I’m not a fan of these ridiculously skinny buildings. I’m not an engineer, just like most people. The engineering may be sound, but it just looks unsafe from a common sense perspective. Maybe it doesn’t help that I was in LA for the earthquake in 94 and New York on September 11, so I’ve seen devastation with my own eyes. New York also felt an earthquake in 2011 that shook my 6-story building. I can only imagine how scary that would be at the top of this cheese grater.
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Personally I would be waaaaay more concerned with the actual construction of the building. Post 2008 there were not enough inspectors and contractors were allowed to perform self-inspections. And we all know how that goes.
In Turkey issues related to corner cutting and profit were a major factor in the number of fatalities. People hate red tape but it’s a lot better than yellow tape if you ask me.
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They wound up having to tear down part of that building and then reconstruct it.
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Lots of progress with lots of pics. It’s hard to tell, but a cantilevered formwork has been built out on top of the neighboring building, but what is hard to tell exactly is if this is where the cantilever will start or if it’s just the support work for the larger framework needed for it. 4th porthole is now visible and crane jumped.
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This one will definitely top out by the end of the year, it’s moving so quick
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The footprint is the size of a postage stamp.
What postage stamps have you been using?
Can’t wait to see how this one turns out… going up fast!
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Is this rising at a floor per week?
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Just about, if not slightly quicker 1 - 1.5 floors a week. It may slow down some when the cantilever is built though and then pick up again.
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Thanks!
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Crane is clearly visible up 5th Ave. I need to clear up something and apologize about the window situations, the visible portholes we see are not the doubled floor windows but are actually in fact the single larger porthole, so I apologize for that mix-up. I was only able to deduce this because the cantilever has indeed been built out but it is so so small (about a 3rd the original dimension), and with that added sliver, the windows that have been added are now centered amongst the full width.
The second thing the cantilever leads me to believe in addition to the size of the tower portion in relation to the core size is that the floor plates have been shrunk. The building doesn’t look at all the same size as the old plans showed, so not only did the building get shorter, it got smaller as well, which explains it’s absurdly quick rising speed.
The double porthole floors may start to appear once the building (or even netting) has gotten several floors past the start of the cantilever, the south facing side of the building is visible in the last image.
If none of this made sense, I’m more than happy to clarify (response time won’t be quick though). 
Also, sorry for the dark evening images, I didn’t start my walk until later than normal as I was under the weather in the morning/afternoon, was still honestly while I was out. 
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At one time I thought this would never rise. Boy, was I fooled. I can’t wait to see the end result of this. Hoping that aluminum glitters and shines on the skyline.
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That is a very interesting observation! The visible cantilever is definitely much thinner than these older marketing floorplans showed:
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nope - they are the same cause smaller floorplan has also a smaller scale as we can see in comparison in the lower right corner
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I didn’t mean to compare the two side-by-side — that’s just how the two were edited together on the online article I copied the image from, as I was posting on mobile and couldn’t crop it. I believe they show different floors of the same design.
What I meant to refer to was the proportion of the cantilever over the existing building as shown in the diagram on the left, which seems a lot larger than what’s being built.
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The city made sliver buildings illegal for a while, then they brought them back.