NEW YORK | 425 Park Ave | 860 FT | 42 FLOORS

[meh_cd]

Fosters is good, but I would have been fine with any of them except Rogers' design. Oof-dah.

[Antares41]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Ok, so the Foster building is 687 ft. to the rooftop, but not to the "spire" or whatever that is.

So I guess it's about 850 ft. or so, very roughly.

From one of the diagrams they're "fins" which functions as part of the building thermal management system. If this indeed the case then they will be metal, possibly even aluminum or copper alloy to maximize thermal conductivity and thus heat dissipation, much like a radiator.

[Duck From NY]

Originally Posted by NYguy

Proposal by Rogers Stirk Harbour Partners
Height: 665 feet; Stories: 44

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I'm just glad they didn't select this one, mostly because of the awful yellow coloring of the tubing. I would be happy with any of the other three.

[NYguy]

archidose






http://www.metalocus.es/content/en/b...e-proposal-oma

[ThatOneGuy]

I think yellow steel would have looked okay. Check out the Leadenhall Building in London. Its yellow steel looks quite nice.

[Lecom]

Zaha's and Rogers' designs are my favorites. Foster's does give us the most skylines presence, but it looks like the cheapest option.

[hunser]

Oh dear, Hadid's design is just too good to be true... hopefully it will be used somewhere else in the city.

Forster's is totally ok, fits in perfectly imo.

[Duck From NY]

Originally Posted by NYguy

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I must have skipped over this picture before. Thank god they didn't pick this hippie tower. In my opinion, this would have been an awful sore thumb. If it had more-sane coloring, I wouldn't have complained about this design at all.

[lakegz]

I'm glad the Foster tower was chosen as it's my favorite of the bunch.

I actually like a lot of the Roger's design such as the colored steel and the way those outdoor open areas are stacked. They just needed to change the tones in the colors a little and cut down those hideous looking trees.

The Hadid design makes me want to cringe. Of course it is supposed to look futuristic, but I think in real life, that facade would look cheap and very outdated, Kaden tower style.

The Koolhas tower looks sharp to me and I would be happy if they chose that one too and while it would be nice for Park Ave to have some new blood design-wise, it would probably fit in better elsewhere in the city.

Now the Foster tower is perfect for Park Avenue. I always think that the glory days of Park Avenue were the late 1950s to the 1960s when towers like the Seagram and Lever House were built to stand alongside classics like the Waldorf Astoria, Helmseley building and GE building amongst others. This era is kind of when New York came into its own and began dominating modern fashion, culture and art yet did it with a clean style that high modernism exuded. While that era has gone, it seems to have never gone out of style at least



This tower does a lot to remind us of that era while also noting the present with it's white colors, lucent glass and tall striking fins.

[NYguy]

Originally Posted by lakegz

Now the Foster tower is perfect for Park Avenue. I always think that the glory days of Park Avenue were the late 1950s to the 1960s when towers like the Seagram and Lever House were built to stand alongside classics like the Waldorf Astoria, Helmseley building and GE building amongst others. This era is kind of when New York came into its own and began dominating modern fashion, culture and art yet did it with a clean style that high modernism exuded. While that era has gone, it seems to have never gone out of style at least.

This tower does a lot to remind us of that era while also noting the present with it's white colors, lucent glass and tall striking fins.

That's just the thing. We have towers like 250 W 50th St going up, though not on Park Avenue. But it's time for something of this era. I don't believe we've seen the best of what we can be, and we can't only rely on successes of the past. It's time to take some new risks.



I do like the treatment of the fins on this model.

Originally Posted by NYguy

archidose

[Dac150]

Measured up against the rest, the Foster design seems the most fitting and realistic for the setting. It blends a taste of a tradition with a twist of 'new'.

[JayPro]

To expand on the twisting metaphor, I do really hope that the Koolhaas design is one day chosen for a spot in the (hopefully) approved MidTown East redevelopment zone. It could even help fill a void Downtown that 56 Leonard will create.
Apropos of this thread, that comparative model of Lord Foster's winner is *sharp*. From due East/West, the appearance of a triple spire (i.e. the fins) will give this part of the skyline a needed and well-deserved boost.

[khaizer007]

56 Leonard is back on track. They might need to find another spot.

[JayPro]

Originally Posted by khaizer007

56 Leonard is back on track. They might need to find another spot.

Thank you for the observation....and that's why I chose the word will. It's a go, I have read up on its status; but I'm not sure what you mean by finding another spot. I'd appreciate it if you could help me clarify this in the thread for that tower (since I don't want to clutter off-topic stuff here). Thanks again.

