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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/re...l?ref=business
Offices Put High Above the High Line http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...er.enlarge.jpg Morris Admji, left, and Charles Blaichman at 14th Street project. http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...towerB.190.jpg A rendering of the tower. By STACEY STOWE April 16, 2008 In the trendy meatpacking district, an office tower used to be as rare a sighting as a fanny pack. But the area, a 20-square block playground of boutiques, bistros and luxury apartments in Manhattan, is starting to attract new corporate tenants. Indeed, in a neighborhood where the clip-clop of stilettos has replaced the scrape of a meat hook on a cable, one new building, at 450 West 14th Street, is being built on a distinctive site imbued with slaughterhouse and sleekly modern characteristics. Designed by the architect Morris Adjmi, a 10-story glass tower is under construction on top of a former meatpacking plant, a three-story buff brick building where cattle carcasses were delivered by rail and processed for consumption. The 22,000-square-foot plant sits atop the High Line, the former elevated train track that is being redeveloped as an urban park. The High Line runs 103 feet through the building, which will have a staircase and elevator for access to the track. “Morris combined the historic significance of the building and also captured the essence of history in the meatpacking district,” said Charles Blaichman, the principal developer of the project. The meatpacking district, which sits between 15th and Horatio Streets on the West Side, originated in 1884, when the city set aside a two-acre parcel for food stalls. It was named the Gansevoort Market, for Gen. Peter Gansevoort, who was a Revolutionary War hero and grandfather of Herman Melville, according to the Meatpacking District Initiative, a nonprofit business development organization. Mr. Blaichman’s office building is expected to have full-floor tenants. It is set amid a landscape that includes some 50 nightclubs and restaurants. He said he hoped that certain kinds of companies would appreciate being part of that mix. These might be financial firms or advertising agencies, he said, or “whoever wants to work in an interesting neighborhood.” While it has a particularly striking design, the West 14th Street project is not the only office building under construction in the meatpacking district. The event planner Robert Isabell is erecting an 80,000-square-foot building behind the restaurant Pastis that will span the full width of the block between West 13th Street and Little West 12th Street. The prospective annual rent in that building is $100 to $175 a square foot, depending on the floor, said the leasing agent, Matthew R. Bergey, a broker with CB Richard Ellis. There will be ground floor retail space and offices above. Offices are beginning to sprout in the area because “people want to work where they live,” Mr. Bergey said. He said that the trend began when Paul Tudor Jones of the Tudor Investment Corporation leased 10,000 square feet of office space above the Apple store at 401 West 14th Street. “There’s a lot of high-net-worth individuals running around, and they want high-end space to work in,” said Mr. Bergey, who specializes in leases of office space in Chelsea, the meatpacking district and the West Village. When finished about 14 months from now, Mr. Blaichman’s building will have 100,000 square feet of office space to lease for $100 to $125 a square foot annually as well as 8,000 square feet of retail space at $400 a square foot, Mr. Adjmi said. The project is expected to cost about $55 million. Two retail stores will occupy the ground floor of 450 West 14th Street. Interest has been expressed by high-end fashion retailers, Mr. Blaichman said. The tenants will be half a block away from the Diane Von Furstenberg store at 874 Washington Street. Ms. Furstenberg’s son, Alex, is a partner with Mr. Blaichman in the 450 West 14th Street project. Mal Serure, is the third partner. Other retailers in the neighborhood include the clothing boutiques Trina Turk on Gansevoort Street and Maison Martin Margiela on Greenwich Street. Restaurants like Pastis and Spice Market and hotels like the Gansevoort and Soho House have drawn tourists to the area. Two blocks away from Mr. Blaichman’s project is the Caledonia, the first high-end residential tower to be built on the High Line. Its developers are the Related Companies and Taconic Investment Partners. As for the office space in his new building, Mr. Blaichman said, the fifth and sixth floor have been spoken for by a fashion retailer, whom Mr. Blaichman declined to identify because the deal had not been completed. The sweeping views from the upper floors will include the Hudson River, the Marine Aviation Terminal Pier and the Standard, an André Balazs hotel. The building will address environmental concerns, being constructed with some sustainable materials in an energy-efficient manner, said Mr. Adjmi, whose works includes the new Prudential Center area in downtown Newark. Mr. Blaichman, 54, was a developer of the Urban Glass House, a condominium on Spring Street in Lower Manhattan that was the last commission of the architect Philip Johnson, who died in 2005 at age 98, with interiors designed by Annabelle Selldorf. In the early 1990s, Mr. Blaichman, whose father, Frank, develops hotels and residential projects in New Jersey, worked primarily on town house and loft restorations, including the rehabilitation of a space once owned by Bob Dylan for the Italian painter Francesco Clemente. In building 450 West 14th Street, Mr. Blaichman, who has developed property in the meatpacking district for a decade, sought to retain the original character of the location. “There’s an attractive vibrancy here of art, fashion, food and design,” he said. “It’s a commercial jewel.” ______________________ http://www.ma.com/projects/450-west-14-street/ http://www.ma.com/projects/images/450-Perspective2.jpg http://www.ma.com/projects/images/450-Perspective.jpg |
It just keeps getting better and better...
:worship: :worship: :worship: :worship: :worship: :eeekk: ......convulsions......convulsions.....:hyper: ..........:hyper: .....:hyper: :hyper: :hyper: |
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/01/ar...01whit.html?hp
Whitney’s Downtown Sanctuary By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF May 1, 2008 Optimism is in the air again at the Whitney Museum of American Art, which has just released a preliminary design by the Italian architect Renzo Piano for its proposed satellite museum downtown. For more than 20 years the Whitney has been unveiling sunny expansion plans for its Marcel Breuer home on Madison Avenue, only to have them crash against the reality of neighborhood politics. With its decision to build a second museum in the meatpacking district, the Whitney seems to have found its bearings. Mr. Piano’s project for a site on Gansevoort Street, west of Washington Street, is a striking departure from the ethereal glass creations that have made him a favorite of the art-world cognoscenti. Its bold chiseled form won’t appeal to those who prefer architecture to be unobtrusive. Rising among the derelict warehouses and hip boutiques of the rapidly changing neighborhood, the museum’s monumental exterior forms are conceived as a barrier against the area’s increasingly amusement-park atmosphere. It makes a powerful statement about the encroaching effects of the global consumer society. Inside, Mr. Piano has created a contemplative sanctuary where art reasserts its primary place in the cultural hierarchy. The feat is especially impressive given the obstacles Mr. Piano and the Whitney have overcome. After they spent years refining a proposed addition to the Breuer building, the museum abandoned that plan in 2006 (the third time that the museum had pulled out after commissioning a noted architect to design a major expansion). Then the idea of a satellite downtown raised concerns that the Whitney would abandon its Breuer building or that it could not afford to run two museums. In a recent interview Adam Weinberg, the Whitney’s director, said the curators had yet to define the relationship between the two buildings. (One possibility is that the Breuer building will be used for exhibitions that focus on one aspect of the collection or a single artist, with the core of the collection relocated downtown.) Mr. Piano’s design is certainly distinct from Breuer’s, presenting a strange, even forbidding aura. The building’s faceted surface seems hewed from a massive block of stone. Its main facade is slightly angled to make room for a small public plaza. The roof steps down in a series of big terraces on one side; on the other, it