The tower is a project that challenges the lineage of architectural unity and proportion. It wants to be iconographic, yet standardized, monumental, yet functional, monolithic, yet discretized.  In its evolution, we have seen the type radically transformed in exterior expression, yet lethargic in its interior progression of the open floor plan, column grids that adorn the needs of the workplace.  We prefer the later, the slow, meticulous alteration of a type, adapting as needed, pushing the spatial limits through its inherited architectural assemblage. New York has a long history of these towers, which over-scaled palazzi and stretched temples. Triumphal in their conquest to perfect Antiquity as the symbol of a new empire, these towers used cast iron and terracotta entablatures copied from their Ancestors, columns and pediments that spoke the language of the Ancients, unashamedly repurposing them for the greatest city on Earth. A plastic use of the tropes of unprecedented magnitude.

Somewhere along the line, textured Corinthian columns were replaced by sleek I-beams, bas-reliefs now flat reflections of neighboring buildings on glossy glass panels. The reference was abandoned in favor of an architecture of convenience and consumption.  The Parthenon Tower proposes an alternative. Its heavy, rusticated presence of columns and thick slabs is felt at the city level, but fades to almost a drawing at its peak. We see the column grid not as a generic deployment of structure, but as a thoughtful progression from exterior structure to interior organization. Greek temples used the column not only to carry their trabeated canopies, but as a means of creating enclosure.  The columns of their interior worked to form a variety of spaces that were informed by the sizing and spacing of the columns.

Parthenon Tower tries to replicate this, through stacked temple plans, all using the column to push inward, creating moments of various densities and programmatic opportunity, allowing flexibility, without ambiguity. The column is a device to differentiate and sometimes even inhabit. At its core, they merge, creating complete enclosure for the necessities of this office temple. Parthenon tower is both iconic, pushing against the generic, non-referential high-rise of the 21st Century, yet entirely rational, an interior typological evolution.