Reply With QuoteThanks for the pics!
Your far more generous with the thumbs up than I would have been.
continued...
47. Ariel East and Ariel West
2628 Broadway/245 West 99th Street
The landmarked Metro movie theater remains in façade only, crumbling and vacant. But the paired towers next to
it and across the street are a nice surprise, adding variety to Broadway’s jagged profile.
48. The Metropolitan
181 East 90th Street
This bland luxury high-rise, designed by Philip Johnson in his dotage, cost New York four tenements and a handful
of democratic local businesses, including the charming, tin-ceilinged Victory Café. The Metropolitan’s
amenities, on the other hand, pamper residents only.
49. Riverside South
Riverside Boulevard, 59th to 72nd Streets
Donald Trump no longer has much to do with this palisade of apartments. Still, he retains the blame.
The buildings aren’t terrible, and in theory it was a good idea to build over the tracks, but the plan yielded a
forbidding wall severing the rest of the West Side from the river.
50. Columbia University Lasker Biomedical Research Building
3960 Broadway
After a big preservation fight, Davis Brody Bond saved portions of the Audubon Ballroom, where Malcolm X was killed,
and restored the 1912 façade, gluing it all awkwardly to a glum block. A Pyrrhic victory.
51. Columbia University School of Social Work
1255 Amsterdam Avenue
Cooper Robertson’s blond masonry building at 122nd Street mitigates the effect of the oppressive wall that Columbia
long ago built fronting the avenue, but it’s still pretty timid.
52. Graceline Court
106 West 116th Street
A condo has sprouted over the roof of Malcolm Shabazz Mosque No. 7. Arguably better than the vacant lot that was
there before, but couldn’t Graceline Court have a more graceful line?
53. 325 Fifth Avenue
Near 32nd Street
To make room for Stephen Jacobs’s mutant tower, the developer scooped out the middle of the block. The collateral
damage included a quaint red townhouse, its aspirations all out of proportion to its size. A textbook case of a street
that lost texture and variety.
54. Hearst Tower
300 West 57th Street
The best work of corporate architecture to grace New York in decades, Norman Foster’s Hearst Tower negotiates deftly
between its crystalline exoskeleton and the fanciful 1928 base by Joseph Urban. Turns out one era’s version of
modernity can always talk to another’s.
Thanks for the pics!
Your far more generous with the thumbs up than I would have been.
Wow. That was quite the walk down memory lane. Like my life just passed before my eyes.
Thanks for posting all that, antinimby.
AN, I noticed you gave a thumbs down for the New 42nd Street studios (designed by my old firm), Im not sure if you knew or not that the facade for the old building was to be preserved. Due to contractor mistakes it collapsed during construction.
Considering ^ I love that new studio building. It was really one of the first on the "new" 42nd Street to incorporate sophisticated lighting. Great job.
They upgraded the lighting while I worked there, great project IMO.
I did take several factors into consideration and while some of the new replacements may have been less than stellar, if for instance, they replaced an eyesore open lot, then I would be more forgiving.Originally Posted by scumonkey
In other cases, if the replacements upgraded the area, even if they themselves weren't necessarily very good architecturally, I also gave them a thumbs up.
In other words, I asked myself these things: what did it replaced? did they make an effort to preserve if the older building was nice? what did the new building do for the area? what does the new building look like? is it better than the one it replaced? is it worse?
By the way, I also want to clarify that this () meant that I didn't care one way or the other.
Thanks for that bit of info. I had not known that. I guess I would be less harsh on them knowing the circumstance now.
Info on the studio building: http://wirednewyork.com/duke.htm
The old building whose facade collapsed was the entry portal to the Selwyn Theater.
The theater still stands and is now the Roundabout Theater Company's clumsily-titled
but beautifully-restored American Airlines Theater.
It was a sad day when the old Selwyn fell down ...
The old Selwyn Theatre collapsed
Tuesday morning, a few months
before its scheduled demolition [sic]
Actually, it was planned that the facade
should be preserved while the old building
structure connecting it to the theater
was to be taken down.
The Selwyn was on the plain Jane side.
Amazing collection of before-and-afters. Very informative.