forms an impenetrable block facing the West Side Highway. But as you study the form more intently, more layered meanings emerge. The stepped roof, for example, both supports a series of outdoor sculpture gardens and allows sunlight to spill down onto the High Line, the elevated rail bed that is being converted into a public garden. The angle of the facade allows people walking along the High Line to catch glimpses of the Hudson River down Gansevoort Street. The feeling of a structure being carved apart to facilitate the flow of light and movement is magnified at ground level. Part of the structure rests on a glass base that houses a bookstore and cafe, so that you feel the full weight of the building bearing down. The underbelly of the building tilts up at one end, providing shade for the plaza and adding a sense of compression as you approach the entry. This experience abruptly changes as you cross the threshold, for a window at the back of the lobby opens onto a view of the water and the height of the lobby space suddenly lets you breathe again. From there elevators whisk you up to the auditorium, library and galleries. The new museum will have 50,000 square feet of gallery space, compared with 32,000 uptown. The third-floor gallery, at 17,500 square feet, will be the largest column-free space for viewing art in Manhattan, Mr. Weinberg said. Mr. Piano plans to use a weblike structure of delicate steel, glass and fabric scrims for the roof on the top-floor gallery: the kind of intricate lighting system he has created before, in projects like the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. Because the galleries are on multiple levels, visitors can experience the drama of climbing from darkness into light as they proceed through the floors. The contrast between the muscularity of the exterior and the refinement of the interior brings to mind other recent designs, including Rem Koolhaas’s Casa da Musica in Porto, Portugal, and Rafael Moneo’s Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles. Each of these projects offer an enclave conceived as a refuge from the world outside. But in this case Mr. Piano is also offering a gentle critique of Breuer’s fortresslike vision for the Whitney. Like Breuer’s 1966 design, Mr. Piano’s building is a temple to culture; but here the relationship between inside and out — high art and the marketplace — is more fluid. The design is preliminary, and needs more work. The weblike roof system, for example, is nothing more than a concept at this point. Mr. Piano is toying with the notion of bringing daylight into the lower-floor galleries — as the Sanaa design did for the recently opened New Museum on the Bowery — which is possible here because of the terraced roof. Just as important to the outcome of the design, however, is Mr. Piano’s approach to New York’s evolving cultural scene. He and Mr. Weinberg refer to the downtown site as a return to the museum’s roots, because Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s original museum opened on West Eighth Street. But unlike 1930s Greenwich Village, the meatpacking district is more shopping mall than vibrant art scene. So one of Mr. Piano’s most delicate tasks will be to balance a spirit of openness with an instinct for self-preservation. He has wisely decided not to link the building directly to the High Line, forcing visitors to climb down to street level before entering the museum across the plaza. Yet other key issues are less resolved. The building’s chiseled aesthetic could be pushed a bit further, becoming more animated. The relationship between the lobby and the upper floors is still clunky. And there is the issue of material. At a meeting last month Mr. Piano, who often uses the metaphor of a ship in dry dock when talking about the satellite museum, said he was leaning toward a steel frame structure covered in welded steel plates, an idea that may be a holdover from his abandoned design for the uptown expansion. But the massive form of the downtown design suggests a building drawn from a single block rather than one built of individual structural pieces. That image would probably be strengthened by cladding the building in a stone compound. A concrete exterior could also form a psychological bridge between the new museum and the Breuer building, making a trip downtown feel more like a homecoming. Mr. Piano certainly has the skill to resolve these issues. Meanwhile he has laid the groundwork for a serious work of architecture. The bold form expresses a level of experimental courage that he hasn’t shown in years. It represents his willingness to move forward without betraying his faith in historical continuity. This is a building that could revive the Whitney, and inject welcome creative energy into the city’s cultural life. http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...enzoslide1.jpg http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...enzoslide3.jpg |
http://www.thevillager.com/villager_...rwasthere.html
Celebrating 75 years: Newspaper was there at High Line’s birth and now its rebirth By Albert Amateau Since 1850, street-level railroad tracks ran down Manhattan’s West Side. Fatal accidents between freight trains and street-level traffic gave 10th Ave. the nickname of “Death Ave.” So a speed limit was established, and for safety, “West Side Cowboys,” men on horses waving red flags or lanterns at night, preceded the trains. In 1929, after years of debate, the city and state signed an agreement with the New York Central Railroad for The West Side Improvement Project, which included the High Line, a rail viaduct 18 feet to 30 feet above grade between 35th St. and the St. John’s Terminal building at Spring St. The elevated rail line was completed in 1934. “Tracks Gone from Death Avenue,” proclaimed The Villager page 1 headline on July 5, 1934. “Famous pony express outrider vanishes from the scene,” the article said. The railroad tracks previously at street level were replaced the week before when Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia traveled the length of the $300 million viaduct. In the Oct. 18, 1934, issue of The Villager, an article noted that the elevated tracks went through the buildings of the National Biscuit Company, the Cudahy Packing Company and the Bell Telephone Laboratory at Bethune St. (now Westbeth) and Armour, Wilson, Swift, Borden’s and the New York Dressed Poultry Terminal in the Meatpacking District. But the nation’s transportation system went from rails to roads after World War II. By 1962, the High Line south of Houston St. was demolished and The Villager wrote about a proposal to convert the viaduct into a truck express roadway. The scheme was “a dead duck” when it was declared illegal. In 1980, The Villager noted that the last train on the High Line carried a load of frozen turkeys. In the mid-1980s a group of owners of property under the High Line began to demolish the remnant of the High Line. But a railroad enthusiast, Peter Obletz, acquired a title to the line from Conrail, the then owner, for $1. Obletz, who was chronicled in The Villager, became a member of Community Board 4 and envisaged a return to railroad use, and failing that, the creation of an elevated park. In 1992, the stretch of the High Line that ran through the Village between Houston and Horatio Sts. was taken down to make way for residential development. In 1999, The Villager began following the story of Friends of the High Line and its founders, Josh David and Robert Hammond, who were advocating for converting the viaduct into an elevated park. The idea, derided as fantasy at first, soon caught on and Mayor Bloomberg made it the centerpiece of a new West Side with a 1.5-mile-long park in the sky. Work began in April 2006 and the first half of the park, between Gansevoort and W. 20th Sts. is scheduled to open by the end of this year. |
Wow, just wow!
I was in New York for the first time back in the summer of '05. I remember seeing the conceptual plans for all this at the MOMA I think. I thought it would be such an amazing project. How did I not stumble onto this thread sooner? This looks amazing! :tup: I loved my one visit to New York and have always thought about a trip back sooner rather than later, perhaps I should wait until some of this is completed to really sweeten that trip! In Calgary we have a set of rail lines running right through our CBD and 'beltline' district. A lot of us Calgary forumers dream of the day when the rail is relocated and we could open up that space to parks and projects like this. |
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NYGuy, your updates on the New York threads in the G.D. forum make me so excited when they appear. Keep it comin'! :tup: |
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The HL23 exhibit opened at the Museum of the City of New York...
