Ahead of the May 7th sales launch, Bjarke Ingels and developer HFZ Capital have released several new renderings of the Eleventh, or the XI as it’s been branded. The West Chelsea hotel/condo project is notable not only for being Ingels’ first NYC condo project but for its asymmetrical, twisting silhouette. And in the new renderings, we’re able to get a better look at the pair of towers and their skybridge, along with, for the first time, the central courtyard and an apartment interior. — 6sqft
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This twisty Rem baby stuff is not going to age well. It's all outward appearance (the sell) like a toxic mortgage -- not much else going on.
Outward appearance is what every condo building is about. The interiors are typically renovated over and over again. BIG, more than most other firms who are creating condo towers are not relying on a luxurious surface material for impact, but is actually dealing with space, views, and relationships to the urban context. David Chipperfield will be praised for his use of material on his Bryant Park condo tower, but essentially it's just a a very standard building with luxury materials that doesn't engage the city.
Shut up fanboy, it's just tiring. There are twisty buildings, and then there is unnecessary shit. This lands in the 2nd category.
I can tell from the quality of your comments that you are a serious person who cares deeply about creating nuanced and important work. lol
Comic book architecture.
on the bright side, it’s not just a blank glass facade. has some structural presence. Though flat surfaces make window cleaning much easier, looks like the structure may be accommodating to that. Though the BIG twists are usually unearned and empty gestures
can someone please make a collage of the 5000 times someone designed twisted towers....thx in advance
Bjarke Ingels: Eurotrash or no?
The man, or the people who work in his firm, or the work they all produce together? Who exactly are you trying to insult?
why?
Why not?
I asked you first. :)
Did you ask me? Who were you asking? Were you asking Dana Schulz?
Who is Dana Schultz?
Who is Dana Schultz?
The person who posted the article you responded to.
I ask "why?" Because I would presume you'd have a pretty compelling reason to design a building that way, considering it's not a particularly beautiful form, it looks precariously vertiginous, and is no doubt crazy expensive to build. I'm looking for a reason to want the building to be the way it is, and I can't find it.
You do realize that you're not talking to Bjarke Inglels, don't you?
I suspect that there are all sorts of reasons. But generally, I recognize that this building exists in a very large culture and marketplace where it must compete for attention and owners. The architecture functions to give the building cultural significance and market value. Obviously it has to do a lot of other mundane but important things as well because it's a building where people will need to live safely and comfortably,
No, we feel like we are talking to Bjarke Ingels, or his alter ego.
Y'all are in insane.
looks like somebody @BIG discovered the box morph command...
How is this any different than Studio Gang?
Difficult to understand without the diagrams.
come for a life of luxury and vertigo, vomit comes out of the marble floors really easy!
Better to be conspicuously bad than good and boring. Explains our decaying culture and politics.
For chrissake, people, it looks like a perfectly lovely $4m+ condo. It's not trying to be the Guggenheim.
(And I actually love the cobblestone turnaround - that's pretty elegant.)
Bjarke want's to be a star in the mold of what for the last 75 years passes for creative genius/avant garde. Twist it this way or that, get your 15 minutes of fame and cash in your check. In the meantime the city gets another pile that doesn't play well with others, like a party full of screaming people. And who wouldn't love the cobblestone paving when the alternative is looking at this.
I think there is a myth in the minds of people who live far from NYC that buildings like these are somehow uncomfortable for the people who interact with them. The reality is that people at street level experience the first floor (maybe the second), and the first floor of this looks very similar to the first floor of nearly every other building. The real problem isn't with the architecture or with Bjarke's persona. The real problem is with the economics of Manhattan. In a more just city, BIG would be designing public housing instead of luxury condos.
Then why do they not do just that? Stop behaving as if starchitects are "forced" to do stupid shit. Its all bloated ego, enlarged by sycophants like yourself.
Because corrupt American politicians almost never hire the best architects to design public housing. They hire politically connected local hacks.