I do think that in a city as dense as NYC, the odd open space (read: surface lot) and the vistas it affords is not necessarily soooo bad (HERESY!! BURN HIM AT THE STAKE!!) as in other downtowns where the lots have effectively ruined them.
I noticed one thing in a recent car ad. The gist was that this particular model had a 'NY spirit' (bear with me; I know the premise is idiotic). What struck me is that they background was quite "tenementy", rather than "skyscrapery".
I grew up in the 1970s and if you wanted to give a foreigner the idea of NYC it was always midtown’s tangle of modern skyscrapers. Nowadays, it's back to cast-Iron buildings and Brooklyn's brooding 19th century warehouse, LES tenements that are seen as uniquely NYC (perhaps because every provincial hole in Asia has a cluster of gleaming glass towers). I find that very interesting and very positive.
Last edited by stache; September 18th, 2008 at 03:14 AM.
WTF?!!
A four-story addition added to the Chapin School's original Georgian-style building at 100 East End Ave.
A Fine Blog
Going back to the New York magazine article, what a disingenuous crock of garbage that was. Whatever ad-man wrote it should be given the swirlie of his life for calling himself a reporter.
There was more whitewashing in that article than anything Huck Finn ever swindled anyone into doing. It seemed that article, which was supposed to "measure" the effects of the building boom "on balance," took the top 1% of luxury developments that replaced surface lots and left the 80,000 destroyed buildings to rot.
What about the many holes in the ground, at the site of the Drake or on 8th Avenue where Stephen Ross' monstrosity may not be getting built for a while after taking out a block of beautiful tenements? What about the thousands of no-name, POS developments across every borough? Why not a SINGLE EXAMPLE of one of the city's most runaway-prolific developers, Mr Scratch himself, Sam Chang? It's hard to argue against the Hearst Building -- but look across the street at what Moinian is doing to the Newsweek Building? Costas, O'Hara, Scarano and Gene Kaufman didn't sit the building boom out, that's for sure. But you'd hardly know it from the NY mag article.
The Fillips That Take Buildings From Merely Wonderful to Genius
The Fillips That Take Buildings From Merely Wonderful to Genius
By CARTER B. HORSLEY,
Special to the Sun |
September 25, 2008
It's the fillips, or flourishes, that really count in the great paintings. Those grand curlicues of putti-protecting clouds; those diaphanous veils that encircle half-shell Venuses; those gilded glimmers from the orderly chests of beribboned, medaled warriors.
For architects, however, the real badges of honor are often more obscure: a fusillade of endless doors, a few unnecessary flying buttresses, and other small details that separate the genius from the merely wonderful.
Two such occurrences have recently cropped up.
Downtown are the nearly freestanding, dangling windows at 217-219 West Broadway in TriBeCa, where five long, green tentacles of Lady Liberty's crown from El Teddy's restaurant once so exuberantly stretched.
In 1984, Antoni Miralda and Montse Guillen acquired a former steak house and soon installed the green-painted, steel "Liberty" crown. They called the restaurant they opened El Internacional. In 1989, the restaurant reopened as El Teddy's, but it closed in 2004, when the Landmarks Preservation Commission declined to designate it as a landmark.
The developer, Steven Elghanayan, subsequently bought the building and commissioned Cook + Fox Architects to design a six-story residential condominium, which was completed about a year ago. Richard A. Cook, the architect, said his firm and Mr. Elghanayan had considered ways of incorporating the Liberty crown into the new design, but decided such a solution "seemed contrived."
Mr. Cook's inspiration for the new design came from the shadows cast by the fire escapes on the neighboring buildings, and by the clean lines of the white terra-cotta building across the street.
(Ben Parker)
His elegant solution was "floating" glass panels beneath the tall windows, suspended by two metal bars placed horizontally, and one metal bar placed vertically in the center of the opening. The proportions of the "floating" panel and its supports are quite exquisite and infinitely more attractive than the cheap "children's guard" that the city requires placed in many apartment windows.
Another fillip worth noting is uptown, where too-large balconies adorn Harry Macklowe's glassy condo tower at 310 E. 53rd St., at the southeast corner of Second Avenue.