http://archinect.com/news/article.php?id=76380_0_24_0_C Some images from AP... http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3282/...g?v=1213665433 http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3282/...dc377e3a_b.jpg http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3272/...d9a9f9.jpg?v=0 http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3272/...33d9a9f9_b.jpg http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3109/...g?v=1213665418 http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3142/...760f5b.jpg?v=0 http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3142/...e1760f5b_b.jpg |
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Updated On 06/25/08 at 06:22PM
New High Line renderings revealed New renderings of the High Line were unveiled by the city today, showing new features, notably a sundeck with half an inch of running water. The renderings are the first to be released since the originals came out back in 2005. The park's first phase, which runs from Gansevoort Street to 20th Street, is set to open by the end of this year. The second phase, which runs from 20th Street and to 30th Street, is slated to open by the end of 2009. Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro were the design team selected for the project after an international competition in 2004. The project, which will redevelop abandoned elevated railroad structures, has accelerated a residential boom on the far West Side. TRD http://s3.amazonaws.com/trd_three/im...e4_midsize.jpg http://s3.amazonaws.com/trd_three/im...e6_midsize.jpg http://s3.amazonaws.com/trd_three/im...e1_midsize.jpg http://s3.amazonaws.com/trd_three/im...e2_midsize.jpg |
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/ny...l?ref=nyregion
City Unveils Final Plan on First Slice of the High Line By SEWELL CHAN June 26, 2008 City officials and the Friends of the High Line presented the final design on Wednesday for the first phase of the High Line, the $170 million park that is under construction on the West Side of Manhattan and has been called one of New York City’s more distinctive public projects. The park, modeled loosely on the Promenade Plantée in Paris, is being built on a 1.45-mile elevated freight rail structure that stretches 22 blocks, from Gansevoort Street to 34th Street, near the Hudson River. The rail structure, built to support two fully loaded freight trains, was built from 1929 to 1934 when the West Side was a freight-transportation hub, but has been unused for decades. The tracks are 30 to 60 feet wide and 18 to 30 feet above the ground. Ground was broken in April 2006. Over the past two years, crews have been constructing the first, $85 million segment of the 6.7-acre park, which is estimated to cost $170 million and is financed by federal, city and private money. At a news conference in Chelsea, officials unveiled two sets of final designs: for the first phase, which will stretch from Gansevoort Street to 20th Street and be completed by the end of this year, and for the second phase, which will go from 20th Street to 30th Street and be completed by the end of 2009. “The High Line will be like other parks in our city’s system, but it will also be distinct — a park in the sky, unlike any other,” Adrian Benepe, the city’s parks commissioner, said in a statement. Amanda M. Burden, the city’s planning commissioner, who joined Mr. Benepe at the news conference, said in a statement that the designers had “created a magical environment that is at once ever-changing, intricate and sweeping.” The designs for the park are the creation of a team led by Field Operations, a landscape architectural company, which, along with architects from Diller Scofidio + Renfro, won a 2004 design competition. The Museum of Modern Art exhibited the team’s preliminary designs for the first phase of the High Line in 2005. The new designs reveal with greater precision the important elements of the park’s first phase, including Gansevoort Plaza, the park’s southern terminus in the meatpacking district and a major access point for the park; the “slow stairs” that will gradually ascend from street level to the elevated rail bed; and a two-level sundeck between 14th and 15th Streets that will offer views of the Hudson. It will also have an art installation space where the park cuts through the Chelsea Market, formerly a Nabisco factory; and the 10th Avenue Square, an area of steps and ramps at 17th Street where visitors can descend into the lower part of the elevated railway. An additional $14 million has been designated for a plaza and stairs to the park, still to be designed. A third and final phase of the High Line, still in the planning stages, involves a half-mile section ringing the railyards north of 30th Street and 12th Avenue. A developer, the Related Companies, won a contract in May to redevelop the railyards with the park as part of its proposal, but who will finance that final phase of the project remains unclear. Robert Hammond, co-founder of Friends of the High Line, a nonprofit group established in 1999, which will eventually manage and operate the High Line in cooperation with the parks department, said the park’s grand opening had not been scheduled but was likely to take place in December or January. Asked whether the cold months were the best time to open a new park, Mr. Hammond replied that the timing would allow officials — and the public — to acclimate themselves to the new space. “One of my biggest concerns is over-success,” he said. “It’s not MoMA. It’s not the Sheep Meadow. It’s a relatively small park. One of the advantages of opening the window is, it’s almost like a soft opening. As it gets more beautiful in the spring, we’ll be figuring out how to manage it. “One of my concerns is it being loved to death in the first few weeks. It’s a good problem to have, but it’s something we’ve been thinking a lot about.” |
More from curbed.com
http://curbednetwork.com/cache/galle...70835192_o.jpg http://curbednetwork.com/cache/galle...ebc481fb_o.jpg Instantly captivating, the 26th Street Viewing Spur re-imagines the billboards that once dotted the High Line as a place for you, yes you, to become one with advertecture. It also offers, per a comment by Ricardo Scofidio at today's presser, "A way to stand in the middle of Tenth Avenue and not be run over." http://curbednetwork.com/cache/galle...6f8defc6_o.jpg Another highlight of today's announcement was most certainly the 30th Street Cut-Out, in which the High Line's concrete deck is cut away to show beams, girders, and whatever the heck sort of illicit behavior is going on down at street level. This is also the end of Phase Two; immediately to the north is Phase Three, the future of which remains, as Hudson Yards itself, uncertain. http://curbednetwork.com/cache/galle...1950f7e7_o.jpg Look here, it's the 23rd Street Lawn, or as it may be known 10 years from now, "HL23's backyard." Per the press materials, "The High Line's only lawn 'peels up' at this locations, lifting seated visitors above the walkway and offering views to the west and east." We say: bocce! http://curbednetwork.com/cache/galle...2200eea6_o.jpg The next segement is, yes, oh, yes, the Woodland Flyover. "It's a wild, primitive, found-object landscape," James Corner enthused, and yes, we cannot wait to see what objects we find here. |
Pretty interesting how a long narrow park can be built from what was a rail line. Only in New York :)
I rank this is as the best civil project currently being developed here in NY. |
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I do agree about its awesomeness though. The alternative approach would have been to tear it all down... I think we all agree this way is far, far better. |
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/op...ml?ref=opinion
High Line, Low Aims By SEAN WILSEY July 9, 2008 LATE last month, city officials and the group Friends of the High Line presented the final design for part of the $170 million High Line park that is under construction on the West Side of Manhattan. The High Line, an abandoned elevated railway that once carried freight to, and sometimes inside, warehouses, is already a fanciful forest of industrial decay and native plants, and it has the potential to be the most delightful and unconventional green space in the country. And yet I was struck by the banality of the plans unveiled. The idea, come to at great expense and after much fanfare, is essentially to plant some native shrubs (the same shrubs that have been colonizing the structure since the last train ran on it, in 1980) and thread a path through them. I’d been hoping for a utopia. Instead, I got sumac. The plan’s most exciting element is a big glass panel that would allow people on 10th Avenue to look up and see the pedestrians on the High Line. This, plate glass and sumac, provides the city with absolutely nothing it doesn’t already have in abundance. What a waste. The High Line is in many ways a metaphor for the heterogeneity of New York, and an ideal plan should reflect that. It joins two neighborhoods that have been in historic opposition: Greenwich Village, the historical heart of bohemia, and Midtown, a center of global capitalism and corporate culture. To span the gulf, it runs through a largely defunct slaughterhouse district, a gallery district, low-income housing projects, the center of gay Manhattan and heaps of old warehouses. Can’t this be a place to dream? The High Line is exposed mostly in the meatpacking district, with views over the city and the river. It overlooks the street, rather than running through a corridor of