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Boldness at Last on West 53rd Street
Jean Nouvel Designs Mixed-Use Tower for Hines
Another expansion for MOMA
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By Carter B. Horsley
The Museum of Modern Art 's architectural history has been steeped in sleek, elegant modernity but its last couple of major expansions have been widely seen as rather bland and not in the forefront of contemporary architecture.
On November 14, 2007, Hines, the Houston-based development concern headed by Gerald D. Hines, announced that Jean Nouvel had designed a 75-story tower for it that will combine an expansion for the Museum of Modern Art in its base, a 100-room "seven-star" hotel and 120 high-end residential condominium apartments. Hines had acquired the small plot of about 17,000 square feet at 53 West 53rd Street in January, 2007 for about $125 million. The L-shaped plot runs through the block to 54th Street where it is just to the west of the American Museum of Folk Art.
Nouvel's design is quite breathtaking, bold and a bit bizarre. It is definitely not in context, which is not necessarily bad.
Is it a deconstructed obelisk? Is it a hanger for a an ungainly spacecraft designed for a landing on Pluto? Is it a prickly 21st Century urban thorn?
It does not conform to any known building style and that's just what New York City needs more of.
A completely asymmetrical design, it has no traditional setbacks and tapers to a point.
The press release did not indicate the building's height in feet and commentators on the Internet were euphoric about the design and especially about its height that some suggested was as tall as the Chrysler Building, which apparently was based on a drawing published the day before in The New York Times in a rave review by its architecture critic, Nicolai Ouroussoff.
The renderings published in The New York Times and others that could be found on the Internet the next day, and reproduced below, added to the intial confusion as some indicated that the building would have an open crown and the more finished renderings indicated an enclosed, sharply angled top. The source of many of the renderings is
www.dezeen.com.
The announcement indicated that the "project will likely commence pre-sales in late 2008.
Gerald D. Hines, the chairman of Hines, said that "Nouvel's exciting concept has the potential to become an international architectural design icon."
Nouvel designed the residential condominium project nearing completion at 40 Mercer Street in SoHo for Hines and Andre Balasz. The initial renderings for the project indicated its facade would have some bright red and bright blue windows, but the overall color of the project is something like a bland battleship gray. The project, of course, is notable for its huge windows that slide up and down and a strong Lever House-like modernity whose rectilinearity is not out of place in SoHo.
Far more exciting is Nouvel's design for 100 Eleventh Avenue, a residential condominium tower now under construction in Chelsea that is notable for its very faceted fenestration, as shown above. It is directly across from Frank O. Gehry's headquarters building for IAC and the juxtaposition is one of the city's choicest. It is being developed by Alf Naman and Cape Advisors.
Both 40 Mercer and 100 Eleventh Avenue have relatively conventional forms in sharp contrast to 53 West 53rd Street whose angularity far outstrips Sir Norman Foster's Hearst Building tower a few blocks away on the southwest corner of Eighth Avenue and 57th Street.
The announcement stated that "Nouvel's design maximizes the site while considering the city's zoning envelope," adding that its "unique silhouette tapers as it rises to a distinctive spire" and that "its steel and glass façade reveals the diagrid structural design."
The color rendering released with the announcement indicated that the building will have a very complex façade with many diagonal braces, a design that one surfer at skyscraper.com likened to the "the Chicago Hancock Center after being beaten by a blacksmith, hammered and stretched to fit into its site."
In a review of the new Nouvel tower, architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote in the November 15, 2007 edition of The New York Times that it promises to be the most exhilarating addition to the skyline in a generation," adding that "Its faceted exterior, tapering to a series of crystalline peaks, suggests an atavistic preoccupation with celestial heights. It brings to mind John Ruskin's praise for the irrationality of Gothic architecture: "It not only dared, but delighted in, the infringement of every servile principle."
Noting that the new tower's facade have "a taut, muscular look," Mr. Ouroussoff maintained that the tower's "contorted forms are a scream for freedom." He also noted that "The top-floor apartment is arranged around such a massive elevator core that its inhabitants will feel pressed up against the glass exterior walls. (Mr. Nouvel compared the apartment to the pied-à-terre at the top of the Eiffel Tower from which Gustave Eiffel used to survey his handiwork below.)"
The comparison to the Eiffel Tower may be apt for Nouvel's tower is sculpted structure whose aesthetic is based in large part on its engineering. Unfortunately, it does not stand alone like the Eiffel Tower but it is likely to become a signature element of the midtown skyline.
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I feel like killing all the NIMBYs in NYC.
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