Quote:
Originally Posted by yesinmybackyard
Nonsense. I'd like to see a single example in history of a skyline being "ruined". Skylines are ever evolving, growing, shifting. The skyline of generations past were "ruined" by the perfect one that exists in your mind.
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See DT Manhattan,
pre and post One Chase Manhattan Plaza...
Prior to 1960 the DT Manhattan skyline was an elegant balance combination of spires pointing upwards, each tower had its own proportional massing and culmination.... post 1CP these massing were blurred out of the skyline silhouette with a tower that which has a massing that could best described as wide and flat; its ostentatious presence eliminated much of the spacing between elegant, and proportional towers such as 40, Wall street, 70 Pine Street, the Woolworth Building, 20 Exchange Place, Bank of New York Building, etc...
And yes this tower and the modernist/international architectural movement, in my opinion, did ruin what was once an elegant DT Manhattan Skyline. And to be fair whereas the modernist movement did start as and artistic endeavor that displays minimalism.... it quickly turned into an accounting gimmick to build "plazas" in exchange for proportion promulgated by developers to produce more profitable towers, as all of its mundane identical floorplates can be streamlined into materials that are easier (and in turn cheaper) to manufacture and assemble. The realization of this business plan let to a saturation of this type of "style" (which was more means to a greater profit margin) and more ostentatious bulks such as 1 Liberty Plaza, 55 Water streets (sheesh!), One New York Plaza, were built and further ruined what was once a skyline of elegant turn of the century building massings that interplayed into pleasant greater whole.
Skylines should evolve and adjust to the times, but in the case of DT and here in Hudson Yards, the massing of these buildings create bulk and visual glass walls... Even from a practical standpoint regarding the appeal of office space, all these towers by Foster and BIG encroaching on top of each other you have basically created an office 850 feet into the sky to have a view of taller glass wall and not that of NYC's panorama.
But I am sure yesinmybackyard's impressions and opinions are wholly not nonsensical.