Archinect - News

Ai Weiwei’s minimalist New York apartment lists for $2 million

2023-03-22T14:58:00-04:00

Looking for the ultimate artist’s flat, perhaps one owned by an internationally renowned master? Look no further than this high-floor condo in the Loft 25 building in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood. The 1,400-square-foot minimalist-minded pied-à-terre is owned by Chinese contemporary artist, documentarian, and activist Ai Weiwei.

As ARTnews reported, the loft was staged with Weiwei’s 1983 Dancers painting and three Marble Chair sculptures from 2008, the same year he moved to the 79-unit building located at 420 W. 25th Street in Chelsea. The 1-bed, 2-bathroom apartment features 12-foot ceilings and appliances made by Liebherr and Bosch, among others. Weiwei originally purchased the property for $1.7 million.

Weiwei’s Upstate Tsai Residence design also sold recently for $5 million. He will have to hope for a better experience with Compass, the real estate firm responsible for the listing, after battling a German company over the misuse of his Berlin apartment that was for sale much of last year.

All images courtesy of Compass

Meanwhile, his largest-ever Lego work just went on view at MoMA. Weiwei is currently between his homes in Cambridge, England; and rural Alentejo, Portugal, where the artist reportedly feels most comfortable.

All images courtesy of Compass

All images courtesy o...

A highly-flexible Manhattan apartment, designed by Martin Hopp

2022-06-06T18:38:00-04:00

New York City-based architecture firm Martin Hopp has completed the renovation of a 720-square-foot basement in Manhattan into a flexible and hyper-functional living and working space.

Located in a 1930s building in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, the garden-level apartment was in need of major structural repairs. Its original layout and features made by being below grade gave the apartment a subterranean feel that limited natural daylight. Thus, the renovation aimed to introduce more “light, joy, and purpose” into the space.

Image: Fei Liu

As per the architects: “The new apartment uses a flexible targeted design, elevates simple materials, and carefully-proportioned spaces to raise the residents' quality of life.” Adaptable features including folding and pivoting doors, a rotating table, counter-balanced spring mechanisms, and multiple forms of storage enhance the flexibility of the space.

Image: Fei Liu

A palette of white materials and white oak paneling establish a sense of br...

A pedestrianized train tunnel will anchor COOKFOX's renovated and expanded Terminal Warehouse in New York

2020-01-31T14:08:00-05:00

COOKFOX Architects and developers L & L Holding Company and Normandy Real Estate Partners have been granted approval by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission for a wide ranging restoration and expansion of the historic Terminal Warehouse in New York City's Chelsea district. The architects will restore and build upon an existing former commercial distribution structure that once served as a vital node between Hudson River-based mercantile traffic and New York City.

Top: A frontal view of the restored warehouse. Bottom: Street level view of the warehouse with the office addition visible at the top of the structure. Images courtesy of COOKFOX.

The structure is marked on its ground level by a 670-foot-long tunnel that was once used by trains that directly connected nearby docks with the commercial facilities, New York YIMBY reports. In the latest iteration of the building, the former train tunnel will become a pedestrian shopping street filled with public seating and comme...

New plans suggest changes to upcoming Zaha Hadid-designed Manhattan tower

2019-06-17T13:59:00-04:00

The final New York City building to be designed by the late architect Zaha Hadid may be changing course, according to plans filed with the city’s Department of Buildings. The structure at 220 11th Avenue, developed by Moinian Group, was first announced back in 2016, just months after Hadid’s untimely death at the age of 65.

Revised permit filings indicate a change from the originally proposed eleven-story mixed-use building to a nine-story commercial structure in West Chelsea.

New York YIMBY reports that STUDIOS Architecture is listed as the architect of record.

New photos reveal the beauty of Zaha Hadid Architects' completed 520 West 28th Street facade

2018-03-15T14:34:00-04:00

Zaha Hadid Architects have released new Hufton+Crow photographs of the recently completed 520 West 28th Street development—and they're pretty stunning.

Standing smack adjacent to Manhattan's famed High Line, the 11-story residential mid-rise is certainly a formidable first project in New York City for ZHA. Since we published initial renderings back in 2013, readers speculated about the quality of the highly animated facade, and these new photographs allow a good glimpse of the impressive workmanship that went into hand-brushing and hand-tinting the curvy steel exterior.