buildings. Why not convert the little-trafficked block of Little West 12th Street, between West Street and Washington Street, into a sloped pasture that ascends gradually to the deck of the High Line? Here the deck and pasture could be used for outdoor concerts, dancing and movies, maximizing the openness of this neighborhood. During the day it would be a place for sports and sunbathing, and somewhere to take children from the West Village. Bring in some farm animals to graze on the pasture, adjacent to the quasi-defunct Gansevoort Meat Market building, and you’d have something like Chicago’s Lincoln Park. The Village would be a village again! As the High Line approaches 14th Street it briefly doubles in width, passing through the Eastern Meats building. How about installing snow-making machinery (faithful to the historic use of the building), thereby filling this interior space with winter year round? O.K. maybe this isn’t the greenest of suggestions, but we New Yorkers often take ourselves too seriously and yet, given the opportunity to dream, choke on our own seriousness: the result is the sort of middlebrow design now on the drawing board. In a city that loves farmers’ markets, what about using the section that is almost 50 percent covered (by Chelsea Market, and by a pedestrian bridge) for a multifaceted, small-business mercantile district based around stalls and kiosks? This could be part Arab souk and part Ponte Vecchio — a space with food vendors and little repair shops; somewhere you could go to get your lamps rewired, your shoes resoled and your computer fixed, and buy a bag of oranges. As for the gallery district, why not add an exhibition space atop the High Line, and model it, loosely, on the Vasari Corridor in Florence (another gallery running above the deck of a bridge)? Shows could be drawn from the collections of New York City museums, or installed by artists. Shouldn’t public art be an integral part of this project, rather than shoehorned into a corner in Chelsea Market, as it seems to be in the current plan? And, finally, the several-block section above 30th Street is the place to do big things, noisy things, that will bring conventioneers down from the Javits Center and lure tourists from the Intrepid, a few blocks north. I’d use the old tracks, but bend them into a roller coaster! Of course it’s amazing that the High Line hasn’t been demolished to make way for condos. It is already a miracle. And, like most New Yorkers, I’m appreciative of the work that’s gone into saving it. But why be so hemmed in with what we’ve saved? I’m not making realistic proposals here — though I’d love to see slides fitted to the windows of the buildings that crowd the High Line in the upper 20s; imagine thousands of office workers sliding down to the deck for lunch! The city, after all, can barely afford the sumac. But isn’t this just the sort of moment when public space should be all the more important? Shouldn’t the $170 million High Line, largely financed by private donors (who could certainly increase that budget, if they were inspired), be a project on the scale of the W.P.A.’s greatest hits? So why not incorporate some of the above? What better than an old railroad to show us a way to the future? Sean Wilsey is the author of “Oh the Glory of It All” and co-editor of the forthcoming anthology “State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of the America.” |
http://curbed.com/archives/2008/07/3...tself.php#more
High Line Construction Chronicles: High Line Soils Itself http://curbed.com/uploads/2008_7_soil1.jpg July 31, 2008, by Joey When is a pile of dirt not just a pile of dirt? When it's dumped onto Manhattan's future park-in-the-sky, of course. According to the High Line Blog, this layer of subsoil has just been delivered to the section of track above 19th Street. The subsoil goes under the more refined topsoil, which will get planted in the fall. Of course, all this horticultural madness will eventually yield this, the most spectacular public project in the history of the city, no the history of the world and you cannot convince us otherwise because why can't you just let us have this one special thing in our lives instead of shooting us down and ruining our dreams like you ruin everything else, mom! http://curbed.com/uploads/2008_7_soil2.jpg |
That's the most beautiful dirt I've ever seen.
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I hope this project serves as an inspiration to cities around the nation and world. So much can be learned from this. So often are small and awkward spaces either leveled and paved for underutilized parking, or just sit and do nothing.
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I wonder if there is some old guy out there that still remembers the railroad being used for its original purpose. I'd love to hear his opinion on whether he could ever forsee such change to the railway in the future.
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earlier this month, grasses and perennials arrived for planting. The High Line Blog has photos
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Curbed.com
Construction Watch: Free to Be, HL23 Monday, October 27, 2008, by Joey http://curbednetwork.com/cache/galle...2029891e_o.jpg One day, two Construction Watches? Folks, do not panic. Normally we would provide you with sufficient time and space between batches of photos of steel beams and cement, but in the case of HL23, the news just couldn't wait. Now that the legal wrangling over the Neil Denari-designed condo building at 517 West 23rd Street appears to be settled, the glassy mindtrip is free to rise over the High Line. And rise, it shall! Above, some tipster-submitted photos proving that all newborns look alike, even if they'll grow up to become some sort of bizarre alien being. According to StreetEasy, two of the 15-story building's 11 units are in contract. Is Kanye going to step up to the plate or what? |
NY Post
HIGH STAKES THE HIGH LINE BETS BIG ON DESIGN AND LUXURY By MAX GROSS Last updated: 12:38 am November 13, 2008 Posted: 12:37 am November 13, 2008 http://www.nypost.com/seven/11132008/photos/re046a.jpg This view of the High Line from the Caledonia development includes, from left to right, Frank Gehry's IAC building, the still-in-progress Jean Nouvel condo tower at 100 11th Ave. and Annabelle Selldorf's 520 West Chelsea. In 1999, a nonprofit called Friends of the High Line was born. Its mission was simple: to preserve and beautify the High Line — a 1½-mile strip of elevated rail tracks that snakes along 10th and 11th avenues, from the Meatpacking District through Chelsea. Earlier this year, the group started turning the tracks into a public park, a $170 million project (about $50 million of which is being raised through private donations) — but it would seem as if they’ve already gone way beyond their original mission. This thin strip of greenery has sprouted something unprecedented along its edges in terms of architecture and design. Heavy hitters — including Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry, Annabelle Selldorf and Shigeru Ban — have planted their flags near the High Line, designing residential and commercial buildings that are among the city’s most eye-catching. Andre Balazs is unveiling a hotel called the Standard (which is set for a soft opening in December and which will have a restaurant helmed by former Lever House chef Dan Silverman). And the Whitney is planning a museum for 2012. “In terms of the quality of construction here, it’s everything good about modernism,” says Ping Kwan, himself an architect, who, with wife Aimee Chang, stopped by an open house last weekend for 456 W. 19th St. That new condo building is being designed by Cary Tamarkin and should be finished by the end of next year. http://www.nypost.com/seven/11132008/photos/re047a.jpg STANDARD BY ME: The Standard (left) will have a soft opening in December; HL23 (right) is designed by Neil Denari and has 11 full-floor units. “All these buildings really represent new ideas for living,” Kwan says. But there’s also something ephemeral here. “We won’t see this [kind of] building able to be replicated for many years to come,” says Holly Parker, a broker with Prudential Douglas Elliman, which is selling the half-finished Jean Nouvel condo building at 100 11th Ave., first conceived back in 2005. “We’re not going to see these finishes — it’s the end of an era.” Developers in the future “will choose whatever’s cheaper,” Parker adds. With good reason. Even though a building like 100 11th Ave. is fetching an average of more than $2,000 per square foot, it’s also among the more complex designs around — with pieces of the exterior being shipped from China — and is reportedly roughly $50 million over budget. “The good news is that a lot of the buildings that have been planned look like they’re going to get finished,” says Leonard Steinberg, also with Prudential Douglas Elliman, who is selling the Annabelle Selldorf-designed 200 11th Ave., where units are fetching more than $2,800 per square foot. Steinberg adds that the building is 80 percent sold and that “those buyers are very committed.” The question still hanging in the air is if other buildings, which have already laid down their roots but aren’t close to 80 percent sold, will actually make money. “These are going to be New York landmarks,” says Steinberg. “And sometimes when you make art, you don’t make a profit.” Might it be a case of a neighborhood that flew too far too fast? “Three years ago, the highest we could get in the area was somewhere around $900 [per square foot],” says Erin Boisson