“For us, it was really a blend of what’s the right concept for Park Avenue, a place that has not had a new building for almost 50 years, an avenue that is quite possibly the most important commercial boulevard in New York City, quite possibly the United States, and what is the place of a new build down the street from Seagrams and Lever House, two of the greatest buildings ever built,” Daivd Levinson said. — New York Observer
Four very different schemes for an office tower in New York. Who's your pick?
20 Comments
Hadid and OMA towers are way better than the Foster design...
i'm not generally a fan of skyscraper design at all, but - despite that - i think any of these would be handsome additions to a city's skyline.
I like the one from Rogers, although it doesn't jive as well with Park Ave like Foster's does.
Zaha's interior is nice too.
Rem: focus on the view on the upper floors, connection in lower parts.
I guess the reason he lost is because his plan has issues in floor depth? Then I further concluded that Foster's plan would give the client most desired office layout, in the meantime, they will provide some sky parks. The idea is basic but should work well without risk factors.
These buildings might be interesting forms, but they are anti-urban. Every building stands in complete aloofness to its surroundings. Splendid isolation dosen't add up to a greater whole. The hell with cooperation, I gotta be me!
How can you say that, Thayer, when both the OMA and Foster schemes open up completely at the bottom to engage the street.
Zaha and OMA couldn't have been serious.
Darkman, why not? When you ask ZHA or OMA to design something, your implicitly stating that you want an avant-garde home run. Do you expect Zaha or Rem to enter a competition with a quasi-corporate design a la Foster? If the client didn't want to at least consider some truly innovative (and perhaps ridiculous) options for the sight, he wouldn't have asked those firms.
And Thayer, the only thing uncharacteristically aloof about the designs is that they will be of a higher quality than most of the surrounding architecture. Are you seriously going to argue that any of the other nearby buildings is more open to the street or better related to the common man?
Faux-old designer thayer-d/perenialhole will now proceed to complain about Corb, the "avant'garde" , and modernism. While glorifying some old building nearby that the proposals should have copied, or "learned from."
except, the proposals did this already.
Not a traditionalist, but I've previously complained that OMA's work has become too oversimplified--actually a bit dull. They would have been better served by offering a smart solution for the very conservatively-modern park avenue, something like the IIT in Chicago which responds to the mies-modernism around it in a surprising and interesting way. So I guess I am a OMA-nostalgist.
As far as Zaha, like OMA, the solution looks too much like it was made in a 3D modeling program rather than with structural ideas. That's why Foster continues to win these projects. His proposal is very Park Avenue.
Would a conservatively-modern park avenue essay have been labled a dreaded revivalist building? Would it have made the author a devil traditionalist? Can anyone honestly answer these questions with out implicating themselves in the same broad brush criticism so easily thrown out at anyone who dosen't tow the line? The self-imposed semantical straight jacket that so many architects have built for themselves makes all the primping and posing even more ridiculous. Not that there isn't a place for the grand sculptural gesture, but it's been driven more by a fear of not fitting in versus as a reaction to program and context. Reminds me of the punk scene in the 1980's except the only one getting punked here is the public.
aphorismal, zaha's design is definitely less serious, and more anti-urban. look at the aerial view—it's clear that the tower squeezes out to its setbacks completely. there's no plaza or public space at all. that's just awful.
besides that... its design and interior just seem hokey to me. its base really annoys me.
Darkman, why not? When you ask ZHA or OMA to design something, your implicitly stating that you want an avant-garde home run.
The only way one could truley deliver "avant garde" is if they walked away and told them to go fuck themselves..... That would be bad ass and completely avant garde these days! anything else is corporate regardless of the form!
ah - now I understand why the foster scheme won. I kind of like the goofiness of the fir forests in the rogers design, and OMA's atrium space is a nice idea - wish the exterior wasn't so bland, though.
I sort of like zaha's interior spaces (about as much as I like early 00s apple product design), but those f-ing awful molded chairs in the common spaces. has anyone ever sat in those things for any length of time? Not only are they uncomfortable, they make your backside cold. That's not the sort of association you want when someone is looking at your renderings.
"The only way one could truley deliver "avant garde" is if they walked away and told them to go fuck themselves..... That would be bad ass and completely avant garde these days! anything else is corporate regardless of the form!"
Well said. The point being there are no more rules from which the avant guard can break out from. I might flip it around and say that a traditional design would be avant guard in that it's so completely opposite of what's excpected, but that would acknowledge that the highest goal of architecture and the avant guard would be to break rules for the sake of breaking rules. That's pathetic.
If you want to "flip it," then you're going backwards.
There are always rules break. In fact, there really aren't any "rules", only to the faux-old maybe, in which case there is much to be easily offended by.
The "avant garde" is over, this is the apres garde. Most work on the edge doesn't look anything like these proposals. The faux-old establishment's selective memory seems to forget that
"The faux-old establishment's selective memory seems to forget that"
Establishment? Talk about nostalgia. You're the one who was born in the wrong century. Where's the Classical academies you're rebeling against? You are part of the establishment, and any cursory survey of architectural schools and periodicals would bear that out, but you seem intent on tilting towards windmills. By my measure, who cares if you're part of the establishment or not though, the quality of your work will have nno more to do with the color of your skin or your position in society. You are easily offended by someone's desire to decorate a building with traditional ornament rather than modern ornament? You're easily offended by a building that helps to frame the public realm, rather than one that screams "look at me" while trashing the public realm? I hope you win the starchitect lottery, becasue if you don't, it's going to be a hard landing.
Yes there is a faux-old architecture establishment, as has been noted in previous discussions.
"There are always rules break. In fact, there really aren't any "rules",
This confused statement is all you need to know about your grasp of reality.
The point being there are no more rules from which the avant guard can break out from.
This confused statement is all you need to know about your grasp on what human/nonhuman progress is.
Second guessing and faux-old lies don't count as reality, sorry.
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