The facade reveals the 21 interlaced split levels in a dramatic fashion, echoing the multiple layers of civic space on 28th Street and the High Line, according to the architects.

The list of amenities and other luxury goodies includes Boffi kitchens by Zaha Hadid Design, private elevator lobbies, sculpture garden, 25-yard sky-...

Bjarke Ingels reveals new rendering for West Chelsea hotel/condo project, The Eleventh

2018-03-08T17:43:00-05:00

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) has released new design details and a teaser site for its first New York condominium and hotel project at 76 Eleventh Avenue near the High Line in West Chelsea. Known as “The Eleventh,” or as it’s being written now, The XI, the project is comprised of a pair of twisting asymmetrical bronze and travertine towers joined by a skybridge. The windowed facade is said to be inspired by the Meatpacking District’s iconic warehouses.

Thomas Heatherwick designs two bubbled condo towers for Related’s High Line-straddling site

2018-01-10T12:05:00-05:00

Thomas Heatherwick plans to bring more eccentricity to Manhattan’s west side with two condo towers covered in a bubbled facade and bisected by the High Line, as CityRealty reported on Wednesday. The straddling pair at 515 West 18th Street, currently known as the Hudson Residences in conjunction with another tower planned on West 22nd Street, will contain 181 condos split between a 10-floor east tower and a 22-floor west tower. The development spans 425,000 square feet and will include 17,000 square feet of retail and gallery space, as well as 175 parking spots.

The project’s developer, Related Companies, first purchased the site in 2014 for a then-record of $205 million. Executive architects SLCE filed construction permits in late 2016, which are now approved. The buildings anchor the western side of Tenth Avenue between 18th and 20th Street in Chelsea.

Related plans to build to the maximum allowable floor area, nearly bursting its bubbled exterior. The bulging, rounded-out windows ...

Renzo Piano to design new $50M art gallery for mega-dealer David Zwirner

2018-01-09T18:22:00-05:00

That, Mr. Zwirner said, is the site of what in the fall of 2020 will become the new heart of his New York operation: a five-story, $50 million gallery designed by Renzo Piano. [...] The precise design has yet to be determined — Mr. Piano is in the early stages of the process. But it is likely to have a similarly spare aesthetic to Mr. Zwirner’s current spaces, by Annabelle Selldorf.

In its article about art dealer David Zwirner's upcoming Renzo Piano-designed gallery and global headquarters, the NYT recounts a telephone interview with Piano about (early) design visions for the building: "You kill art by making just white boxes, so you need to integrate emotion in some way. You cannot be neutral, because otherwise you disappear."

David Zwirner's current portfolio of NYC galleries includes this 20th Street gallery in West Chelsea by Selldorf Architects. Photo: Jason Schmidt.

When completed in 2020, the building will be the Zwirner art empire's fifth gallery in New York and the seventh worldwide.

Zaha Hadid’s 520 West 28th Street reveals full suite of amenity renderings

2017-10-20T11:55:00-04:00

Closings commenced at the late Zaha Hadid‘s futurist 520 West 28th Street at the end of June. According to a press release from developer Related, now that move-ins are underway, the architects have revealed the fully amenitized interiors, which include one of the world’s first private IMAX theaters, a 75-foot sky-lit lap pool, a High Line-adjacent terrace and landscaped courtyard, and a fitness center complete with a 24-hour juice bar and plunge pool.

renderings © Scott Frances

Lawsuit alleges Frank Gehry's IAC Building is melting

2016-11-22T14:05:00-05:00

The curvy, twisted glass facade of media mogul Barry Diller’s IAC Building on West 18th Street and 11th Avenue is facing a sticky problem: The window sealant has become a dripping, opaque blob, according to a lawsuit. “Nearly all of the windows have significant and visible defects,” the building’s owners claim in the suit against Permasteelisa North America, the company that installed the unique facade of the building designed by the acclaimed architect.

More Gehry-news on Archinect:

Could This Glass-Enclosed Farm/Condo Grow on Rem Koolhaas’ High Line Site?

