these criteria:
- Stain resistance: Materials with non-porous surfaces require less maintenance and retain their appearance longer in urban settings
- Graffiti removal compatibility: Dense surfaces that allow solvent-free cleaning reduce long-term maintenance costs
- Thermal compatibility with substrate: Low thermal expansion materials place less stress on anchors and support systems, especially in climates with wide temperature swings
- Weight relative to structural capacity: Lighter panels allow thinner support frames and reduce foundation loads
- Long-term availability: Materials with consistent color and texture across production runs simplify future repairs and expansions
The selection of crystallized glass ceramic panels at BAM South demonstrates each of these criteria in practice. For projects that also prioritize environmental performance, specifying bird-friendly low-emissivity glass for building envelopes can complement the rainscreen cladding with enhanced thermal and ecological performance.
Rainscreen System Design for Mixed-Use Podiums
Podium-level rainscreen cladding in mixed-use buildings must address several performance requirements simultaneously. The open-joint rainscreen approach used at BAM South provides a versatile solution. Key design decisions include:
- Joint width: 15 mm reveals allow adequate drainage while maintaining visual continuity across panel fields
- Anchor type: Back-cut anchors provide a clean face with no visible clips or fasteners, supporting the modern aesthetic
- Support structure: Engineered strut systems distribute wind loads and cladding weight to the primary structure while accommodating thermal movement
- Air barrier continuity: The airtight layer behind the rainscreen must be continuous at all transitions, including at the plaza-step interfaces where the cladding changes plane
Applying BIM to Facade Delivery
The BIM workflow used at BAM South is replicable on projects of any scale. The essential elements include a shared model environment where the architect, facade engineer, and general contractor coordinate in real time; a panel-by-panel modeling approach that captures every unique geometry; and a rigorous clash detection protocol that catches conflicts before they reach the field. For building teams that are implementing sustainable design targets alongside complex facades, integrating BIM with LEED Zero certification and net-zero carbon building design standards creates a unified digital workflow from design through commissioning.
Urban Revitalization through Design
Perhaps the most important lesson from BAM South is that building materials and design strategies serve a larger urban purpose. The terraced plaza is not merely an architectural gesture but a functional tool for revitalizing an underused district. By drawing pedestrians upward from the sidewalk, the building activates the cultural spaces on its lower floors, increases foot traffic for ground-floor retail, and creates a sense of place that benefits the entire neighborhood. This kind of urban thinking, combined with material innovation and digital fabrication methods, points the way forward for mixed-use construction in cities worldwide. Projects involving bio-inspired high-rise design for tropical residential construction share this same emphasis on contextual responsiveness and material performance as drivers of architectural quality.
The combination of a stepped plaza at grade, a rainscreen facade using advanced materials at the podium, and rigorous BIM-driven engineering throughout demonstrates how building professionals can deliver projects that are durable, beautiful, and socially impactful. For any team planning a mixed-use urban building, the strategies employed at BAM South offer a proven template worth studying.