Ben Parker 310 East 53rd Street. 09 (Ben Parker)
The recently completed, 28-story residential condominium tower was designed by Moed de Armas & Shannon, the building's "design architects," and SLCE, the building's "architects of record," for Macklowe Properties.
Many of the apartments in the setback tower have balconies with glass railings that extend below the floor of the balcony, which is known, in architectural circles, as the "eyebrow."
A partner in the architectural firm, Dan Shannon, said the unusual railing design was a collaboration between the architects and Mr. Macklowe, who also developed the stunning mixed-used, black-glass, knife-edge skyscraper at 146 E. 57th St.
"Harry wanted to find a way to change the look of the concrete edge of a floor slab — the 'fly-by.' During the extensive mock-up process, we didn't find any precedents," Mr. Shannon said, adding that the "underhang is a bit like a window valence and makes the balcony space more comfortable and enclosed."
He added, "The layered planes of glass and Bulgarian white limestone suggest a dissolving boundary between interior and exterior space; depending on the changing light, the glass panels reflect the street and sky, cast subtle shadows on the stone, or seem to disappear altogether."
Mr. Horsley is the editor of CityRealty.com.
http://www.nysun.com/real-estate/the...-merely/86569/
© 2008 The New York Sun,
Key | Spring 2009
New Glass City
By JIM LEWIS
Published: March 11, 2009
New York is the capital of glass, the city of windows. Other cities get their gravitas from marble or stone, but New York is made of silica, soda ash and lime, melted to make this vitreous stuff: transparent, translucent and opaque; reflective, tinted, frosted, coated, clear. The slightest shift in the angle of sun fall can hide or reveal entire worlds, and as evening comes the city gradually turns itself inside out — the streets go dark and the buildings open up, offering their rooms like stagelets upon which our little lives are played.
In Sook Kim for The New York Times
25 Cooper Square: The Cooper Square Hotel Completed: 2009 Architect: Carlos Zapata Developer: Sciame Photo date: Sunday, Jan. 18, 2009
In Sook Kim for The New York Times
731 Lexington Avenue and 1 Beacon Court: Global headquarters for Bloomberg L.P. and other offices, as well as retail and residences Completed: 2005 Architects: Cesar and Rafael Pelli (Pelli Clark Pelli Architects) Developer: Vornado Realty Trust Photo date: Thursday, Jan. 15, 2009
In Sook Kim for The New York Times
405 West 55th Street: The Joan Weill Center for Dance, home of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Completed: 2004 Architect: lu + Bibliowicz Architects L.L.P. Photo date: Friday, Jan. 16, 2009
In Sook Kim for The New York Times
48 Bond Street: Condominium residence Completed: 2008 Architect: Deborah Berke & Partners Architects Developer: Dacbon L.L.C. Photo date: Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2009
In Sook Kim for The New York Times
One Ten Third, a Condominium Building Designed By Greenbergfarrow and built by Toll Brothers City Living. The photographer In Sook Kim Set Up Lights in a dozen apartments and placed the residents in their windows. In postproduction, she rearranged the windows to form the shape of a key.
As old as the material is, glass remains a mystery. No one quite knows what goes on, down where the molecules bind — whether it’s a slow-moving liquid, an especially mutable solid or something in between. Still, new compounds appear regularly, with new qualities that promise new possibilities. The substance has never been exhausted, and may yet prove inexhaustible, an endless inspiration to architects and designers as it grows stronger, lighter, clearer and more flexible.
For this issue, In Sook Kim, an artist with a special interest in intimacy and display, photographed five buildings in Manhattan — chips in the kaleidoscope of the city and homes to some of its most emblematic activities: business, the arts, putting up tourists and, of course, staying in for the night. For each photograph, Kim, who is based in Germany, lit interior rooms with colored gels and arranged the occupants of the buildings in everyday tableaux. She then parked herself across from the buildings with a large-format camera, the glass of her lens facing the glass of the facades, creating portraits of the city as a crystalline beehive, always bright and always busy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/re...ef=keymagazine
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
May 2009
Going back to glass bricks
Architects rediscover benefits of material popular a century ago
Joseph Pell Lombardi designed a six-story, mixed-use project for 401-3 Greenwich Street in Tribeca with a facade of clear glass bricks
By Lynne Miller
For years, glass curtain façades have been de rigueur for hot new condos. While they have not faded from view, more affordable and traditional-looking glass bricks are coming back in fashion.
