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  #1  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 2:14 PM
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Smile 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.




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.
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  #2  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 2:18 PM
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Another look...


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  #3  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 5:55 PM
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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.


Last edited by fimiak; Feb 7, 2011 at 6:13 PM.
     
     
  #4  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 5:59 PM
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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.
     
     
  #5  
Old Posted Feb 8, 2011, 5:53 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by babybackribs2314 View Post
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.
Are you nuts??!!! This building is spectacular! I think you're in the super-extreme minority with this one...
     
     
  #6  
Old Posted Jan 28, 2016, 4:23 AM
Phil McAvity Phil McAvity is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by babybackribs2314 View Post
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.
The quintessential example of how architecture, like art, is completely subjective because this may be the coolest looking building i've ever seen.
     
     
  #7  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 6:51 PM
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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.
     
     
  #8  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 7:36 PM
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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...
     
     
  #9  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 7:54 PM
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great building.

much better pictures and video:

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

the picture in the first post doesn't do it justice.
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Pictures of Santa Rosa, So. Co.
     
     
  #10  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 8:18 PM
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build it, now! ... and taller!
     
     
  #11  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 8:24 PM
Tony73 Tony73 is offline
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Smile

FANTASTIC
     
     
  #12  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 8:28 PM
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Pretty cool
     
     
  #13  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 8:48 PM
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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





















     
     
  #14  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 10:19 PM
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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.
     
     
  #15  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 10:30 PM
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I like it. I think its the perfect location and oppurtunity for a building of this type in Manhattan.













































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
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  #16  
Old Posted May 2, 2012, 4:59 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NYguy View Post
I like it. I think its the perfect location and oppurtunity for a building of this type in Manhattan.
Perfect location? Maybe if it was about 2 miles further south... 17th & West would put it next to the IAC building, between the High Line and Chelsea Piers.
     
     
  #17  
Old Posted May 2, 2012, 9:38 PM
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Originally Posted by 10023 View Post
Perfect location? Maybe if it was about 2 miles further south... 17th & West would put it next to the IAC building, between the High Line and Chelsea Piers.
"Perfect location" doesn't translate as "best spot on the planet". What I mean is that it's on the waterfront, and isn't blocked or surrounded by taller towers, important in Manhattan for a building of this size.
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NEW YORK is Back!

“Office buildings are our factories – whether for tech, creative or traditional industries we must continue to grow our modern factories to create new jobs,” said United States Senator Chuck Schumer.
     
     
  #18  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 10:43 PM
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I've seen and heard of this building before. Looks really nice, especially to live in!
     
     
  #19  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2011, 11:58 PM
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I change my mind. I love this building!
     
     
  #20  
Old Posted Feb 8, 2011, 3:09 AM
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This is brilliant. What is the likelihood of this getting built?
     
     
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