Dror Benshetrit of New York’s Studio Dror is best known for product and interior design, including chairs for Cappellini, cabinets for Boffi, and retail stores for the likes of Tumi and Yigal Azrouël. But long focused on maintaining what he calls a “practice with no boundaries,” Benshetrit has turned increasingly toward large­-scale architectural projects. “I’m always interested in thinking about unconventional ways of looking at set typologies,” he says.

His latest target is the residential skyscraper. Recently, he released three conceptual proposals for towers in New York, each with a radically different structural design. A proposal for 100 Varick Street is based on QuaDror, a triangulated structural system Benshetrit devised almost a decade ago that can be used at any scale, from furniture to buildings. In this case, the building features a steel QuaDror exoskeleton supporting individual glass modules of five stories each. “The geometry, which is similar to some of Norman Foster’s buildings, is super efficient,” Benshetrit says.

The studio’s proposal for 350 Bowery exploits a site that allows unlimited height but limited square footage. To make the most of it, the design elevates the residential units with a forest of columns towering above a retail space at ground level. That gives the building a lighter appearance from the street and better views for occupants. A design for 281 Fifth Avenue, meanwhile, offers similar advantages but hangs individual apartments off soaring concrete shear walls positioned like a pinwheel.

For now, these structural systems are only concepts, but the designer hints that real buildings are coming soon. Benshetrit expects to announce the details of two major architectural commissions later this year.

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