Permasteelisa

Permasteelisa is an architectural engineering, manufacturing, and installation firm based in Vittorio Veneto, Italy with offices throughout the world. The company was founded in 1973 by Massimo Colomban. The firm has worked with many highly acclaimed architects to bring their ideas and computer generated renderings, many now world-renowned buildings, to life. Some of these projects include Norman Foster's Hearst Tower in New York, Frank Gehry's Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Thom Mayne's Federal Building in San Francisco, Yoshio Taniguchi's MoMA in Manhattan, and Richard Cook's One Bryant Park, also in Manhattan. Colloquially referred to as curtain-wall couturiers, the company's team of engineers work to mold ostensibly rigid materials such as glass and metal into organically arching, flowing, and bending exterior skins, sometimes called 'envelopes,' that cover the building's supporting structure. After visiting the firm's 300,000-square-foot factory in Windsor, Connecticut, Karrie Jacobs, writing for Wired Magazine describes the studio, filled with test sections of recognizable facades lining the property from the Hearst Tower, 7 World Trade Center, and a chunk of the new Louis Vuitton store, as "like visiting a New York set on a Hollywood back lot – except instead of creating illusion, Permasteelisa builds reality."

Currently, the firm is working with Frank Gehry on both Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp headquarters in Manhattan's West Chelsea neighborhood, and a 75-story hospital-school-condo tower, known as the Beekman, planned for lower Manhattan.

External links

* [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.12/building.html Wired Article on Permasteelisa (December, 2006)]

* http://www.permasteelisa.it/ Company´s official website