Short answers, pulled from the story.
Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) designed the building in the International Style. Whitson Overcash was the partner in charge and Paul Baren was the project manager. Two earlier architects, Morris Lapidus and then Kahn & Jacobs, were hired and dismissed before SOM was announced in September 1971.
The developers wanted to sell primarily to foreign buyers. Most luxury buildings in New York at the time were cooperatives, which could reject applicants for almost any reason. A condominium structure removed that barrier, and brochures were printed in five languages to reach an international audience.
The lower 21 stories are framed in steel while the upper 30 stories are cast concrete. The 22nd floor acts as a transfer truss, connecting columns that do not perfectly align between the two structural systems. This hybrid approach was later described by the general contractor as time-consuming and expensive.
Aristotle Onassis took an apartment at opening. Fashion designer Halston occupied the entire 21st floor until 1984. Billionaire Adnan Khashoggi owned a penthouse with its own pool and ballroom from 1976 to 1993. The Marcos family of the Philippines allegedly owned five units, and musician Roger Waters, actor Nicolas Cage, and the daughters of Maurizio Gucci have all lived there.
Paul Goldberger of The New York Times called the architecture 'oppressively banal' and said it overwhelmed Fifth Avenue 'like an aircraft carrier beside a row of sailboats.' Ada Louise Huxtable, also of The New York Times, called the tower 'about as nondescript as anything that size can be' and described the residential lobby as 'mildly offensive in design and taste.'
Crown Acquisitions purchased the remaining ownership interests in Olympic Tower and three neighboring structures for $652 million in May 2015. In the same transaction, Oxford Properties acquired a majority interest. The four properties together had been valued at about $1 billion at the time of an earlier partial sale in 2012.