Aries, sales director at HL23, another of the swanky new condo buildings with full-floor apartments. And “we’re approaching $3,000 a foot now,” Aries adds. Developers, though, are sobering up. “We’ve been tweaking the whole way through, as we get a sense of the market,” says Tamarkin. “We’re at the roughly $1,850 per square foot range, which is firmly where [the market] wants to be.” And buyers in this market are taking their time. For example, HL23, has sold just two of its 11 units since it went on the market in the spring. And even though the $10.5 million penthouse at HL23 is $2,900 per square foot, the building’s average is closer to $1,800 per square foot. But for buyers who have committed themselves to the High Line, things seems to be chugging along nicely. The High Line “will increase property values — I think it was smart of the city,” says Julie Bauer, who recently bought a two-bedroom at Loft 25, once a printing plant that was turned into condos earlier this year. Bauer, a former TriBeCa resident, thinks it has the same flavor her old neighborhood did before it became hot. “It [became] too much like being on the Upper East Side,” Bauer says of TriBeCa. “There were baby carriages everywhere. It was losing some of its charm. I like being here. I like all the galleries — I like the fact that it’s still a New York neighborhood.” Bauer might be somewhat disappointed, however, about what the future bodes for the High Line. Prams are making their way over here, too. “We wanted to live near the High Line,” says Clay Erwin, who just moved into a two-bedroom, 1,500-square-foot condo in the Caledonia building on West 17th Street with his wife, Kristy, last weekend — they’re expecting a baby in January. “Nationally, real estate is an ugly story — but this is one thing people are excited about.” Indeed, the area has considerably improved in the short four-year spurt when the High Line really started taking off. “For one thing, it’s a lot safer,” says Kevin Donaldson, a 13-year resident of Chelsea, who stopped by the open house at 456 W. 19th St. on Sunday. “When I moved here, it used to be hookers all along here.” “It’s young and vibrant and very upscale,” says Gilbert Dychiao, who also swung by the open house. And the sheer volume of residential real estate that has hit the market recently has been astounding. In addition to those mentioned earlier, new buildings in the area include 540 W. 28th St. and Chelsea Enclave. There’s also Audrey Matlock’s Chelsea Modern, which is 75 percent sold, and which recently saw its first residents move in. And architect Jared Della Valle has two buildings — one at 459 W. 18th St., across from the Caledonia, and another at 245 10th Ave., at 24th Street, a silver building that looks like a design fantasy. “I think it’s the nexus of a number of different things,” says David Wine, vice chairman and executive vice president of the Related Companies, which built the Caledonia (a half-rental, half-condo development). “What you have is incredibly exciting retail in the Meatpacking District [and] unique architecture . . . that combines with the history of New York.” Copyright 2008 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved. |
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/re...l?ref=business
Taking a Stroll Along the High Line http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...ft.xlarge1.jpg http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...qft.large2.jpg The Caledonia apartments, left, and the High Line Building, a future office tower. By AMY CORTESE November 28, 2008 ON a bright, blustery afternoon in November, construction workers were packing up their gear on the High Line, the park being created atop the old elevated railway in the West Chelsea area of Manhattan, leaving it empty for a few intrepid visitors to tour. Even amid the bitter cold and building materials, it was easy to see why the project has inspired even some of the most jaded New Yorkers. Designed by an architectural team from Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the High Line offers a retreat from street life, a bucolic space floating 30 feet in the air with Hudson River views. Yet it retains many elements of its gritty past: graffiti is prevalent on the buildings it wends through, and some of the rails have been restored in the park. That the park — which grew from an idea hatched 10 years ago into a $170 million project —is being built at all is a marvel. “When we first started people thought it was crazy,” said Robert Hammond, a co-founder of Friends of the High Line, the community group that pushed for the park. No longer. The first section of the park will open to the public this spring, but it has already transformed the area near its 22-block stretch near the river, prompting some of the most ambitious development in the city in years. Condominiums, hotels and office buildings — designed by architectural talent like Jean Nouvel, Annabelle Selldorf, Renzo Piano, and the Della Valle Bernheimer firm — are sprouting along the park’s span, which runs from Gansevoort Street to 34th Street. About 1.5 million square feet of construction is already under way, with an additional 2.5 million square feet in planning stages, according to Robert C. Lieber, the deputy mayor for economic development. All told, that translates into roughly $4 billion in private investment, he said. A stroll down the High Line, starting at the north end of the first phase, at 20th Street and 10th Avenue, and heading south toward Gansevoort, provides a glimpse of what is to come. -Near the Frank Gehry building for IAC/InterActiveCorp on 11th Avenue, between 17th and 18th Streets, a 21-story residential tower designed by Mr. Nouvel is rising. Marketing literature promises “the most highly engineered and technologically advanced curtain wall ever constructed in New York City,” with a “Mondrian-like window pattern” of nearly 1,700 panes of glass. -East of the park is 520 West Chelsea, a residential building by Ms. Selldorf, combining a glass facade with blue-glazed terra cotta. Keep strolling and you come across the Caledonia, a $350 million residential development by the Related Companies and Taconic Investment Partners that looms over the High Line at West 17th Street. The building contains a mix of 190 condos and 288 rental units, including 56 designated for low-income renters. -Then it’s on to the High Line Building, the 10-story glass office tower by the developer Charles Blaichman and designed by Morris Adjmi that is rising atop the High Line and a former meatpacking plant. -Above Washington Street, André Balazs’s highly anticipated Standard Hotel is nearing completion. The 18-story hotel, designed by Polshek Partnership Architects, literally straddles the High Line. It is expected to have a soft opening in December with about a third of the 330 rooms open. A restaurant and rooftop pool and lounge won’t open until next February or March. -At the south end of the park, a new branch of the Whitney Museum designed by Renzo Piano will provide a cultural bookend. The new museum is expected to open in late 2012. -And on that bitterly cold November afternoon, a nattily dressed man and his entourage appeared, heading for the Standard Hotel. It was Mr. Balazs, the developer. He confirmed a December soft opening — “very soft,” he says. When asked how much the hotel’s rooms would cost, he said: “I don’t know. The market is changing so fast.” That sentiment hints at the discomfort some developers are feeling as their grand plans run up against a deteriorating economy and credit squeeze. Even the High Line district, as it is being called, cannot escape the tightening economic vise. The developers of the Nouvel tower have run into cost increases and delays; its opening has been pushed back from December to next summer. And there are no signs of construction yet on a couple of lots near the 18th Street entrance to the High Line, where Edison Properties plans to build two towers designed by the architect Robert A. M. Stern. Edison did not return telephone calls seeking comment. Still, many condominium buildings have presold their units. Residents have started moving into condos in the Caledonia. Its condos sold out in eight months starting in 2006, at prices from $600,000 to $4 million. And the rental units began being offered in May. More than 80 percent of the Nouvel building’s condo units have sold, at prices from $2 million to $22 million, said Craig Wood, the developer, including two sales in late September. Despite the difficult environment, his firm, Cape Advisors Inc., refinanced its construction loans in September, he said. Charles R. Bendit, a co-chief executive of Taconic Investment Partners, said: “We all imagine the High Line will be a phenomenal amenity for the area.” John H. Alschuler Jr., chairman of HR&A Advisors, a real estate appraisal firm, estimated that proximity to the High Line has added 10 to 15 percent to the value of properties. And New York City officials have predicted that the High Line park will bring the city $900 million in revenue over 30 years. Even as the first phase is readied for a spring opening, a second phase, from 20th to 30th Street, is expected to be completed in 2010. Mr. Hammond, whose organization will oversee the park in a new role as a conservancy, is taking the long view. “We’re in this for the long term,” he said, and in an otherwise dismal economy, the High Line “is a real bright spot.” He added: “It shows that New York can still think big and do big things.” |
The Highline development surely has to be credited with the current boom in the City.
