Billionaires' Row

All photos DC unless noted

Pictures from a recent trip to New York

Rafael Viñoly's pencil tower as seen from 57th Street. I still like it. Well-resolved facades - direct, elegant, no nonsense, no shame. Looks good --or at least commands attention-- from all over town and the region. Very New York. A crowd of these? Art history teachers always liked San Gimignano, right?  And income disparity is nothing new in New York.

Another plus: it makes Trump Tower look small.

From designboon.com

Each window measures approximately 10 x 10 feet. Interiors by Deborah Berke: http://www.designboom.com/design/deborah-berke-on-the-interior-design-of-432-park-avenue-01-17-2014/

Double-height technical floors are open to lessen wind loads, breezes pass through them. There is an elaborate system of dampers and floor slabs have added mass on upper floors to lower oscillating movement under wind pressure:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/432_Park_Avenue

Portzamparc's tower on West 57th, with its fussy glass skin is, as Viñoly has said, "horrendous".
https://www.dezeen.com/2016/05/13/rafael-vinoly-apologises-432-park-avenue-super-tall-skyscraper-new-york-comments-screw-ups/

Herzog & de Meuron, 56 Leonard Street. Source: Dezeen

 A summary of star-architect designed projects underway in New York from January 2016, including three by Herzog & de Meuron and one by Álvaro Siza:
https://www.dezeen.com/2016/01/29/16-residential-luxury-condos-famous-architects-changing-new-york-construction-boom

An inside look at the tower by Viñoly and Herzog & de Meuron's Leonard Street tower in Tribeca:
Justin Davidson
"Fancy Prisons for Billionaires Are Reshaping the Manhattan Skyline"
New York Magazine,  May 9, 2017
 

Photo: Jeff English

 Bjark Ingel's West 57th Street rental block: I took a stroll with my friend Jeff around the finished building.  The impact from the street is brutal. You see how cheaply it is thrown together. On the back side on West 58th Street the ground floor is full of floor-height mechanical louvers, and on 57th the aluminum-framed storefront glazing isn't much better. Though at least this facade got some sunshine. A design for the distant view - and the media view.

The idea of living there isn't very appealing. Too much like a beehive, you imagine the warren of narrow corridors on every floor, and the little studios and one-bedrooms. Like an over-dimensioned college dorm or, inevitably, decks of a cruise ship.

The location is not attractive except for the river views for the best units, but that's nothing new on Manhattan's formerly industrial and fast-developing Hudson River environs.

More on this project in my blog entry of May 12, 2015



Food truck in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Who needs art?

New Jersey skyline from Battery Park City. A mess. I wonder what walking around Hoboken is like nowadays.

Pier 32

Central Park Reservoir. The last time I was here (1980s?), the fence was chain link. The transformation of Central Park is amazing.

Posing for bridal photos in Central Park's Conservatory Garden. Future husband looks on.

Previous post on my New York visit:
Postcard from New York
04.25.17

Mega Manhattan a la BIG

© Ike Edeani / The Atlantic

The Atlantic reports on the Bjarke Ingels apartment building currently under construction on West 57th Street (link). If it is half as good as the renderings, it's the most exciting new building in New York in years.

(Updated May 5, 2017, see below)

Ingels designs to the scale of modern development, abandoning outdated and outgrown formulas of towers and slabs, big boxes and malls.

The work reminds me of some of the landform buildings of Spanish Organicism, such as Fernando Higueras' Las Salinas Hotel in Lanzarote. A new approach to the megastructure?

Fernando Higueras, Hotel Las Salinas, Lanzarote, 1973-77

Waïf / Tumblr

Aitor Estevez 2011 / Tumblr

Contemporary postcard. Blog Postales Inventados, Dec. 5, 2009

Kirsten Capps

The Great Pyramid of Manhattan

The Atlantic

May 2015

See also: 
HOT TO COLD: an odyssey of architectural adaptation
Exhibition of work of Bjarle Ingeles
National Building Museum
Washington, DC
Until August 30, 2015
Catalog available

BIG: Bjarke Ingels Group

Update May 5, 2017

 

Photo: Jeffrrey English, April 16, 2017

I took a stroll with my friend Jeff around the finished building on a recent trip to New York.  The impact from the street is brutal. You see how cheaply it is thrown together. On the back side on West 58th Street the ground floor is full of floor-height mechanical louvers, and on 57th the aluminum-framed storefront glazing isn't much better. Though at least this facade got some sunshine. Definitely a design for the distant view - and for the media view.

The idea of living there isn't very appealing either. Too much like a beehive, you imagine the warren of narrow corridors on every floor, and the little studios and one-bedrooms. Like an over-dimensioned college dorm or, inevitably, a cruise ship without public spaces.

The location is not attractive either, but that's nothing new on Manhattan's formerly industrial and fast-developing Hudson River environs.

Quote of the Month

"Some people use only the color white, or only 90 degrees. What defines their style is the sum of all their inhibitions. And I think we try to put ourselves in a position where we can be free to choose any weapon of choice in each and every case to match the context, the culture [and] the climate in the best possible way." 

Bjarke Ingels, asked about why his work supposedly doesn't have a recognizable style (although I would disagree). Good one to the solar plexus of uptight American practice.  

Quote from:
"Bjarke Ingels: An "Architect For A Moment Or An Era?"
NPR (National Public Radio), USA
January 03, 2014

I chosse Bjarke Ingels as Architect of the Year in December's Gentleman (Spanish edition).

(More goodbyes: this will be my last collaboration with the magazine, which closes with the January issue.)  

Arquitecto sin fronteras
Bjarke Ingels, Architect of the year
Gentleman, December 2013, page 24

Photo, Dan Bobkoff for NPR