NYC Architecture and Development

[kz1000ps]

^ Glad you like! Here's a random bunch from March and April.

From my roof

Quick detour to the NY Auto Show because cars rule

 

[kz1000ps]

And late April up to now:

I really love how Gotham-y this old hospital is

Cheers from the Hudson

 

[Matthew]

The number of traffic lights in that penultimate picture seems like it would give many Bostonians conniptions.

 

[CSTH]

The number of traffic lights in that penultimate picture seems like it would give many Bostonians conniptions.

In Boston they'd all be different colors...

 

[lexicon506]

I love 432 Park. And I know a lot of people probably don't agree.

It makes such a powerful, confident statement as a skyscraper, unabashedly shooting into the sky and not giving a crap about what anyone thinks. Also a big fan of its simple, no-frills geometry--refreshingly elegant.

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

I love 432 Park. And I know a lot of people probably don't agree.

It's not so much about the design (although that leaves much to be desired) that people hate. It's that it is the total embodiment of how the city has become a luxury item for the 1% (really the top 1% of the 1%). When it opens the building is going to be empty most of the time as the owners of these units use it as an investment or a status symbol, right at a time when the middle class and artists are being pushed out due to rapidly rising costs of living. We are all down here struggling and here is this giant white billionaire's cock towering over us. That's where the hate is.

 

[BarbaricManchurian]

The new Calatrava building looks incredible. Love that NYC goes for the very best.

 

[kz1000ps]

432 Park... someone somewhere said it looks like a smoke stack and I've been unable to shake that image since.

It's OK if you catch it at a 45-degree angle where it has a bit more girth -- then it starts to make sense on the skyline. But from most angles, it reads more as a purely utilitarian object--aka a smoke stack--which in turn trivializes the rest of the skyline for me -- all the sudden the Empire State Building isn't some proud art deco giant but instead is another smoke stack, albeit one with a touch of sculpting. One57, Citicorp Tower and Bloomberg Tower? Just more smoke stacks.

Or then you catch it at a totally random time, for instance far out in Queens, and it really looks like a generic industrial object.

Another friend who smokes like a smoke stack called it "the cigarette," so there's that also, ha.

 

[davem]

Yeah, it really takes away from the ESB... I don't know how I feel about that.

Also amazing is I apparently haven't been back home in a while, last time I was in the city nothing was that tall in midtown.

 

[kz1000ps]

Yeah, it really takes away from the ESB

Ding ding ding. Seeing the ESB diminished does not feel right inside at all. And not that I've turned anti-development, but seeing what's about to usurp it--piggy bank penises--doesn't exactly leave me with fuzzy feelings for the future.

Oh well, guess it's time to hang things up and become a crotchety old fart.

 

[davem]

At least it appears it's far enough away it won't infringe on my favorite surprise skyline sighting site: RT-17 in Jersey

^not my image

 

[Matthew]

Puke, Rt 17. One of my least favorite stroads.

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

A terrible road with a killer view.

 

[FK4]

Yeah, it really takes away from the ESB... I don't know how I feel about that.

Also amazing is I apparently haven't been back home in a while, last time I was in the city nothing was that tall in midtown.

yea - its pretty shocking now driving into the city and having the first thing you notice being 432 park and not the empire state blg's spire... although i like the simple structure of 432, that one fact really is something i dont like... the grandest of all skyscrapers is now just not that big a deal... get used to it, there's 2 or 3 more supertall rich condo towers coming right along in the same area.

****

kz, where is this

 

[datadyne007]

Stephen Holl wrote the article we've all been waiting for...

Stephen Holl on the rash of "profane" slim towers in NYC

"In New York, architecture with a sense of social purpose is becoming increasingly rare"

Opinion: as super-thin residential towers for the super-rich sprout up across Manhattan, inequality has begun to take architectural form, writes leading US architect Steven Holl.

On Saturday, construction work began on our Hunters Point Community Library, a project that promises to be a little engine of public space. But in New York, architecture with a sense of social purpose is becoming increasingly rare...

...

Full article: http://www.dezeen.com/2015/05/22/opinion-steven-holl-new-york-skyscrapers-profane/

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

Basically what I said before.

 

[lexicon506]

Stephen Holl wrote the article we've all been waiting for...

"Inequality has begun to take architectural form" ... Hahaha good one Steven Holl, ever heard of the Great Pyramids of Giza? Architecture and inequality go hand in hand, always have and always will.

Let's step back for a second. The fact that we all grovel at the feet of the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building while lamenting that 432 Park and co. are monuments to the 1% strikes me as very hypocritical. What is the ESB if not a monument to how the 1% made their money? When have skyscrapers ever been anything other than a symbol of wealth and privilege that Average Joe will likely never achieve? Throwing in a public observation deck at $25 a pop does not qualify as having a "sense of social purpose."

 

[CSTH]

^ Agreed, the logic in the piece seems a little fuzzy, though i sympathize with the sentiment

If you replace 'inequality' with 'commodification' - the increased salience of the 'financial asset' function of the built environment - then you're on to something. But inequality is too broad for the purposes he's putting it to here.

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

Let's step back for a second. The fact that we all grovel at the feet of the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building while lamenting that 432 Park and co. are monuments to the 1% strikes me as very hypocritical. What is the ESB if not a monument to how the 1% made their money? When have skyscrapers ever been anything other than a symbol of wealth and privilege that Average Joe will likely never achieve? Throwing in a public observation deck at $25 a pop does not qualify as having a "sense of social purpose."

He points this out in the article:

If we fast forward to Manhattan in 1934 and buildings like the Rockefeller Center, thin and vertical architecture marked great public urban space; the Empire State Building's vertical dominance offered a public observatory deck.

Also the average Joe has the ability to at least work in these office buildings; most you can even enjoy their lobbies if you don't work there. They were towers that improved the urban fabric as well; you don't need to go to the Top of the Rock to enjoy Rock Center. The new condo towers have nothing for the average person and that is exactly what the 1% want.

While towers are always a trophy to money and vanity these new breed of condos act more like glass castles rather than places where different people can come and interact, i.e. and office tower or even a hotel.

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

I just want to state that I personally don't hate these buildings as much as others. What I would like is some sort of tax on them, as opposed to tax breaks for them, which could then be put toward subsidizing affordable housing. You can complain that they are too tall or ugly but that isn't a big deal. The big deal is that they are just mostly just empty parking spots for billionaires dollars. Someone in the real estate lobby is pressuring the city not to tax these developments but given how cheap NYC real estate is globally a tax wouldn't do much to dissuade buyers.