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Is it just me or does the walking path look too narrow for the number of people I imagine will be walking up and down once this thing is open? It seems to me they're going to get similar numbers of people as the West Village section of the Hudson River Park, and that pathway is much wider. This path looks like it's only wide enough for two people walking abreast.
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An idea from this rendering
Lis Charman http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3264/...05571a20_o.jpg Looking up at the High Line... wsifrancis http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3503/...459ebffd_b.jpg http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3494/...0d1c5970_b.jpg Some older shots... stits http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3225/...cc05b98f_b.jpg http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3149/...ff913fdb_b.jpg |
http://www.chelseanow.com/cn_121/var...yhighline.html
Variance by High Line is meaty issue for board http://www.chelseanow.com/cn_121/highline.gif A rendering of the Romanoff family’s planned building for 437-451 W. 13th St., with the Standard Hotel in the left foreground. By Lincoln Anderson February 13 - 26, 2009 Dealing a blow to a family development team’s vision of a signature, glass-sheathed office tower with large-scale retail in the Meat Market, Community Board 2 recently shot down their request for extra height to allow a 12-story building. C.B. 2 voted at its Jan. 22 full board meeting to deny the developer’s request for a variance for 55 percent extra F.A.R. — or, simply put, for a 55 percent larger building. The vote — done by a show of hands — was roughly about 60 percent yes to 40 percent no. (F.A.R., or floor area ratio, is a multiple of the property’s ground-floor square footage, and determines how much floor area can be built.) With its vote, the board overturned its Zoning Committee, whose resolution had approved a variance for 27 percent additional F.A.R. The community board’s votes are advisory only, and the Romanoffs’ next step would be to make the case for their variances to the Board of Standards and Appeals. The community board wasn’t swayed by the fact that the building’s designer is the renowned architect James Carpenter. Among his other projects, Carpenter did the glass sheathing on the new 7 World Trade Center and designed the long-delayed Moynihan Station (the new Penn Station) and the Israel Museum. Neither was the board influenced by support for the building expressed by fashion icon Diane von Furstenberg, whose store is adjacent to the location. Due to a setback design in its facade, the new building would not block views along Washington St. of von Furstenberg’s unique, jewel-inspired skylight. Before the board voted, David Gruber, who said he was “the driving force” behind the committee’s resolution, admitted he had misunderstood the situation facing the developers, wrongly thinking that they were being deprived of 27 percent of their F.A.R. In fact, the developers — the Romanoff family — are unable to build on 27 percent of their property because it lies beneath the High Line, which is being transformed into a new city park. However, their design transfers these air rights — in the form of F.A.R. — to the rest of the site, so that, in actuality, they don’t lose any F.A.R. at all. “Everyone else has built successfully with 5 [F.A.R.],” Gruber said of other developers in the Meat Market, referring to Andre Balazs’s Standard Hotel and the new High Line Building, another office building, currently rising on W. 14th St. The Romanoffs, however, not satisfied with the area’s existing 5 F.A.R., want 7.73 F.A.R. Before the full board voted, Stuart Romanoff, part of the development team, squared off in the hallway outside the meeting room in a lively point-counterpoint over the building’s design with first Renee Kaufman, a C.B. 2 member, and then Andrew Berman, director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. “It looks like a Meier building, which have not been a big hit,” Kaufman said, referring to the Richard Meier glass towers at West and Perry and Charles Sts. “This building, in my opinion, could have been in Abu Dhabi or Uptown or Midtown. I don’t have a problem with the height,” added Kaufman, a landscape architect. The building’s Washington St. facade up to the third floor would feature materials like zinc and bluestone to be more contextual with the historic Meat Market. The developers are also seeking a variance to permit a retail store of up to 30,000 square feet in the building’s lower floors. The Meat Market’s manufacturing zoning, however, allows retail stores of only up to 10,000 square feet. The Romanoffs had hoped to lure Barney’s, but the deal fell through. “It’s not going to be like Times Square,” Romanoff assured. “We’re going to have high-end retailers that are going to complement the neighborhood. We will not have a big box — it will not exist.” Romanoff said, for example, they would never want a “Target or Chuck E. Cheese’s,” only a retailer along the lines of a Barney’s or one having something to do with fashion or the arts. The office space on the upper floors, similarly, would be leased to a business in fashion, the arts or another creative field, he said. The Meat Market’s zoning doesn’t allow residential use, so developers’ main options are hotels or office buildings. Asked if the economy could change their plans, Darryl Romanoff, Stuart’s brother, standing nearby, said they are confident they can do the building. “We’re going to build it when we find a tenant,” he said. At the heart of the Romanoffs’ variance application is their argument that they face a financial hardship because the High Line runs over about a quarter of their property. However, unlike Balazs’s Standard Hotel, they point out, because of their property’s configuration, they can’t span the High Line. In short, they don’t own the property on the west side of the High Line; the Gottlieb estate does, and, as usual, they are not selling. As a result, the Romanoffs must build a more narrow building right next to the High Line. In turn, because their building would be narrower, they say they would have to locate its “core” — essentially, the elevator banks — not in the center but on the building’s north side to allow for large-enough floor plates to attract commercial tenants. All of this translates into a costlier project, they say. “The design creates a loft-type building,” as opposed to one with a “Midtown-style core,” Stuart Romanoff. “I fundamentally disagree that you have a hardship here,” Berman said. The preservationist added he really dislikes the design of the building’s north wall, which is windowless and covered with a field of terra-cotta panels shaped like vertical slats. “We’re not telling you where to put the core,” Berman explained. “We’re just concerned about a 215-foot-tall blank wall.” Berman later told Chelsea Now that he’s also concerned that the Romanoffs would rent out the building’s north wall for large billboard advertising. The Gansevoort Historic District doesn’t allow such billboards, but the Romanoffs’ site is just outside the historic district. The Romanoff family has owned the property, at W. 13th and Washington Sts., since the 1940s, when their grandfather purchased it. The lease of Interstate, one of the two meat companies that occupied the existing property, expired at the end of last year, and the other lease, for Atlas Meats, will be expiring soon, Stuart Romanoff said. The Meat Market’s few remaining meat businesses are now almost exclusively concentrated in the city-owned Gansevoort Market co-op building, on the block between Gansevoort, Little West 12th, Washington and West Sts. Before the board’s vote, Brad Hoylman, C.B. 2 chairperson, asked, “Is this the first time the High Line has been used as a hardship?” Indeed, most view the High Line as a great boon for developers, especially in Chelsea, where new high-rises have been springing up all around the old elevated railway. David Reck, the board’s Zoning Committee chairperson, noted that the special High Line zoning in Chelsea doesn’t extend south of 14th St. The only other developable site in C.B. 2 adjacent to the High Line is the block with the Meat Market co-op, on the southern part of which the Downtown Whitney Museum branch will be built. Annie Washburn, a C.B. 2 member and executive director of the Meatpacking District Initiative — a group advocating for the area’s business owners — spoke in favor of the Romanoffs’ plan. “I think this is an incredible opportunity to get a really beautiful building in our neighborhood,” she said. Of the property’s current state, Washburn said, “It’s kind of the black hole of the neighborhood. It’s disgusting and gross — it needs to be revitalized.” Jo Hamilton said she