A facelift into an energy efficient future

The white-brick façade of 201 E. 79th St., a large apart­ment building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, was falling apart back in 2017, and the co-op board had to decide what to do about it. 

The glazing on the bricks that was supposed to repel rain­water was chip­ping off and the bricks them­selves were sepa­rating, all of which allowed water to seep in. The building, which was erected in 1963 and stands 20 stories tall, stretching along Third Avenue to East 80th Street, wouldn’t pass muster with the city’s Façade Inspection & Safety Program, also known as Local Law 11 (LL11).

Then the co-op board heard that another piece of legis­la­tion — the Climate Mobilization Act, which includes Local Law 97 (LL97) — was in the offing, and would require that large build­ings slash their carbon emis­sions or pay hefty fines. The leaky façade, which was driving up energy use and the emis­sions that came with it, suddenly became even more urgent to deal with.

The board’s solu­tion — removing all the old brick, swad­dling the exte­rior in insu­la­tion, and installing a porce­lain rain­screen on top — gave the building a hand­some, new high-perfor­mance façade. This choice neatly posi­tioned the building to meet the require­ments of both LL11 and LL97. 

“We’re ahead of the game,” said Stefan Unger, a long­time resi­dent and co-op board member who oversaw the recladding project.

The Challenge

The façade trou­bles might come as a surprise to those who designed and constructed glazed white-brick build­ings in the 1950s and ​’60s. There are perhaps as many as 200 of the struc­tures, which came to be called ​“white boxes” due to their lack of adorn­ment, or ​“wedding cake” build­ings, thanks to their tiered forms.

Their façades were believed to be durable and weath­er­proof, not to mention self-cleaning. Rain, it was thought, would glide down the bricks’ glazing, keeping the bricks gleaming and inte­riors dry. 

But over time, prob­lems emerged. Water seeped in through mortar joints and became trapped behind the glazing. The water froze and expanded in winter, cracking the glazing and leaving bricks vulner­able to even more water infil­tra­tion. Because the brick was laid against concrete-block struc­tural walls with little air space, zero insu­la­tion, and no water­proofing, water even pene­trated the struc­tural walls. 

This type of damage to build­ings — often uncov­ered during LL11 inspec­tions, which take place every five years — has set off a wave of repairs. And it isn’t only glazed-brick build­ings that may have trouble, experts say.

“Many early cavity-wall build­ings are likely to have or develop similar prob­lems,” said Alissa Bucher, a partner at Rogers Partners, the design archi­tects for the façade redo at 201 E. 79th St. 

The façade dete­ri­o­ra­tion at the building first came to light in 2010, during Cycle 7 of the building’s LL11 inspec­tions. The co-op then spent $1.8 million repointing brick and repairing terraces — $800,000 more than expected. But it was only a tempo­rary fix. 

The Roadmap

During the next LL11 cycle, the building filed for exten­sions, buying time to focus on other prior­i­ties like installing a new chiller. By 2017, however, ​“we knew we had to deal with this elephant in the room,” said Unger, who became co-op board pres­i­dent the following year.

He and other board members initially thought they would rebrick the building, as some white boxes have done — an expen­sive propo­si­tion, but one that seemed wiser than spending millions on repairs every five years with no end in sight. 

But probes of the façade revealed under­lying condi­tions that made the board shift gears. The building, it turned out, didn’t have nearly enough brick ties — the steel parts that fasten the façade to the struc­tural walls — and some of the ties that did exist were rusted, said Ed Rawlings, prin­cipal of Rawlings Architects, archi­tects of record for the reno­va­tion. In addi­tion to the lack of struc­ture to support rebricking, the building also wouldn’t have enough room to add the required insu­la­tion to satisfy upcoming LL97 mandates.

The building, the board decided, needed a completely new façade. And given the pres­sure from LL97, it should be a robust, well-insu­lated, energy-effi­cient one.

2012’s amend­ments to the zoning code helped pave the way. The updated code lets existing build­ings add exte­rior insu­la­tion, allowing them to expand several inches into the street if necessary. 

That leeway would make it possible for 201 E. 79th St. to install a rain­screen system. The rain­screen system is a type of façade that is common in Europe and has grown in popu­larity in the United States and Canada in the last two decades ​“as energy codes become more strin­gent and enforced,” said Denali Jones, tech­nical director of the Rainscreen Association in North America, an industry group. 

The Project

The work on 201 E. 79th St. began in early 2020 and took 28 months. Residents of the building’s 168 apart­ments were able to stay in their homes the whole time, although they did have to contend with the noise and disrup­tion of an active job site. 

First, the contractor, CMA Construction Management, worked with a subcon­tractor to remove the old brick. This exposed the concrete masonry walls which they then repaired and ​“parged,” spreading concrete over them to create a smooth surface. 

Next, workers painted on a water and air barrier to prevent water from infil­trating the struc­tural walls, then attached a grid of squared aluminum tubes to the walls and tucked sections of 4‑inch-thick mineral wool insu­la­tion into the open­ings. Finally, they clipped on custom-designed porce­lain panels manu­fac­tured by Fiandre, an Italian company with a factory in Tennessee.

The project was expen­sive, costing about $30 million. The building paid for it by obtaining a 30-year mort­gage, locking in a low rate of 2.95 percent in 2019. Among other options, the board consid­ered levying an assess­ment on share­holders, as other build­ings have done to pay for capital expenses, but worried that some resi­dents — older ones on fixed incomes, and younger ones without ample savings — would not be able to afford $100,000 to $150,000 per apart­ment. Instead, the board raised the monthly main­te­nance by 27 percent, starting in 2020.

It was a signif­i­cant increase, but the building’s main­te­nance had been below the median for the area before the project, Unger said. The increase put the main­te­nance over the median temporarily, but today, they’re right back at it again, he said. 

Now, with its new façade, the building is poised to sail through at least the next several LL11 cycles. 

As for LL97, the façade and other upgrades the co-op under­took should help the building easily meet the law’s require­ment for build­ings to reduce carbon emis­sions by 40 percent by 2030 compared with 2005 levels, putting 201 E. 79th St. in compli­ance at least through 2034. 

Although defin­i­tive data on energy use and carbon emis­sions has not yet been compiled, an analysis by Dagher Engineering suggests that both measures have decreased post-retrofit. The amount of energy needed for façade-related heating and cooling is expected to have declined from 10,144 MBTU (and 455 metric tons of carbon dioxide) to a projected 6,397 MBTU (and 285 metric tons) — a drop of about 37 percent for both measures. 

The co-op board expects the building’s current energy-effi­ciency grade of D to improve after its next energy eval­u­a­tion. And the cost of running the building has remained constant despite multiple Consolidated Edison rate increases, Unger said. The temper­a­ture in the building is more even-keeled, too.

For all the project’s success, the board did make one mistake, Unger admits: Instead of replacing all the building’s old, drafty windows with new high-perfor­mance ones as part of the façade under­taking, it gave share­holders the option of purchasing new windows. While more than 60 percent did, many old windows remain — at least for now. 

The board recently adopted a rule requiring that share­holders install new windows when they under­take apart­ment reno­va­tions, which will even­tu­ally push the building to become even more energy effi­cient than it is today. 

“By just changing the windows, it’ll prob­ably bring us further into compli­ance,” Unger said.

The building’s contem­po­rary new look is also expected to enhance the value of apart­ments. Already it’s making an impres­sion on passers-by. After the scaf­folding came down, Unger saw long­time neigh­bor­hood resi­dents stop in their tracks in front of the building. Once he was close enough to hear someone ask: ​“Where did that building come from?”