NEW YORK CITY—Brookfield Property Partners took on the dark, heavy, cement-themed, Brutalist building, originally constructed in 1969, at 450 West 33rd St., invested $350 million in a redesign, and brought it into the 21st century. With changes to its physical body as well as a facelift, Brookfield renamed its shiny, newly refashioned building, Five Manhattan West.

Originally designed by the architect firm Davis Brody (now Davis Brody Bond), over the decades the building suffered from architectural drift. In the 1980s, painting the external structure beige, and adding brown metal siding did the building no aesthetic favors.

Brookfield hired REX architects in 2011, with construction beginning in 2014. On Wednesday during a Five Manhattan West tour, REX's founding principal and president, Joshua Prince-Ramus, noted during the building's architectural nadir, it was often called “the elephant's foot” or the “Tyrell Building,” in reference to the headquarters from the movie “Blade Runner.”