Sky House without any facade would be infinifitely more interesting than it will be with a facade. This seemed like it culd have been a the perfect residential building for glass facade as it is sitting over the park like Little Church Around the corner. The red brick will be pretty horrendous and it does seem that the north face might be a kissing cousin of 325 Fifth Avenue.
Oh no, my disgust with this building hasn't anything necessarily to do with the red brick in so much as the poor and unpleasing design of it.
Skyhouse by FxFowle--while not a gem--is still infinitely better looking than this 1950's-era housing project-looking thing by O'Hara.
Exposed floor plates, institutional-looking windows make this a clone of the one on W. 42nd he did earlier.
Shame affordable housing has to look so cheap.
Larger here
Another one for a slide show about why NYC needs design laws. This is the case against exposed floor plates.
(I would have prefered the parking-lot or 3 story crap building that this replaced. At least the view would not have been ruined)
^ Anything is better than a parking lot --though this almost isn't.
Has that O'Hara touch. Does he never tire of sculpting crap?
Dare I say it, but it actually has good massing. The materials are just too cheap, with shoddy construction overall.
You beat me to it, sfenn. I'll add something more, though: the ground-floor entrance looks positively harmless. It's got that early-90's-public-high-school look to it. Reminds me of something I used to see in Queens.
Didn't know this was affordable housing. What happened to the boutique hotel idea? And if this is what we get for affordable housing, in the middle of Midtown no less (why?), I'll take it. Definitely better than almost any public housing project from the 60s.
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