Last week, the final piece of the third and highest apex of Jean Nouvel’s first residential skyscraper was anchored and installed over Midtown. 53 West 53rd Street now stands 1,050 feet tall, and is currently the 7th-tallest skyscraper under construction in New York City. — New York YIMBY

The architect behind 53 West 53rd wanted the tower to be synonymous with New York City, to be a building that couldn’t easily be slipped into another skyline.

“A worldwide catastrophe today is the number of buildings that are parachuted because they were preconceived. Offices, housing, shopping malls all look the same,” Jean Nouvel told The Real Deal, translated from French. — The Real Deal

Back in January, the Jean Nouvel-designed MoMA tower was on the heels of reaching its full 82-story height and now, that milestone has been accomplished. Last week, the long-awaited supertall, named 53W53, topped out and it now stands at 1,050 feet tall, tying with the New York Times building and the Chrysler Building as the city’s sixth tallest building. — Curbed

The people of Geneva have narrowly rejected a controversial plan to extend and renovate the city’s Musée d’Art et d’Histoire by the French architect Jean Nouvel. The “non” camp won the public vote on 28 February with 54%.  
 
Ateliers Jean Nouvel in Paris designed the planned extension, which was approved by Geneva’s municipal council last May, in collaboration with the local firms Architectures Jucker and DVK Architectes.[...]

The council must now launch a new competition for the museum. — theartnewspaper.com

Gone is the “Art Bay,” with a glass garage-like door that would have allowed visitors to enter galleries straight from the street.

Gone, too, is the fourth-floor “Gray Box,” with acoustic absorption panels through which passers-by could have peered up at performance art in progress.

And there will be no new public entrance to the sculpture garden on 54th Street.

The Museum of Modern Art has eliminated these polarizing elements of its sweeping redesign, museum officials said on Tuesday... — the New York Times

Nouvel’s aspirations for 53W53, scheduled for completion in fall 2018, sound almost modest: “It’s going to try to hold its place, [...]

It’s going to try to be good enough for New York … it’s going to try to make its own small contribution, and it’s done in a way that ensures this contribution is readable, understandable, and it’s maybe a bit more precious than others. And it’s a little linked to this notion – a fairly disputed notion these days – that architecture is still an art, sometimes.” — theguardian.com

City Realty made the rendering above, which they say gives us an idea of what the city will look like in 2018 based on projections for buildings currently being planned or already in construction: "New York City skyline circa 2018 2,500 feet above Central Park. Image features upcoming supertall skyscrapers such as One Vanderbilt, 53W53, 432 Park Avenue, 225 West 57th, and 111 West 57th Street are completed." — gothamist.com