305 East 43rd Street

New York

TYPE NEW BUILDING

LOCATION NEW YORK, NY

The future home of the Malaysian Consulate to the United Nations will be only a few doors east of its present address at 313 East 43rd Street in Manhattan. Located between Second Avenue and Tudor City Place, the Consulate is well-situated in Turtle Bay, a neighborhood with a colorful history.

Long before the United Nations came to midtown Manhattan in 1952, the area was lined with slaughterhouses and tenements until the 1920s. During the 19th century, it was known respectively as “Goat Hill”, as goats roamed there; “Dutch Hill”; and finally re-named again in the 1850s as “Corcoran’s Roost”, a shanty Irish community founded by Jimmy Corcoran. Real estate developer, Fred F. French, built Tudor City, a pleasant complex of apartment buildings and gardens, during the 1920s.

Marin Architects was invited to provide conceptual design for the new mixed-use building. The new building includes consulate offices on the first floor, a large event space with a terrace, and residential units on the upper floors. Marin incorporated elements of Islamic decoration into the architecture, particularly in the façade of the front of the structure, allowing light to naturally flow into the building.