Architects are including clear bricks in new condominiums where traditional masonry is desired, or required, making thinner glass unsuitable — as well as using them on projects for which providing security and natural light are priorities. Glass bricks or blocks cost considerably less than tempered sheet glass and vandal-proof specialty glass windows. In some cases, glass brick can be installed without professional glass specialists.
Architect Adam Meshberg sees glass block turning up on newer condominiums in Williamsburg. By his estimates, glass blocks can cost $5 to $10 apiece for an 8-inch square block, or for rectangles measuring 8 by 16 inches, while tempered sheet glass that is a half-inch thick can run $20 to $40 per square foot.
Glass brick or block offers excellent thermal and sound insulation, fire protection and security, said Meshberg, who has used the material for upper-level windows and on interior walls separating bedrooms from bathrooms. Clear blocks are also popular for ground-floor spaces.
"They let light through while still having the security of a solid wall," he said. "There is always an issue in design of how to treat ground-floor spaces that need light but are vulnerable to the sidewalk traffic."
Architects and designers also appreciate bricks for their resilience in weathering the elements and for their availability in standard sizes.
An architect who specializes in historic preservation, Joseph Pell Lombardi has plenty of experience working with clay bricks, but not glass. For a six-story, mixed-use project planned for 401-3 Greenwich Street in Tribeca, he designed a traditional Romanesque-style building made entirely of glass. Plans call for building a façade made of clear glass bricks laid in a traditional brick pattern, with carved glass columns and other details that are in keeping with the neighborhood's prevailing Romanesque Revival style.
"The glass bricks are being used exactly the way people use red brick," Lombardi said. "We created a modern building, but we used masonry. It's not using any form of new technology that's been developed by glass companies."
In fact, there's nothing new about glass brick. It was originally developed in the early 1900s to provide natural light in factories. Glass block buildings became popular in the 1930s and '40s almost to the point of excess, before falling out of fashion in the 1960s and '70s. In New York, glass-block partitions can be seen in a number of subway stations.
While the bricks Lombardi plans to use cost more than plate glass, they are cheaper than more conventional construction, which would feature clay brick, finished gypsum wallboard and furring — long, thin strips of wood or metal used to support the finished surfaces in rooms.
And although the budget didn't drive the decision to use the material, Lombardi said his client, an English developer whom he declined to identify by name, was pleased to find out glass bricks are not especially costly. The clear brick façade would be preassembled in panels in a factory to ensure precision. "That's a fairly economical way of doing things," Lombardi said.
In Nolita, architectural firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro designed a seven-story sliver-style townhouse at 277 Mott Street with a floor-to-ceiling curtain wall, which would be veiled by a system of operable glass masonry screens that would work like curtains. The architecture firm did not return The Real Deal's phone calls seeking comment on the status of the project.
However, according to Diller Scofidio + Renfro's Web site, the screens would feature custom-made glass bricks set in a traditional brick pattern with staggered voids. The glass bricks would be threaded on rods "like beads and suspended from tracks in front of the glass wall at every floor slab," the site noted. According to the site, the screens would satisfy local zoning restrictions that require building façades to be at least 50 percent masonry.
In the South Bronx, the new light-filled Betances Community Center features lots of clear glass. On the ground floor of the three-story building, glass brick was used on a back wall that faces an apartment building and playground. The New York City Housing Authority had concerns about vandalism and maintenance, so architect Stephen Yablon used solid glass brick instead of plain sheet glass.
"We used it because we wanted to maximize natural light in the space," Yablon said. "We weren't sure the people in the apartment building wanted to be looking through into a gym. If it were a plain glass wall, you'd be looking directly into a gym."
http://beta.therealdeal.com/articles...o-glass-bricks
© 2009 The Real Deal
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