[JayPro]

Originally Posted by Dac150

Measured up against the rest, the Foster design seems the most fitting and realistic for the setting. It blends a taste of a tradition with a twist of 'new'.

I'm getting the feeling that Rogers didn't even *try* this time. The comparison pic makes it look like a bookshelf stocked with bonsais. I don't even think that it would meld well even with China's tackiest supertalls.

[NYguy]

These four firms were the four "finalists" from the initial process. It would be interesting to see what some other firms would have come up with.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...FTForthStories

Aiming to create an iconic, eye-catching building in the place of a 1950s-built boxy tower at 425 Park Ave., L&L last week reached out to 11 top architectural firms to join a competition to design a new tower. The list included Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Jean Nouvel, each of whom have won architecture's top Pritzker Prize.

[khaizer007]

Originally Posted by JayPro

Thank you for the observation....and that's why I chose the word will. It's a go, I have read up on its status; but I'm not sure what you mean by finding another spot. I'd appreciate it if you could help me clarify this in the thread for that tower (since I don't want to clutter off-topic stuff here). Thanks again.

I was just agreeing with your premise that the OMA proposal should be built somewhere downtown. It would fit well with all those creative buildings popping up in the area (56 leonard, The Calatrava Station, The Ghery building etc..)

[Dac150]

Originally Posted by JayPro

I'm getting the feeling that Rogers didn't even *try* this time. The comparison pic makes it look like a bookshelf stocked with bonsais. I don't even think that it would meld well even with China's tackiest supertalls.

Interesting - I find that his design has the most thought and or detail. To each their own.

[NYguy]

http://archrecord.construction.com/n...York-Style.asp

The Making of a Landmark, New York Style
Behind the Scenes of 425 Park Avenue





By Suzanne Stephens
October 25, 2012

The amount of attention showered on Manhattan’s 425 Park Avenue, the proposed 687-foot-high office tower by Foster + Partners, may make people wonder. A very high high-rise—this is what New York City does, so why the fuss? The reasons would seem to be disparate but compelling: the first three of course are location, location, location. The skyscraper, which was announced October 3, will occupy a block between 55th and 56th Streets, a stretch of Park Avenue that is famous for two Modernist landmarks—Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building (1958) and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Lever House (1952).

Add to the location the fact that little new construction has appeared in this swank section of East Midtown since the 1950s. And making the project even more newsworthy is the choice of the architect, the world-renown Norman Foster.....Put all this together with the timing of its appearance. The tower is being proposed at a moment when Mayor Bloomberg is pushing for the rezoning of a 70-block area around Grand Central (between 39th and 57th Streets).

The tall, attenuated, elegant skyscraper is a far cry from Foster’s stubby, muscular Hearst Tower (2006) in west Midtown. It is a significantly better design than the 32-story wedding-cake shaped building by Kahn & Jacobs it will replace on Park Avenue. L&L Holding will take over the lease of the site when the original one expires for the 1957 structure (along with current occupants’ leases) in 2015. L&L then plans to demolish the white-brick and glass pile for the new scheme.

Foster’s 41-story tower pushes the elevator core to the rear (east) elevation, articulated by three shear walls. The glass and steel frame structure provides column-free spaces and views on three sides. Setbacks allow large open spaces or terraces for the 650,000-square-foot (gross) high-rise. If zoning allows, the tower will be lifted off the street to create a large sheltered plaza, which Levinson and Foster consider intrinsic to improving the public realm.

How does this proposal fit in with the city’s East Midtown rezoning?.....Because Hudson Yards in West Midtown and Lower Manhattan’s World Trade Center site, both in various stages of development, would suffer from more office construction in Midtown, the East Midtown zoning comes with a sunrise provision: A developer would have to wait five years before starting construction to give the weaker sibling developments a jump start. So if 425 Park is willing to be very patient, it could go to 21.6 FAR. L&L has a different time frame. It wants the tower to start construction by 2015, and be finished by 2017. If the new East Midtown zoning were be in place by October 2013, as reported, permits would go out around 2017, and developers could start building in 2018. The lag is perhaps the reason Levinson wants to stay with an 18 FAR, although he doesn’t want to be saddled with keeping the base of Kahn & Jacobs’ tower. If he could cut a deal soon the tower would stand proud and tall above civic space in 2018, and be already occupied while others in the East Midtown zoning were getting going. The city might be willing to work something out with Levinson avant la lettre, so to speak, but according to some, it’s not without a payback: if Levinson gets the unencumbered 18 FAR, the city would like a payment to make up the difference between 15 and 18.

[NYguy]

masnyc