NEW YORK | 15 Penn Plaza (Hotel Penn) | 1,050 FT / 315 M | 52 FLOORS

[NYguy]

Originally Posted by NYguy

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-09...uare-feet-of-blight-james-s-russell.html

Behemoth Tower Packs 2.83 Million Square Feet of Blight: James S. Russell

By James S. Russell
Nov 9, 2010


An architectural rendering of 15 Penn Plaza. The tower tapers only slightly as it rises about 1,200 feet.


An architectural rendering of the the lobby of 15 Penn Plaza. Across from Penn Station in New York City, the tower would rise sheer from the ground, tapering back beginning at the 58th floor.
The design by architect Pelli Clarke Pelli for Vornado Realty Trust intends to accommodate a financial firm with trading floors extending as large as 70,000 square feet at the base.


A view looking east to West 32nd Street from Penn Station in New York. 15 Penn Plaza would rise 1,200 feet on the north side of the street, after the 23-story Hotel Pennsylvania is demolished.


A view looking west on West 32nd Street in New York. A zoning variance permits 15 Penn Plaza to rise about five times as high as the building to the north (right in photo), the Hotel Pennsylvania, which would be demolished.

http://www.observer.com/2010/real-estate...nning-out-room-15-penn-and-its-neighbors

A Problem of Design and Demand: We're Running Out of Room for 15 Penn and Its Big Brothers



By Matt Chaban
November 11, 2010

Add Bloomberg architecture critic James Russell to the list of people none too keen to see Vornado's 15 Penn Plaza get built. He finds the building undistinguished, but the real problem is its gigantism.

He sees more of the same coming, as well, with the redevelopment of Moynihan Station and the million-plus square feet that project is expected to throw off, as well as development further west at Hudson Yards. That project will account for upward of 6 million square feet of commercial development, as well as millions more in slimmer residential towers. There is also Brookfield's Manhattan West, with two towers of 5.4 million square feet, as well as millions more square feet of amorphous development surrounding the Javits Center.

Things are going to get very crowded on the far West Side.

That is where the problems begin. It is not just all that raw square footage but the out-sized shape it is expected to take and the impact it will have on all those new people.

As Russell suggests and The Journal's Anton Troianovski smartly illustrated before him, this is a problem of design and demand. The reason the buildings are so big—so bulky, to use the technical term of art—is that the modern financier requires huge trading floors on which to pack his (it's almost always a he) bankers, sometimes thousands to a floor, a high-powered, high-frequency sweatshop.

As a result, the step-backed, slender towers that had been the norm at the turn of the last century are obsolete. There is a good reason the Financial District, with its near countless conversions, might as well be called the Residential District nowadays. As for the straight-laced, straight-faced glass modernists of the previous generation, the Seagrams and Nine Wests of New York, those were built up from generous, sometimes windswept, yet still light-filled plazas, a respite from all those flat facades.

But now land is too valuable, tenants too powerful. Every allowable square-foot must be built up, the demands of those inside the building's trumping those outside.

If bigger floorplates are warranted, so be it, even if it means the canyons that are 32nd and 33rd streets grow nearly a thousand feet deeper.

Part of the problem is that this is no longer a fight between midtown and downtown or even between New York, Boston and Chicago, but one between New York and the world. The question is, if Shanghai, Mumbai and Dubai are all O.K. with building—and living—on top of each other, even more so than we famously do here in New York, will we put up with it? Can we?