Amid the slender needles and elegant spires of the Manhattan skyline, a mountainous lump has risen into view. It climbs in bulky steps, looking like several towers strapped together to form a dark, looming mass. From some angles, it resembles a hulking bar chart; from others, it glowers like a coffin, ready to swallow the delicate Chrysler Building that trembles in its shadow. It is New York’s final boss—a brawny, bronzed behemoth that now lords over the city with a brutish swagger.
Fittingly, this is the new global headquarters of JPMorgan, the world’s biggest bank. The firm boasts a market capitalization of $855 billion, more than Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup combined, and it looks as if it might have swallowed all three inside its tinted glass shell. Last year, for the first time, it made over $1 billion a week in profits. Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon likes to tout its “fortress balance sheet,” and now he has an actual fortress to match—built, he revealed at the opening, at a cost of around $4 billion. He has certainly made his mark. It would be hard to design a more menacing building if you tried.
This is a machine designed to crush the hybrid-working movement once and for all.
The Brobdingnagian structure is the work of Foster + Partners, led by 90-year-old Norman Foster, who is no stranger to designing extravagant bank headquarters. His HSBC tower in Hong Kong was the world’s most expensive building when it opened in 1986, standing as a costly exercise in structural redundancy, with a stack of steel suspension bridges bolted to its facade. It was described by one former partner as “a sledgehammer to crack a nut.” In comparison, the JPMorgan tower is like using a bronze-plated bulldozer to puree a pea.
The sheer amount of structural steel—95,000 tons in total—is staggering for a building that contains just 60 stories in its 423-meter height, half the number of floors you might expect in such a colossus. It uses 60% more steel than the Empire State Building, which is taller and has more square footage. One leading engineer calculated that if the steel were flattened into a belt (30 mm wide by 5 mm thick), it would wrap around the world twice—an apt symbol of the bank’s suffocating global dominance.
If the building is a bullying affront to the skyline, it is just as domineering at street level. It erupts from the sidewalk with gargantuan clusters of steel columns that fan out at each corner, clutching the base of the tower like Nosferatu’s fingers. Positioned to dodge train tracks below, the columns splay out to hold the building’s swollen mass ominously above new strips of privately owned “public space,” where shallow steps and planters seem designed to deter lingering. To the west, on Madison Avenue, the building greets the street with an incongruous cliff face of carved granite boulders. This, it turns out, is an artwork by Maya Lin, who has achieved the impressive feat of making real stone look like fiberglass scenery from Disney’s Frontierland, complete with bits of mossy garnish clinging to the cracks.
On the other side of the block, along Park Avenue, security guards will let you peer through the windows to admire a U.S. flag hanging from a 12-meter-high bronze flagpole at the top of a staircase in the lobby. In another surreal touch, it flutters in an artificial indoor breeze. It is a rare artwork by Lord Foster himself, who intended the flag’s movement to reflect the wind conditions outside. On the calm, still day of my visit, it was billowing at a stiff clip. In this “city within a city,” JPMorgan gets to dictate the weather it wants.
Inside, everything is colossal. Great walls of fluted travertine, sourced from a single quarry in Italy, rise through the 24-meter-high lobby, flanking a grand travertine staircase.A staircase is flanked by two enormous Gerhard Richter paintings. Banks of elevators carry 10,000 workers up into a vertical world of office and wellness, complete with a 19-restaurant food court (offering kitchen-to-desk delivery), a hair salon, meditation rooms, a fitness center, a medical clinic, and a pub. The column-free office floors feature circadian rhythm lighting, creating a carefully controlled environment detached from the outside world—much like a Las Vegas casino—in the hope that employees might never want to leave their desks. Jamie Dimon is determined to bring everyone back to the office full-time, despite staff objections. This building is his machine to crush the hybrid-working movement for good.
The lobby features a surreal touch: a flag that flutters in an artificial breeze.
While the ceilings are lofty (adding significant volume to heat and cool), when images of the new trading floors were posted online, criticism was immediate. Comparisons were made to factory-farmed chickens, Chinese sweatshops, and the very kind of 1950s cubicle offices that open-plan designs were meant to replace. A prominent steel truss zigzagging through the space undercuts the “column-free” claim and raises questions about the building’s structural logic. One engineer who studied the plans noted that adding a few more columns and reducing spans by a couple of meters could have cut the building’s carbon footprint by 20–30%. But then, architect Norman Foster and Dimon wouldn’t have gotten the dramatic, protein-fueled steelwork they wanted, slicing through the building in monumental V-shapes.
Beyond the structural showmanship, they also aimed for nighttime theatrics. Every evening, for miles around, New Yorkers can watch in awe or dismay as the tower’s crown transforms into a glittering spectacle, with twinkling lights bubbling up the facade like an oversized champagne flute. This is the work of artist Leo Villareal, who recently illuminated the bridges of the Thames. At times, the pulsating diamond shape evokes the inescapable Eye of Sauron. At others, it seems to shift into a pulsating, yonic void.