liked how the new building’s design was angled to complement the High Line’s orientation. However, most board members were critical of the hardship argument. “They are getting the benefit of the High Line,” stated Doris Diether. “They get the F.A.R. from the part under the High Line.” For the area underneath the High Line, the Romanoffs’ plan includes a restaurant. Ed Gold recalled how the late C.B. 2 member Verna Small “worked for years against big buildings blocking views to the water. If Verna Small saw his, she’d be turning in her grave,” Gold declared of the Romanoffs’ 12-story design. Reck resented Gold’s remark, interjecting, “That’s nonsense. He just insulted the work of the committee. I’m offended by that.” “I think the community board should draw a line here: No more big buildings in the Meat Market,” Gold stated forcefully. But Reck criticized what he called the board’s “just-say-no attitude,” saying it’s what got C.B. 2 “locked out” of the negotiations on projects like Superior Ink and the Perry St. Hotel. “The Meat Market is a happening neighborhood,” Reck stressed to his fellow board members. In the end, in addition to denying any extra F.A.R. for the project, the board voted to allow retail use on only the basement level and first and second floors, with no one retail establishment being larger than 10,000 square feet. The Romanoffs declined to comment after the vote. Their public-relations spokesperson, Jim Capalino, said, “We’re confident we have a credible hardship application. It’s disappointing that the board did not acknowledge that at all.” The Romanoffs next step is to make their case for variances to the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals. Zack Winestine, of the Greenwich Village Community Task Force, said afterward, “This is just round one. The community board is only advisory — and who knows what the B.S.A. is going to do? … Asking for a 50 percent F.A.R. variance was grossly exorbitant.” http://www.chelseanow.com/cn_121/village.gif A rendering showing the Washington St. side of the Romanoffs’ planned building, which would have a setback at the third floor to align with Diane von Furstenberg’s red-brick building, to the right. http://www.chelseanow.com/cn_121/linehigh.gif A rendering showing how the High Line — represented by the green diagonal line — passes over the western edge of the Romanoffs’ property at 437-451 W. 13th St. — represented by the dotted, red line. |
This is a good building that wasn't designed by an hack architect. Of course they'll deny it.
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i love the high line!
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Im so glad they are not tearing this down. Its such a cool use of something totally unique. I could just imagine how awesome it would be to ride my bike up and down it once completed.
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What a great piece of urban reuse!
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http://chelseanow.com/CN_124/parkinsky.html
‘Park in sky’ chugging along toward June opening http://chelseanow.com/CN_124/hart.jpg Flats of grasses and perennials await planting on the High Line between the reinstalled railroad tracks in the park’s Gansevoort Woodland section. By Katie Lorah In just a few months, the first section of the High Line will open to the public. Section 1 of the park runs through the Meatpacking District and the southernmost blocks of Chelsea, from Gansevoort St. to 20th St. An exact opening date has yet to be set, but is likely to fall in early June. The second section, from 20th St. to 30th St., is projected to open one year later. To get ready for the High Line’s debut, contractors are now putting the finishing touches on the park’s landscape, in the final stage of the landscape work that began more than a year ago. First, the construction crew installed the High Line’s pathways, made of long, smooth, concrete planks. The planks were designed to taper at their ends to allow the plantings to push up between them, just as grass grew up in the gravel ballast of the original High Line rail bed. Many of the High Line’s original steel railroad tracks have been returned to their locations, integrated into the planting beds. The beds themselves were then prepared, using a layered system much like a typical green roof. Several layers of specialized material — a perforated drainage mat, pea gravel and filter fabric, were installed to aid in soil drainage. Two layers of soil — a coarse subsoil and a nutrient-rich topsoil — were then delivered and spread into the planting beds. At the same time, lighting, irrigation and rodent-proofing systems were installed. Last fall, a team of landscape specialists began working to bring the High Line’s planting beds to life, as envisioned by planting designer Piet Oudolf. Since then, the one-of-a-kind landscape has taken shape block by block. With the help of landscape contracting company Siteworks, the Section 1 environment of hardy perennials, textural grasses, shrubs and trees has taken root on the High Line. There are roughly 210 different plant species in the beds of Section 1, ranging from a meadow-like mix of asters, goldenrod and big bluestem grass in the low beds of the Sundeck, to a grove of gray birch and serviceberry trees as part of the Gansevoort Woodland. Besides the planting work, several of the High Line’s special design features are nearing completion. The monumental “Slow Stairs” are now in place at the future High Line access point at Gansevoort St. This blocklong staircase rises from street level, underneath the High Line, to cut through the steel of the structure itself. Visitors will ascend along the staircase, coming face to face with the High Line’s heavy steel girders and hand-driven rivets, before emerging into the wild landscape above. With the adjacent site being planned as the new Whitney Museum, the southern terminus of the High Line is set to become one of the city’s liveliest new public spaces. At 17th St., large window-like cutouts were recently made in the steel of the High Line’s Tenth Avenue Square, one of Section 1’s most unique design features. Soon, glass will be installed, providing High Line visitors with a view up Tenth Ave., and a peek into the park to those walking below. Amphitheater-like seating, doubling as a ramp and staircase, will allow High Line visitors to drop down into the steel structure of the Square. In the coming weeks, work on the High Line’s access points, planting beds, pathways and seating will be completed. While two-thirds of the High Line is owned by the city and is currently under construction to become a park, the future of the northernmost section, around the West Side Rail Yards, remains undecided. There is still a chance that this section could be partially or fully demolished, depending on a planning process now taking place between the city, the New York State-run M.T.A. and The Related Companies, the private developer leasing the site. The 26-acre rail yards site is the largest developable plot of land in Manhattan, and the current scheme calls for more than 12 million square feet of commercial and residential development, along with several acres of public open space. Friends of the High Line, along with Community Board 4 and many elected officials, is advocating for the full preservation of the entire High Line at the rail yards, and its integration into the site. Friends of the High Line is encouraging the city to take ownership of this section of the High Line, much like it did with the rest of the High Line in 2005. To find out more about the High Line at the rail yards, and to learn how you can help save the entire High Line, please visit www.thehighline.org. The opening of the first section of the High Line will be celebrated in June with a street festival, put on by Friends of the High Line. The festival will also celebrate the 10th anniversary of the founding of Friends of the High Line, and the 75th anniversary of the High Line itself. (It was completed in 1934 to lift dangerous freight trains off the city’s streets.) There will be a variety of free public programming, both on and off the High Line, during the park’s inaugural summer. More information about what’s planned for the opening season will be announced through Friends of the High Line’s e-mail newsletter. You can sign up to receive updates and information on how you can get involved at www.thehighline.org. You can also read the latest construction updates and announcements on the High Line Blog, www.thehighline.org/blog. http://chelseanow.com/CN_124/treesgreen.jpg Clockwise from above left, workers install foliage in between the High Line’s pathways; trees, with root balls wrapped in burlap, that will be planted in the park’s Gansevoort Woodland section; the newly installed, blocklong “Slow Stairs,” part of the Gansevoort St. access point, will bring visitors up through the structure itself. |
