http://www.nysun.com/arts/at-one-bryant-park-scale-changes-everything/80783/
At One Bryant Park, Scale Changes Everything
RISING The all but completed One Bryant Park, a massive skyscraper designed by the firm of Cook + Fox, will also be known as the Bank of America Tower.
By JAMES GARDNER
June 27, 2008
One of the biggest banks to open in Manhattan in many years will be the Bank of America flagship that is promised for the all but completed One Bryant Park, a massive skyscraper designed by the firm of Cook + Fox. The building will also be known as the Bank of America Tower, in honor of its foremost tenant. Already the offices of the bank have been installed in this pale, Deconstructivist tower, and though we are still some months away from the project's completion, it is sufficiently far along that we can offer a preliminary assessment of its success.
One of the two principals of Cook + Fox is Richard Cook, whose firm has designed several estimable structures, among them the persistently exquisite 360 Madison Ave., as well as the nearly completed Lucida, on Lexington Avenue at 86th Street. The other principal is Robert Fox Jr., who, together with his former partner Bruce Fowle, was responsible, just west on 42nd Street, for the Condé Nast and Reuters buildings.
Though the newest project differs from these two neighbors, it shares with them an eagerness to embrace the defining style of the moment, or more precisely, what was the moment nearly three years ago, when the design was decided upon. Just as the constructed, jigsaw aesthetic of the two older buildings was all the rage at the end of the 1990s, so the faceted, deconstructed aesthetic of the new building, ultimately inspired by Daniel Libeskind's design for Tower 1 at the World Trade Center, seemed — if memory serves — daring at some point in the past five years. But now that a good 10 towers in Midtown embrace this aesthetic, it doesn't seem quite so daring anymore.
Because I have never been an admirer of the jagged asymmetries of this aesthetic, I did not take kindly, three years back, to the original design, which has been largely implemented. In addition to its facets, the building is primarily bone-white due to the fritted glass that sheathes it and telegraphs its environmental credentials.
But now that it is approaching completion, I find the whole thing a little more to my liking, and for an odd reason. At 54 stories tall and with a base that stretches from Sixth Avenue half the distance to Broadway, One Bryant Park is so immense that its built-in asymmetries seem to disappear or to fade into irrelevance. What one is left with is the striking, pharaonic boldness of the design's conception, and the fact that the exterior appears to be as well-made as one would expect from the architectural firm that brought us 360 Madison Ave.
And though, if the truth be told, there is little that is strikingly, importantly original in the formal aspects of this building's design, here, as in Minimalist art, scale changes everything. What might have been banal in a smaller, more timid building becomes thrilling in this instance.
Its sheer, unapologetic massiveness means that, in very short order, New York City will have a new landmark to reckon with. As for the finer points of the details, such as the garden court intended to run along Sixth Avenue, we are still about eight months away from being able to render an accurate assessment.
At 54 stories tall, the Bank of America Tower has a base that stretches from Sixth Avenue half the distance to Broadway.
One Bryant Park is so immense that its built-in asymmetries seem to disappear.
Prev
Here you go Scruffy
) this is from my wife's SD1100. I was quite shocked to see the spire ABOVE the ESB's observation deck, which is what, 1050' up? Then I re-read this thread and of course it is higher, I had just forgot 
Linear Mode
