“I-beams are bending like cigarettes in there”

All eyes this week—all eyes that weren’t on the World Cup, that is—were trained on 42^nd Street, in midtown Manhattan, between 2^nd and 3^rd avenues. That’s the site of what’s been called the largest office-to-residential conversion project in the country. Led by Metro Loft and David Werner Real Estate, with Gensler acting as design architect, interior architect, and architect-of-record, the project is set to enlarge the former Pfizer headquarters, made up of two connected buildings on the north side of the block, and turn it into a complex with roughly 1,600 apartments.

The construction site, and then an area around it stretching from 40^th to 45^th streets and 1^st to 3^rd avenues, was closed to public access Tuesday after construction workers noticed that two columns in the larger of the two Pfizer buildings were buckling. In the days since, the restricted area has shrunk—but a partial stop-work order remains in effect at the site, allowing only emergency efforts to shore up the sagging building.

Some observations as of Friday morning:

Gensler has been silent, perhaps content to let Metro Loft CEO Nathan Berman, who has given numerous interviews this week, act as the public face of the crisis. Gensler’s Robert Fuller, who discussed the project in detail with the Architect’s Newspaper last year, did not respond to a request from Punch List for comment.

Speaking of Berman, his tone has been oddly blithe even for somebody you’d expect to downplay the severity of the problem. ““Construction mishaps happen regularly,” he told Bloomberg. “It’s less than 1%, a fraction of the building. It’s frankly not a major issue for us at all.” Berman insists the project will be completed next year, as scheduled.