A buff stone-clad supertall tower designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA) in New York City is nearing the final stages of construction.
The 950-foot-tall building, 220 Central Park South, rises from a site directly opposite Central Park's southern edge as a relatively modest 18-story "villa" apartment complex overlooked from behind by a massive, skinny tower.
Construction on the site has been ongoing since 2013 and is finally heading toward completion. The tower is marked by a traditional arrangement of punched widows and protruding balconies that interrupt otherwise monolithic stone facades. As the tower rises, it steps back slightly as it rises toward a more dramatically stepped top.
A massive 23,000-square-foot penthouse suite located within the tower sold last year for $230 million, making the unit the most expensive home in the United States at the time.
New York YIMBY reports that SLCE Architects is the executive architect and that Thierry W. Despont is providing interior design services for the 67-story tower.
Text on the RAMSA website describing the project states, "The two buildings share a common palette of silvery Alabama limestone and a pattern of dramatically varied fenestration and window groupings accentuated with Juliet balconies, set-back terraces, and ornamental metalwork. Both the Villa and the Tower will have a strong presence on the skyline, but—unlike some of its neighbors now under development—they will belong to the family of buildings that have framed Central Park for generations."
The tower is the latest in a steady stream of supertall towers nearing completion in Midtown Manhattan, where a over a dozen spires are currently rising, reshaping the New York City skyline in the process.
IRL
All 4 Comments
RAMSA buildings depend so much on the detail execution. I’m sure they had a lot of money to make it look like old New York. A lot of their buildings look like cheap McMansion finishes.
The tower they did in Chicago used precast instead of travertine for most of the tower's height. That and the cheap-looking ornament really knocked the new classical look down a notch. Real estate prices simply didn't justify a more expensive tower.
The application of RAMSA's old-tyme stylings to such a tall and skinny building are not quite convincing here. Also, the PR team's insistence on erasing the neighboring and gigantic Central Park Tower from all of the images given to the press is comical.
perfect time to get rid of all that dead-weight in the office!
IRL
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