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-   -   NEW YORK | 625 W 57th St. (Pyramid) | 467 FT | 32 FLOORS (https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/showthread.php?t=188629)

NYguy Feb 7, 2011 2:14 PM

NEW YORK | 625 W 57th St. (Pyramid) | 467 FT | 32 FLOORS
 
http://nymag.com/arts/architecture/features/71213/

Pyramid Scheme
Bjarke Ingels reinvents the New York apartment building.


http://images.nymag.com/arts/archite...110214_560.jpg

By Justin Davidson
Feb 6, 2011

Quote:

Architects mature slowly; prodigies are rare. Yet at an age when most of his peers are still sitting in cubicles, laboring over light fixtures and door handles, Bjarke Ingels, a photogenic 36-year-old Dane with offices on two continents and projects on three, is about to revamp one of New York’s basic units: the apartment building. In every growth spurt, rental towers pop up all over the city like architectural acne, a pox of large, unsightly blocks whose creators claim it’s the best they can do, given financial realities and a restrictive zoning code. Ingels has flicked away those excuses. For the desolate juncture of 57th Street and the West Side Highway, he has designed an utterly unexpected form, neither tower nor slab nor even quite a pyramid, but a gracefully asymmetrical peak with a landscaped bower in its hollowed core. It looks wild, but it’s born of logic; true originality is the inevitable endpoint of rigorous thought.

...The new building, he explains, will fuse two apparently incompatible types: a European-style, low-rise apartment block encircling a courtyard, and a Manhattan tower-on-a-podium, yielding something that looks like neither and behaves like both. New York is ready to embrace such a griffin, he insists: “This is the country that invented surf and turf! To put a lobster on a steak—any French chef would tell you that’s a crime.”

...Well before opening a New York outpost, the Bjarke Ingels Group, founded in 2005 and known by its swaggering acronym, BIG, had turned American-style surf and turf into an architectural philosophy. One of the Ørestad projects merged suburban development with dense city living by stacking little houses with yards into a precipitous mound over a parking garage. To emphasize the building’s loftiness, a steel façade displays a perforated image of Everest.

...Now he is bringing the mountain to Manhattan. Durst’s West 57th Street site is a large, unpromising oblong plot pointing toward the liftoff point of the West Side Highway and flanked by an active but largely empty steam plant and a new garbage-truck garage.

Ingels’s design capitalizes on the city’s steady march to the ever-more-verdant riverfront, where industry meets leisure. He and his architects had multiple tasks: turn the building toward the water, leave neighbors’ views as intact as possible, and negotiate a transition from the low-slung silhouette of Hell’s Kitchen to the long-necked towers of Riverside South.

At the same time, Ingels wanted to make a “blatant” connection with Hudson River Park, and pull its greenery into the heart of the architecture in the form of a spacious court. To open up views, the building dips down at its southwestern corner. To mitigate traffic noise, it pulls back from the highway and the sanitation garage, rising along a steep, continuous slope to a sharp 450-foot summit.

...In a gridded city, reason would seem to dictate an architecture of seamless planes and perpendicular lines, but Ingels has found a more efficient eccentricity. Balconies slash the inclined plane. The apartments slant away from the corridor like fishbones so that windows on 58th Street frame westward views. Ingels is a virtuoso of repetitive protrusions: Instead of facing the building with a slick screen of glass, he breaks it into a Cubist expanse of windowed bays.

The design still has a long parade of approvals to win, beginning with a community- board presentation on February 9, but already it’s clear that without giving up a rentable square foot, busting a frugal developer’s budget, or requesting more than minor tweaks to city rules, Ingels has reinvented a type of architecture that seemed immune to innovation.

