[NYguy]

http://therealdeal.com/blog/2012/10/...tt-falls-flat/

Platt falls flat
The Lam Group’s latest Financial District hotel consists of multiple elements that don’t come together





October 24, 2012
By James Gardner

Whatever else might be said of the new hotel that is planned for 6 Platt Street, there is something uplifting in the spectacle of what had once been a parking lot now on its way to becoming a high-rise. In all cities, but especially in New York, parking lots serve as a symbol of urban failure; of dissipated interest, if not of downright decay. As a result, few things attest more eloquently to the turn in our city’s fortunes than the gradual disappearance of these asphaltic pits once omnipresent in Midtown, Chelsea and Lower Manhattan.

The development of these negative spaces signals not only enhanced revenues from property taxes, but also a revival of civic engagement. That, alas, is pretty much the best that can be said for the hotel planned at 6 Platt Street — if the renderings are at all accurate.

For now, the construction crews have only laid the foundations of what is provisionally known as the Platt Hotel, and the project is not supposed to be completed for another year, according to the architect’s website. Designed by Nobutaka Ashihara Architect, this hotel, a 261-room Four Points by Sheraton, is yet another misbegotten example of a project in a watered-down Deconstructivist style in which the bottom quarter sorts ill with the rest of the building.

Developed by the Lam Group — a company belonging to prolific budget-hotel developer John Lam — the design of this new hotel consists of about six elements, all discordant.......The result is a building that is rather ugly if you think about it, but — and here is the key point — most pedestrians probably won’t think about it. It is not glaringly, clamorously ugly; rather, its varied parts are so ill-conceived and so poorly coordinated that the effect is yet a further cheapening of the skyline.