This is so boring.
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I want to believe Solow told Meier he wanted a restrained, short design to minimize the blowback from the neighborhood whenever he gets going with the massive site he has across the street.
Whatever the case what we got is an out-of-place monolith utterly unlike anything around it. I like Meier, but a Stern-style neo-classical tower would have been a better fit here considering the closest modern buildings are the copper buildings on 35th. The base is OK, but overall its not endearing or welcoming…there’s no porte cochere or even an awning.
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What a PoS. I speculate that the beautiful old buildings that So Low is razing on 57th will be replaced by a fat glass box like this. He’s So Low.
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I wish the parapet weren’t so transparent. How Low can Solow go?
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Yawn 
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Pretty awful. Architect? Perhaps by school degree but not by talent.
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Why did they pick black for this? Blue or green would have been better, boring uninspired design notwithstanding.
Reminds me of the Deutsche Bank building that stuck around after 9/11, a boxy black building draped in black netting:
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r_190708122_beat0037_a by Mitch Waxman, on Flickr
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https://www.instagram.com/p/CCyhf7bjwtA/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CC1CCMPJwdQ/
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https://www.instagram.com/p/CO-1kjXJOZU/?utm_medium=copy_link
https://www.instagram.com/p/CPvaeFzDaRI/?utm_medium=copy_link
https://www.instagram.com/p/CPIv1XELpF8/?utm_medium=copy_link
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https://www.instagram.com/p/CRoUNHLgEMv/?utm_medium=copy_link
https://www.instagram.com/p/CSibZfoodUV/?utm_medium=copy_link
https://www.instagram.com/p/CSsdp7hMIZl/?utm_medium=copy_link
https://www.instagram.com/p/CSosclerOrj/?utm_medium=copy_link
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I cannot wait for this undeveloped parcel to be developed. I can visualize a multiple-skyscraper strip along the East River sitting right there (like the renderings pictured above). No talk, though, about this land in recent real estate news? I am sure within the next three to five years it’ll be developed.
Maybe a waterfront park that extends on top of the FDR Drive as part of the development?
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You know that one vineyard in Beverly Hills that just refuses to be developed? This is the New York version of that, a clunky site without any real definition. The fact of the matter is that the West Side is hot right now, and it ain’t slowing down until something remarkable happens. Now, once the West Side development strategy burns itself out, then the pressure is on because this is the last great large site to build on in Manhattan. Creativity is key right now.
I believe that a few acres are set aside for park space as part of the package here.
The project photos are really amazing.
Yes, this is a good set of project photos. I really like the elegant simplicity of this building; as described by the WSJ - “a polished specimen of neo-Modernist simplicity,”
I know many commenters trash this as a bad design; but there is much more subtle artistry to this design than a “boring box”. The Architect ‘Richard Meyer’ has been around for ever, and is a Pritzker Prize Winner for exceptional Architectural Design; this one is worth another look folks.
This is Capital ‘A’ Architecture. Whether you ‘recognize it’ or not… 