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  #101  
Old Posted Sep 9, 2015, 10:25 PM
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Gasp!

Ya'all suggesting a.......dun dun dunnnnnn........RECLAD
!
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  #102  
Old Posted Sep 10, 2015, 3:14 AM
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I kind of liked the idea of turning it into a giant chia pet.

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  #103  
Old Posted Sep 21, 2015, 4:21 AM
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That is what happens wen u 4get 2 landmark a famous (or infamous) building.
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  #104  
Old Posted Sep 29, 2015, 11:45 AM
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Design Competition To Reclad 58-Story MetLife Building

REID WILSON
SEPTEMBER 29, 2015

Quote:
Metals in Construction is launching a competition to reclad 200 Park Avenue, a.k.a the MetLife Building, which is situated directly behind Grand Central Terminal. Architects and engineers are being asked to submit plans for an updated, eco-friendly and efficient façade that would also retain the building’s heritage. 200 Park is a hulking 58-story, 3-million square-foot office building completed in 1963. Submissions are due February 1st, 2016, and $15,000 will be awarded to the team with the most innovative design.
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  #105  
Old Posted Mar 2, 2016, 10:38 PM
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More in Link: http://www.yimbynews.com/2016/03/met...announced.html

====================

MetLife Building Redesign Competition Finalists Announced

Quote:
Back in September, we told you about a competition to conceive a redesign of the MetLife Building. Earlier this week, the six finalists of the “Reimagine a New York City Icon” competition were announced. The competition, sponsored by Metals in Construction magazine and the Ornamental Metal Institute of New York, isn’t part of any actual process in the works to modify the Midtown office tower, but are fascinating ideas of what could be. Perhaps these ideas will be put into use at other buildings.

Before we get to the finalists, which split a $15,000 prize, here is a some background on the building itself. The 59-story-tall MetLife Building is located immediately north of Grand Central Terminal, at 200 Park Avenue. Designed by Emery Roth & Sons, Pietro Belluschi, and Walter Gropius, it opened on March 7, 1963, only back then it was the Pan Am Building. It served as the airline’s headquarters and even had airport helicopter shuttle service on its roof. Though there was a gap in the service from 1968 to 1977, its resumption was short-lived and came to a particularly gruesome end. A Sikorsky S-61’s landing gear collapsed, leading to one of the rotor blades coming off, killing three people waiting to board (with a fourth dying later) and then flying off the roof to kill a woman on the street, for a total of five dead. The shuttle service never resumed.

[...]




















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  #106  
Old Posted Mar 2, 2016, 11:55 PM
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Lol. They all suck.
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  #107  
Old Posted Mar 3, 2016, 1:17 AM
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I like these designs,that supertall would be massive on the skyline. I personally love this building but it would be nice to see a recladding here.
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  #108  
Old Posted Mar 3, 2016, 9:20 AM
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I like the 4th picture down, the one with the old Pan Am logo- it gives the building a fresh new look while still respecting the original design. The second one from the bottom turned Pan Am into a wild partier by the looks of it.
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  #109  
Old Posted Mar 3, 2016, 5:17 PM
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The building needs to be left alone, but I'm not opposed to bringing back the Pam Am sign.

That shit looked good back in the day.
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  #110  
Old Posted Mar 5, 2016, 5:57 PM
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I’m against tampering with this one. Like Seagram or OCMP, it’s an icon of its time. It represents an era. I hope these proposals go the way of the one to reclad One Astor Plaza.

Is this building yet eligible for landmark status?
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  #111  
Old Posted Mar 6, 2016, 12:41 AM
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It was just a competition for a design, but this isn't being modified.

Last edited by chris08876; Mar 6, 2016 at 4:58 PM. Reason: Holy typo heaven, I must of been drunk typing this
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  #112  
Old Posted Mar 6, 2016, 4:14 PM
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Right, I had done some further investigating and was relieved to realize that. Still, I would very much like to see the tower designated as a landmark.
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  #113  
Old Posted Jun 7, 2016, 10:05 AM
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Article about the building I came across....
http://www.6sqft.com/great-game-chan...-architecture/

Just a couple of excerpts:

Quote:
According to James Trager in his 1990 book, “Park Avenue, Street of Dreams,” William Zeckendorf, head of Webb & Knapp Inc., proposed in 1954 an 80-story, 4.8 million-square-foot tower, 500 feet taller than the Empire State Building which would replace Grand Central Terminal.

The pinched-cylinder design by I. M. Pei, perhaps his finest, was, however, quickly abandoned, but the next year Erwin S. Wolfson, head of the Diesel Construction Company, proposed a considerably smaller tower on the present site of the MetLife Building.......

.....in 1958, Emery Roth & Sons came forward with another design for Wolfson, a 50-story, three million-square-foot tower with a helipad and parking for 2,000 cars.