2016-08-05T13:23:00-04:00

From multidisciplinary architectural firm Weston Baker Creative comes this vision of glass and grass in the form of a mixed-use high-rise springing from the Rem Koolhaas parcel on banks of the High Line. As CityRealty.com reported, the mixed-use concept would include residences, an art gallery and ten levels of indoor farming terraces.

One of the late Dame Zaha Hadid's final designs will be built in West Chelsea

2016-06-06T18:37:00-04:00

When the architecture community learned of the passing of Zaha Hadid in late March, it came as a bit of consolation that her first and only building in New York, 520 West 28th Street, had already begun to take shape along the High Line, ensuring that her legacy would last in our skyline. In much welcome news, 6sqft learns today that yet another design of hers will rise just three blocks away in Chelsea.

The Moinian Group worked with the late Zaha Hadid on one of her final creations, 220 Eleventh Avenue in West Chelsea. The building will be a collection of loft-like condos and penthouses, as well as a cultural institution that will be a hub of the Chelsea art district. Construction is expected to begin in 2017.

Inside the Zaha Hadid-designed $50 million High Line penthouse

2016-05-25T14:00:00-04:00

The cherry atop 520 West 28th, Penthouse 37 contains five bedrooms and six-and-a-half bathrooms, including a corner master suite with two windowed dressing rooms and his-and-hers baths nestled on its lower level, which also houses three guest en-suite bedrooms, a utility room, and a wet bar.

Running at a little over $7,269 a square foot, Zaha Hadid's one and only High Line-adjacent luxury penthouse design features a sinuous metal exterior with floor to ceiling glass windows between 10th and 11th avenues in Chelsea. Ismael Levya Architects worked with Zaha Hadid Architects to create the 39-unit condominium, which offers starter units at $25 million.

The latest on Zaha Hadid Architects:

New Renderings of SuperPier: Google’s New NYC Digs + Bourdain Food Market To Arrive in 2018

2015-11-16T11:12:00-05:00

Last month, Seth Pinsky, Executive Vice President at RXR Realty, shared a presentation regarding the development of the long-planned rehabilitation and conversion of Pier 57 aka “SuperPier.” According to him, the 450,000-square-foot development will invest $350 million of private capital to redevelop the structure, and in return create hundreds of jobs, generate millions of dollars of revenue for the Hudson River Park Trust, and create a new destination for New Yorkers and visitors alike.

Herzog & de Meuron's stadium in Chelsea "will be a hefty brute of a thing"

2015-07-07T01:28:00-04:00

The stadium will be wrapped in a cage of slender concrete and brick columns that will rise to a zig-zagging profile, before folding over to form the roof – as if the architects’ tangle of struts in Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium had been straightened out and neatened up.

Herzog & de Meuron's design for the Football Club stadium in Chelsea takes fandom to the level or religious zealotry, borrowing dramatic gothic elements from Westminster Abbey – the structure that formerly stood on the same site. The design's heavy masonry, brick and railway-style vaults prompt comparisons to "London's Victorian railway viaducts" and the Brutalist concrete hulks of the 1970s. As Jacques Herzog in The Guardian explains it, the stadium will be like “a castle, or a medieval walled village ... It is really a structural thing, very naked in some way."

The £500M stadium should support crowds from 42,000 - 60,000, and while Herzog & de Meuron have already completed numerous arenas (perhaps most famously, their "Bird's Nest" stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics), the Chelsea project's heft offers an aesthetic break from the ongoing sweeping, airy trends in stadium design.

More on Herzog & de Meuron's stadium work:

Bird's Nest Collaborators, Ai Weiwei and Herzog & de Meuron, s...

Is NYC's Flower District the new Chelsea?

2015-02-18T12:45:00-05:00

To stay in Chelsea and retain his lease, Mr. Kaplan [of Casey Kaplan Gallery] said, would have required paying twice the rent and taking on a much higher share of his building’s escalating tax rate. Instead, he elected to move to a new space in the Flower District, on 27th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues. It will have double the square footage, he said, for half the cost [...] The Flower District doesn’t draw the same kinds of numbers but is already on the art-world radar.

Another question: why do neighborhoods keep getting branded "the New _______"?