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/ar...gn/09pols.html
Industrial Sleek (a Park Runs Through It) http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...s/pols.600.jpg The new Standard Hotel in the meatpacking district rises atop the High Line, at left, abandoned elevated rail tracks that are being converted into a greenway. By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF April 8, 2009 It would be easy to dismiss the new Standard Hotel in the meatpacking district as a final shout-out to the age of excess. The entire area, whose trendy shops and cafes must still contend with the occasional whiff of rotten meat, reflects a development culture run amok. Serious Architecture for the Standard Well, that would be a mistake. The boutique hotel, designed by Polshek Partnership, is serious architecture. The first of a string of projects linked to the development of the High Line, a park being built on a segment of abandoned elevated rail tracks, the new building’s muscular form is strong enough to stand up to both its tacky neighbors and the area’s older industrial structures. Its location, on Washington Street at West 13th Street, exploits the clash of scales that has always been a gripping aspect of the city’s character. In short, it is the kind of straightforward, thoughtfully conceived building that is all too rare in the city today. Part of this is due to its stunning position. The partially open hotel — 19 floors and 337 rooms — is the only new building that rises directly over the elevated park. The towering structure is supported on massive concrete pillars, while a ground-floor restaurant and garden cafe are tucked underneath the High Line’s hefty steel frame. I admit to some mixed feelings about the restaurant. Clad in recycled brick, it’s meant to reflect the neighborhood’s old identity as the city’s meat market. A slick black metal canopy is a spiffed-up version of the decrepit canopies that once lined the neighborhood’s sidewalks, without the beef carcasses. The garden’s brick paving and industrial light fixtures look quaintly European. Over all the effect feels about as genuine as a Hollywood back lot. Still, Polshek smartly plays up the contrast between these spaces and the tough brick, concrete and steel structures that surround it. From the garden cafe people can look up at the High Line’s gorgeous steel underbelly. One of the most enticing fire stairs runs down the side of a concrete leg supporting the hotel, crashing down on the restaurant’s roof before tumbling out on the sidewalk. Polshek was also careful to segregate the various entries — to the hotel, restaurant and a lounge that will open this summer on the 18th floor — so that hotel guests won’t feel as though they are trapped in an entertainment hell for 20-somethings. (The Standard’s owner, André Balazs, is negotiating with the city to create a more direct connection between the hotel and the High Line, which would significantly diminish this effect as well as compromise the park’s public quality.) It’s only once you get off the ground, however, that you appreciate the design’s true flair. The hotel is set at a slight angle to the High Line (part of which is to open in June), creating a delicious tension as its deck passes underneath. The building bends slightly near the center, giving it a more streamlined appearance in the skyline and orienting the rooms toward the most spectacular views. To the southwest the facade is angled toward a sweeping view across the Hudson River to the Statue of Liberty. To the northeast, guests look out across jagged rooftops to the Empire State Building. This sense of floating within the city is reinforced by the arrangement of some of the rooms. The rectangular ones on the south side of the building are laid out with their long side along floor-to-ceiling windows. The effect is to bring you up closer to the glass, so that you feel as though you were suspended in midair, with the city just underneath your feet. (Mr. Balazs confessed to an instant of vertigo when he first stepped into one of these rooms.) These are simple but powerful moves. And they are a reminder that enveloping a structure in a flamboyant wrapper is not always the most effective way to create lasting architecture. In the wrong hands, too much creative freedom can be outright dangerous. With the Standard Hotel, Polshek Partnership joins a handful of other midlevel firms that are beginning to find the right balance between innovation and restraint. These include the designers of the Bank of America building in Midtown and 1 Madison Park, two projects under construction that suggest a revival of the kind of smart, sleek and confident architecture popularized by architects as diverse as Morris Lapidus and Gordon Bunshaft in the 1950s and ’60s. Those architects didn’t want to start a revolution; they wanted to make glamorous buildings. Whether this trend will survive the current financial climate, of course, is another matter. http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...rts/stand1.jpg The new Standard Hotel in the meatpacking district is the first of a string of projects linked to the development of the High Line, a park being built on a segment of abandoned elevated rail tracks. http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...rts/stand2.jpg The towering structure, designed by Polshek Partnership, is supported on huge concrete pillars, while a ground-floor restaurant and garden cafe are tucked underneath the High Line’s hefty steel frame. http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...rts/stand3.jpg A view of the lobby. “It would be easy to dismiss the new Standard Hotel in the meatpacking district as a final shout-out to the age of excess. . . . That would be a mistake. The boutique hotel is serious architecture,” writes The Times’s Nicolai Ouroussoff. http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...rts/stand4.jpg The building bends slightly near the center, giving it a more streamlined appearance in the skyline and orienting the rooms toward the most spectacular views. To the southwest the facade is angled toward a sweeping view across the Hudson River to the Statue of Liberty. http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...rts/stand5.jpg An elevator bank. “With the Standard Hotel, Polshek Partnership joins a handful of other midlevel firms that are beginning to find the right balance between innovation and restraint,” writes Mr. Ouroussoff. http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...rts/stand7.jpg The Standard, he writes, “is the kind of straightforward, thoughtfully conceived building that is all too rare in the city today.” |
This project is too good to be true, what an amazing yet simple use for those tracks!
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I just can't wait until the first opening in June.
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Reply
Hi,
wow thats very impressive!!! this is indeed a very cool project.. |
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04272009...pes_166465.htm
HIGH HOPES MEATPACK TOWER UP FOR VOTE http://www.nypost.com/seven/04272009...pack_tower.jpg This rendering shows the plan for a 13-story tower at 13th and Washington streets. By TOM TOPOUSIS April 27, 2009 Darryl Romanoff started working in Manhattan's meat industry when he was a teenager, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. But now that the industry is high-tailing it from Manhattan's now-trendy Meatpacking District, Romanoff wants to turn one of the family's plants into a 13-story tower. "We're not a fly-by-night developer that swoops in because the neighborhood is hot," said Romanoff, whose family has been entrenched in the district for more than 80 years. Romanoff's proposal for 13th and Washington streets goes before the city's Board of Standards and Appeal tomorrow, when he will ask for approval to build four stories higher than local zoning allows. Romanoff said the added costs of building next to and under the High Line, coupled with the environmental clean-up that's needed, mean that he can't build a smaller tower that's economically viable. The project has the support of the neighborhood's commercial property owners, including fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg. "The Romanoffs are the first family of the Meatpacking District and they went out of their way to make sure this building fits in nicely with the community," she said. The project faces some opposition. Community Board 2 generally approved of the project, although it had concerns about the size. "We think it would fit nicely in the fabric of the neighborhood," said Romanoff, adding that tenants would be from creative fields. "It's not going to be Midtown law firms coming down here." |
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