NYguy Feb 7, 2011 2:18 PM

Another look...


http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/18602/1142693.jpg

fimiak Feb 7, 2011 5:55 PM

That's f--ing incredible! I walked by that site just yesterday after brunch and was wondering about it. If I go again I will get pictures of this corner.

http://i383.photobucket.com/albums/o...pe/Capture.jpg

babybackribs2314 Feb 7, 2011 5:59 PM

If only he had remained behind a cubicle with his peers. This is one of the ugliest buildings I've ever seen proposed in the world let alone NYC and I'm going to be furious if this is approved. HIDEOUS. :yuck:

ucgrady369 Feb 7, 2011 6:51 PM

Its not Bjarke's best, if you go to his website you will see he has great designs, but more importantly his projects are based on programmatic and user diagrams so that more than just looking cool, they work.

patriotizzy Feb 7, 2011 7:36 PM

I don't mind the design, however it seems like the pyramid design doesn't utilize the space on the lot very well. Why not build something a bit more convenient and take advantage of the space they have...

northbay Feb 7, 2011 7:54 PM

great building.

much better pictures and video:

http://www.big.dk/projects/w57/

the picture in the first post doesn't do it justice.

hunser Feb 7, 2011 8:18 PM

build it, now! ... and taller! :D

Tony73 Feb 7, 2011 8:24 PM

FANTASTIC:tup:

Obey Feb 7, 2011 8:28 PM

Pretty cool

yankeesfan1000 Feb 7, 2011 8:48 PM

I love this building, it's nice to see something different than just a big glass box. All images from NYCurbed: http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2011/0...ing_rental.php

http://cdn.cstatic.net/cache/gallery...95f724db_o.png

http://cdn.cstatic.net/cache/gallery...662aacef_o.png

http://cdn.cstatic.net/cache/gallery...81358a36_o.png

http://cdn.cstatic.net/cache/gallery...994eed25_o.png

http://cdn.cstatic.net/cache/gallery...197c0f59_o.png

http://cdn.cstatic.net/cache/gallery...2256ca01_o.png

http://cdn.cstatic.net/cache/gallery...814f6d35_o.png

http://cdn.cstatic.net/cache/gallery...278fe808_o.png

http://cdn.cstatic.net/cache/gallery...10358396_o.png

http://cdn.cstatic.net/cache/gallery...796884fd_o.png

http://cdn.cstatic.net/cache/gallery...38c7947c_o.png

Duffstuff129 Feb 7, 2011 10:19 PM

This one has my mouth absolutely watering. If they use the right materials, this will likely be one of the best buildings of the decade.

NYguy Feb 7, 2011 10:30 PM

I like it. I think its the perfect location and oppurtunity for a building of this type in Manhattan.


http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/18602/1143173.jpg



http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/18602/1143174.jpg



http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/18602/1143175.jpg



http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/18602/1143176.jpg



http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/18602/1143177.jpg



http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/18602/1143178.jpg



http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/18602/1143179.jpg



http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/18602/1143180.jpg



http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/18602/1143181.jpg



http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/18602/1143182.jpg



http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/18602/1143183.jpg


For a reference, the buildings in the background of that last pic are supposed to be this...
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=160278

Obey Feb 7, 2011 10:43 PM

I've seen and heard of this building before. Looks really nice, especially to live in!

patriotizzy Feb 7, 2011 11:58 PM

I change my mind. I love this building!

pico44 Feb 8, 2011 3:09 AM

This is brilliant. What is the likelihood of this getting built?

STERNyc Feb 8, 2011 3:21 AM

I like it alot! If I had to nitpick about one thing its the base, the slope just isn't right just above it, its too squashed just to fill out the lot line, it doesn't have the same flow the rest of the building has. The rest of the building is genius, this isn't function following form as the shape allows almost all apartments a water view. The random window pattern we've seen all over the City is finally put on an interesting treatment and not a simple box for once! The slash in the middle is great, the protruding windows are great! Will this building be kitschy and dated? It already is, this is straight from the Montreal Expo, but it looks great nevertheless, just as the Montreal Olympic Stadium and Trans America Pyramid do today, a good eye for design is a good eye for design regardless of how far out the concept is.

Antares41 Feb 8, 2011 3:50 AM

Love it! Beautiful "out-of-the-box" (no pun intended) design. Hope it becomes a reality.

Roadcruiser1 Feb 8, 2011 3:53 AM

This is one unique building. I like it. It looks like a pyramid, but it also looks like a giant came, and bent in the walls. Still it's really cool.

JACKinBeantown Feb 8, 2011 4:10 AM

I'm all for it.


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