Leaving aside the flashy spire, what makes the tower’s extravagance so frustrating is that it required the unnecessary demolition of a perfectly good office building. The 52-story Union Carbide headquarters, built in 1960 as an acclaimed work by Natalie de Blois at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), stood as a sleek, Miesian monolith. It had even undergone a full renovation and environmental upgrade in 2012—touted by JPMorgan at the time as “the largest green renovation of a headquarters building in the world.” Just seven years later, the same ruthless bank reduced it to the tallest building ever intentionally demolished. It was replaced by a structure almost twice the height, but with only eight additional floors.
The interior offers a touch of Las Vegas casino: a carefully calibrated environment detaches employees from the outside world.
The reason for this, beyond ego and greed, stems from a 2017 zoning change. Landlords in East Midtown had grown concerned that the area was losing its status as the world’s premier business address. Office tenants were flocking west to the shiny new towers of Hudson Yards—a trend known in real estate as the “flight to quality.” In a shortsighted act of self-sabotage, the city’s solution was to let Midtown reshape itself in the image of Hudson Yards’ soulless corporate landscape. Incentives were introduced to encourage demolition, including allowing the sale of unused “air rights” from landmarked buildings within a 78-block area. This meant that historic structures that didn’t use the full building potential of their plots could sell their unused rights to others. JPMorgan acquired 65,000 square meters of these air rights.The development leveraged air rights from Grand Central Station and an additional 5,000 square meters from nearby St. Bartholomew’s Church, enabling it to expand well beyond standard size limits. What few anticipated is the cumulative impact of unleashing development on this scale. The JP Morgan tower is not an isolated case, but merely the first of a new breed of oversized supertalls. An even larger 487-meter, 62-story tower was recently approved at 350 Park Avenue nearby, also designed by Foster+Partners as another cluster of towers bundled together, resembling a bulk discount purchase. SOM secured approval for a similarly massive structure at 175 Park Avenue, set to rise from a base of converging columns like fans meeting at a point. Soon, this part of Midtown will look like a crowd of bloated bankers squeezed into stilettos, casting ever-longer shadows down Manhattan’s canyons and blocking views of the city’s beloved peaks, while crushing a generation of handsome, functional buildings beneath them.
For those observing from afar, the fate of New York may matter little. It is a place long shaped by unchecked capital, where form follows finance and landowners build “as of right,” regardless of public sentiment. But Foster’s bronze giant is a preview of what may soon rise in London, on an even larger scale. Last week, JP Morgan announced it will begin work on a 280,000-square-meter European headquarters in Canary Wharf—by far the largest office building in the capital, containing more space than the Shard, the Gherkin, and the Walkie-Talkie combined. The design, also by Foster+Partners, has only been hinted at with a glimpse of a ground-level corner, showing curved bronze fins wrapping a bulging glass drum. Brace yourselves for what lies beyond the frame.
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs About the Norman Foster Skyscraper Controversy
BeginnerLevel Questions
1 What is this new skyscraper everyone is talking about
Its a proposed supertall skyscraper designed by architect Norman Foster for 350 Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan Critics argue its massive monolithic design clashes with the surrounding historic skyline
2 Why are people calling it an environmental outrage
The term refers to both its visual impact and its physical footprint Critics say its sheer size and energyintensive glassandsteel construction represent an outdated approach that ignores climate concerns and the character of the neighborhood
3 Who is Norman Foster
Lord Norman Foster is a worldrenowned Pritzker Prizewinning British architect known for sleek modern designs like Londons Gherkin and Apple Park in California His involvement usually signals a major highprofile project
4 Whats wrong with building new skyscrapers in New York
Nothing inherently but this one is controversial due to its specific location and design The debate centers on whether new construction should blend with or boldly contrast its context especially in historic districts
Advanced Detailed Questions
5 What are the specific design complaints
Critics describe it as a bulky flattopped monolith that will cast long shadows create wind tunnels and visually overwhelm nearby iconic buildings like the Seagram Building and Lever House which are celebrated for their elegance and proportion
6 Isnt this just NIMBYism
While some opposition is local the criticism includes prominent architects preservationists and urban planners They argue its a question of civic design standards and protecting the public realm not just private views
7 What are the arguments in favor of the tower
Proponents including the developer and some business groups argue it will provide stateoftheart office space generate significant tax revenue create jobs and demonstrate cuttingedge engineering They see it as a symbol of progress and economic vitality
8 How does this relate to New York Citys zoning and approval process
The project is seeking multiple variances for its height and bulk This has sparked debate about whether the citys approval process like the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure adequately considers
