Gehry is designing a tower of shimmering beauty near Brooklyn Bridge.
Nicolai is enthusiastic.
NYT
Yet what makes the tower so intoxicating is the exterior skin. Before dreaming up the design, Mr. Gehry checked into a room at the Four Seasons Hotel and spent days gazing out at the skyline. He experimented with dozens of configurations, from stoic to voluptuous, before opting for facades etched with a series of soft, irregular folds.
14 Comments
Shimering beauty? What happened to elegance in simplicity? Whats the base look like - images Ive seen floting around dont show it and the ripple wall seems more like a trick to me. It will be pretty - but the oohs and ahhs I think should be more because NYC real estate is so espensive its cost prohibitive to get very highly detailed residential buildings and the fact that Ratner lined up $600 million in financing. Now - find 76 floors of multimillionere tenants.
I just want to know why the ripples? Look at this rendering not from a mile away -
http://www.onnyturf.com/blogs/print_blog_post.php?post_id=8106
I like it, eventhough the qualities the are most striking, might be because the restraints on the architect (more so here, than in other recent projects).
It handles the scale of the city with a conservative grace - the images from afar speak of a "classical" skyscraper, the large floorplates made elegant through the considerable height of the whole building. and closer, the rippling looks like a nice enough effect, especially in the topmost parts, where the surfaces can catch the light in varied ways through the day and the changing seasons. Looking forward to seeing it realized.
this may be from an outsider, but do new yorkers want a building that looks like it is in the process of falling down?
Evil,
As i understand it the plan calls for the 4-5 story original/classical brick base to be used for a school, with the tower rising atop that pedestal..
Im starting to get this aweful image of NYC full of garish, gaudy 1-off trick buildings. Recently I was there around Houston and the pressed metal facades which the area is so famous for is being obliterated by really bad trendy buildings it seems. Im not advocating protectionism - but at least tip the hat to the part and context, the article says this building does just that - I dont see how.
Its a look at me object. Honestly I think the ripples are kind of annoying but at dusk they will be awesome.
hopefully it doesn't leak
first of all, I'm glad they didn't go with a design of the all-curvy study models. this is rather conservative for FOG.
but what happened to the top of the building? it just ends after 76 floors like a cut-off asparagus? if you dedicate your life to not bow down to modernism, you can't let your building end like a SOM/mies tower. come on, frank, show us you're not like the others and give us some nice top!
Yes, the absence of a real crown looks strange, maybe especially because the rest of the design feels like a nod toward earlier Manhattan towers. Anyway, New York might be the perfect place for FOG to build - the city keeps his forms in check admirably.
Ugg... this is downright painful.
A walk through the studios of KPF or SOM will yield this same scheme done 6 different ways - all of them better than this.
The high-rise typology has a specific set of constraints that lend themselves to an even more specific set of formal opportunities.
Gehry should leave it to the pros... or at least hire them.
I'm with bapha, I wish Bruce Ratner and FOG would move on to find a different city skyline to litter.
It never fails.. a gehry building shows up on here and the place erupts in love/hate conversation!
It may just be the renderings, but thats miles better than the shit he's pulling with atlantic yards.
I think Bapha's comment is really very insightful. The central challenge facing the designers of highrises today is organization. How can we reorganize the highrise, how can we push these parameters, move these assumptions that govern the form of highrises. This building seems to not be involved in this conversation, and that may be a missed opportunity.
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