Quote:
Originally Posted by aquablue
Please stop trying to make excuses. It's a lame set back box with no design innovation. Also it's actually shorter than sears so no real height innovation.
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Excuses? I'm afraid not.
First of all, I'd like to think that I've been attuned to these various conversations all over the NYC-realated threads long enough to understand that economic conditions coupled with tenant demands are the basic driving forces behind what gets built, why and how.
That said, does anyone really think that a high-end bidder like Nordstrom's would appreciate some developer--take your pick--accosting them with a meaningless question like "So...given its location in our great city, do you want your North American/World HQ's to look like a psychedelic phallus or a Barnsley fern?"
IMO they seemed to have wanted something that said "Here We Are" rather loudly, but at the same time perhaps rejecting ideas that to them would have either trivialized or diminished outright the image of their enterprise.
IMHO, It was never in the cards for this tower to shatter some sort of imaginary, preconceived mold vis a vis "innovation", whatever that term is taken subjectively to mean. As I said before, the residential aspect of this tower probably contributed just as much into "dumbing it down", again because the demand all over New York for affordable living space is a naturally prohibitive strike against anything that remotely smacks of extravagance.