If you don't want me to point out the underlying economics, why are you crying in the first place? Because this building slants? Is that it? You're angry because the building slants?! Give me a break. You don't talk about gentrification, or the affordable housing crisis. Your issue is with slanting buildings and something as amorphous as ego.
All I can tell you davvid, that you know nothing about how non-starchitecture works.
Even though the system is not perfect, clients regularly commission good architects to design affordable housing. OK, I agree that this is not profitable for BIG, so lets blame the "corrupt politicians".
So, I guess the issue is this design sucks. Why does it suck? Not just because of the slant, but also because BIG appears to be johnny-come-lately to the party of the twisting tower. If we are still talking about aesthetics, let me mention that the proportions of these towers suck. It is a lazy design move, and when it is so lazy, it is better to not have a crappy formal move like this.
We see what hack architects produce. Their buildings don't get mentioned on archinect, but they're not invisible. NYC's neighborhoods are littered with buildings by hack corporate firms. BIG is one of the few firms producing interesting architecture. Based on your comment's, I suspect that we disagree on what "good" architecture looks like. I'll take clumsy (yet visually interesting) proportions over the standard banality that we see all over town.
We see what hack architects produce. Their buildings don't get mentioned on archinect, but they're not invisible. NYC's neighborhoods are littered with buildings by hack corporate firms.
davvid, what you call hack architects build most of the historic fabric that gives NYC its unique character. Would you take BIG's twisting gizmos over an average warehouse in Soho, or a typical tenament building in the Lower East side, or even a 1920's midtown beaux arts office building? I suspect most wouldn't. So why can't hack architects do as well today given all the advantages we have?
Nobody is talking about tenement buildings or historic Soho warehouses.
Follow your own argument. You contrasted corporate hack architects with BIG "one of the few firms producing interesting architecture". McKim Mead and White where one of those corporate architects among many who did great background buildings and foreground build ings, yet today's modernists think still think of other buildings as a good backdrop to their vision, like Mies's glass tower rising above 19th century Berlin, the same fabric they carefully preserve and even rebuild. So I'll ask again, why do you think pre-war architects where so much better than today's 'corporate hacks'?
Haha. Nobody is talking about McKim Mead and White here. You desperately want to talk about pre-war architecture.
Im even more convinced you work for BIG now davvid.
From your comment, you would seem to imply that all architects that are not starchitects are "hacks". I would love to see where you end up after your starchitect gigs are over.
I don't. And I wasn't implying that all non-starchitects are hacks. I was implying that most of what gets built is pretty lame and uninspired. And that there are a lot of hacks that don't get the criticism they deserve on blogs like this one because they're too dull to even remember. I also want to point out that the "starchitecture" is sort of a nonsense term, as it only describes the amount of attention that media bestows upon an architect. It doesn't describe a style or much of anything other than media visibility. I think people like you, who get so defensive and weird when Bjarke Ingles does anything, are as much a part of the hype machine as Dezeen or Architectural Record is. If you want to upend the "starchitect" phenomenon, start highlighting unsung architects, or start acknowledging the fact that every "starchitect" actually has a large team of super sharp minds working for/with them. It's a team effort. Again, I don't work for BIG. I just recognize that your grievances are unproductive bullshit, and I enjoy pointing that out.
So you don't work for BIG, right? Point taken.
On the other hand, you seem like a person that will almost instantaneously take the side of a "starchitect", irrespective of the project, design or premise. I can see this from your past posts over the years. So, pray tell me who's the hype machine.
BIG is producing good work that challenges the status-quo. The problem is that I never hear corporate firms getting called out for banal towers in Long Island City or Williamsburg. It seems like criticism is only applied to firms that actually try to produce capital "A" architecture. Firms that yield to every market force and end up producing generic shlock don't get mentioned or criticized. That's a major hypocrisy I see in architectural discourse right now. Architects get punished for trying to do important work, because important work gets covered by the media, transforming it into Starchitecture which will get criticized at length in ways that anonymous shlock won't.
I've seen a lot worse.
The bar is pretty low.
Twisty-towers is the new shifty-windows.
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