The digital production studio Visualhouse has released film and renderings of how SL Green’s One Vanderbilt will meet the street, and also remind us just how gargantuan the tower will be. According to the tower’s architects Kohn Pedersen Fox, the tower will rise 1,501 feet to its spire, making it the third tallest building in the city upon completion. — 6sqft.com
8 Comments
This is my first time seeing it but my initial reaction is that it seems a bit clumsy.
Where will it stop? This is like that awful H&dM building that competes with the Eiffel Tower.
Doesn't it seem like SOM, HOK and KPF are sort of stuck in a rut of clumsy forms, frumpy spider clips and panel systems? Why is it so impossible for these massive firms to hit the mark where they're able to create a straight-forward/simple/bold expression that bridges cultural, economic and technological forces? They have no game when it comes to aesthetic/semiotics.
I cannot imagine an SOM, KPF or HOK today producing a building that is as simple, direct and beautifully corporate as the Pepsi-Cola building.
I kind of like it from afar. Of all the dumb and arbitrary forms of late (looking at you REM and BIG) this one seems a touch poetic.
the bottom is a straight knock off whats already is there at that area at that level, 42nd street google maps....the top sucks.
Miles, the H+dM building had an interesting formal concept and aggressive aesthetic language of cuts and steps. Maybe it's undesirable in that context, but it makes a strong and memorable architectural statement.
This - I have no idea what's going on. Can't decide whether the base is a podium or just a clumsy expression of a lobby. So weird yet generic too. Like a filler building in simcity.
Davvid,
I think SOM and KPF did their best work when there were individual designers running things within the bigger firm. Bunshaft obviously did a lot to define a direction for SOM, as did Adrian Smith later. I'm not familiar with KPF's designers, but they evidently had some for years. Now it seems both firms lack singular talents who can lead teams towards a meaningful design logic. Compromise is rarely the goal - it's an outcome of a flat hierarchy where no ideas are good enough to survive on their own.
This project in particular looks like the worst kind of teamwork frozen into form.
I'm not talking about form but rather the deeper issue of New York's visual and cultural identity. Paris has zoning laws preventing construction that would compete with the Eiffel Tower and Paris' identity.
But since NY's cultural identity is money I suppose it's all just fine.
[h&dm's Paris building is, like pretty much everything else they do, merde]
there is too much going on at the ground level... i hate to agree but it is looking a bit overwrought. the nicest image is of the terrace with the simple scalloped panels.
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