[NYguy]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...949330602.html
'Great Theater' on the High Line





By DANA RUBINSTEIN
January 31, 2011

When a designer from Morris Adjmi Architects descended into the basement of 450 W. 14th St., now a 10-story glass box built atop a masonry base pierced through by the High Line, he found a grisly reminder of the building's original purpose: approximately five-dozen 50-gallon drums filled with the remnants of animal carcasses.

The building's drab, five-story art-deco masonry base, completed in 1932, two years before the railroad now known as the High Line, once served as a frozen-storage facility for the meatpacking industry. Trains would pull into the building and stop, allowing workers to haul frozen carcasses, hanging from hooks, onto train cars, before rumbling on to their next destination.

Seven years ago, when Morris Adjmi architects was hired to design a tower for the site, the five-story masonry base was largely derelict. But the architects, enamored of its history, chose to keep it and build a 10-story glass addition on top.

Structurally, that was something of a challenge. According to Mr. Adjmi, the building is the only one along the High Line to share key structural elements with the train track. In other words, the columns and the trusses that support the building are the same columns and trusses that support the track that passes through what would be its second story.

After using ultrasound technology to determine the strength of the foundation, the architects decided to build a light-weight glass-and-steel tower on top of the masonry base.

The inspiration for the design was Rachel Whiteread's "Monument," in Trafalgar Square. The sculpture featured an upside-down, clear-resin facsimile of a stone plinth placed on top of the actual fourth plinth of Trafalgar Square.

Like "Monument," Mr. Adjmi built a translucent top, in this case a 10-story, glass-and-steel office tower, which echoes the opaque, rectangular, masonry base below.

The result is a staid, elegant building, one whose restraint is underscored by the raucous architecture surrounding it. Directly to the south, the tome-shaped Standard Hotel hovers on concrete stilts above the High Line. To the east there's the headquarters of fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, a red-brick building sprouting a flagrantly modern, prismatic glass atrium. (Ms. von Furstenberg is also an investor in 450 West 14th Street, which is being developed by Charles Blaichman, of CB Developers.)

The tower's design eschews excess flourishes. The existing masonry base boasts a restored art deco parapet. The north and south facades of the glass skyscraper, meanwhile, bear four-story indentations, as though a giant pair of fingers had gently pressed in the glass. The angle of the indentations mimics the angle at which the High Line passes through the building below.

On Friday morning, the office tower offered dazzling views of Manhattan and masses of ice swirling along the Hudson River. It also offers views of another sort.

To the south, construction workers routinely witness the now-notorious couplings of the curtain-challenged guests at the Standard. To the north, fashion models can frequently be spotted traipsing into Milk Studios.

In the words of Jordan Rogove, a Morris Adjmi architect, the building offers "great theater."