....The building, they continued, which was then called the Grand Central City Building, was to be clad in aluminum and glass and the “north-south tower rising from the base would not be significantly wider than that of the New York Central Building” and “would thus cause a minimal disruption of the vista up and down Park Avenue.”

In “New York 1960, Architecture and Urbanism Between the Second World War and the Bicentennial,” Robert A. M. Stern, Thomas Mellins and David Fishman...... noted, however, that “Wolfson felt uncomfortable with the modesty of the Roth design” and “asked Richard Roth to suggest a few possible design collaborators.” Roth suggested Walter Gropius, who in turn suggested Pietro Belluschi, the authors noted.

.....In 1959, the three architects came up with a revised plan of a larger building with an “elongated” octagonal plan and a very bold pre-cast concrete facade. Stern, Mellins and Fishman observed that the new design was based on “a well-known prototype, Le Corbusier’s unrealized skyscraper for Algiers (1938-42)” and was “also related to Gio Ponti and Pier Luigi Nervi’s technologically innovative, far more sveltely proportioned Pirelli Building, then under construction in Milan.”
This was the I.M.Pei proposal mentioned above:

source

Grand Central City proposal by Emery Roth and Sons:


source

Le Corbusier's Algiers proposal:

source

Pirelli building:

source
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  #114  
Old Posted Nov 23, 2016, 3:46 AM
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Originally Posted by SkyscrapersOfNewYork View Post
I like these designs,that supertall would be massive on the skyline. I personally love this building but it would be nice to see a recladding here.
I was looking at around and I saw the competition to redo this building. In my opinion, they all suck, really hard. Why is there a need to put plants on a building. Furthermore, what's the point of having produce grow on them. It's not like the building is going to supply the city with food. It seems to me architects are just using buzzwords like 'environment' to seem ahead of the pack and progressive. I'm sorry, you're not. How about use the money that 'would' be spent on "being environmentally sound" and use it to plant for forest or something. I assure you that the corporations inside those offices will do far more damage to the planet than brutalist architecture will ever do.
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  #115  
Old Posted Feb 18, 2018, 2:48 PM
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  #116  
Old Posted Nov 16, 2018, 8:06 PM
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Pic by me. Taken today.



20181116_105427 by Christopher Estevez, on Flickr
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  #117  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2018, 2:25 PM
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https://nypost.com/2018/12/10/midtow...eded-overhaul/

Midtown’s MetLife Building getting much needed overhaul

By Steve Cuozzo
December 10, 2018


Quote:
One of Midtown’s least-loved office-building public spaces is about to be made more lovable — and a lot easier to navigate.

The confusing, two-level, 50,000- square-foot lobby of 200 Park Avenue, aka the MetLife Building, is set for a major beautification via the tower’s owner, Tishman Speyer, and its California-based investment partner, Irvine Company.

The landlord has commissioned MdeAS Architects to reimagine the heavily traversed public space that runs from East 45th Street to Grand Central Terminal’s main concourse.

The lobby’s new look will banish current dark accents for a lighter palette including travertine-clad columns and terrazzo flooring.
Tishman Speyer President and CEO Rob Speyer said the redesign “will restore the vision of 200 Park’s original stewards while meeting the needs of a new generation.”
Quote:
Perhaps the most transformative change will be the creation of ground-floor, open passageways linking the lobby directly to the lip of the terminal concourse. Existing storefronts that have blocked the way since the 1980s will be dismantled to create open views from the top of the terminal escalators to the East 45th Street light.

As things are, occupants and visitors must find their way through narrow passageways to either side of the stores or ride escalators up to a mezzanine and then down again.

The architecture firm noted that the tower’s lobby was altered several times in the past by previous owners. “The new design, part restoration, part reinvigoration, is a nod to its past and a celebration of its future,” the firm said in a statement.

The changes will be welcomed by Grand Central commuters as well as by tenants such as MetLife, law firms Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Greenberg Traurig, and real estate powerhouse CBRE. The tower’s 3.1 million square feet are 99 percent leased.
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  #118  
Old Posted Dec 17, 2018, 4:28 AM
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  #119  
Old Posted Aug 2, 2019, 1:42 PM
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Metlife should come down. It's a crime, that one. Mind you, the shape is quite interesting. But that's all I can say for it. It blocks the avenue, which is a shame. You used to be able to see down Park avenue around that pretty building.

Now, it's not going to happen anytime soon, but someday they could blow it up, and that would be a god send. Grey concrete doesn't age nicely. Now, Paris is re cladding their horrible Tour Montparnase in lovely glass and hopefully met life considers doing that here, it would be better than nothing.

Last edited by urbanview; Aug 2, 2019 at 4:21 PM.
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  #120  
Old Posted Aug 2, 2019, 5:16 PM
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Pretty sure the MetLife building is landmarked? It sure is ugly. Maybe one day it will be replaced like in the Marvel movies when Tony Stark tears the MetLife tower down and replaces it with a supertall.
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