Jersey City now has to build a white 1000ft tower.
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Or a purple one. Or green. Or two… purple and green.
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Red. We need to bring back red towers. And when I mean red, I mean RED
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lol like a Rutgers tower or something? I mean their mascot is the Scarlet Knights. Maybe it can just be a red castle on the river.
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https://www.instagram.com/p/CwpshJDut2A/
I have recently come to a greater appreciation of ‘vantage point’ when viewing various buildings in the New York Metro area.
The distance away, and the angle of view creates an ever changing context that adds to the continued enjoyment of viewing great works of Architecture.
This photo was taken from Hoyt Street.
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From 7.13.23:
From 8.19.23:
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Third place went to:
Fourth place went to OMA’s Eagle + West in
Pretty strong showing for Brooklyn 
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I enjoyed reading this article in Architectural Record about this “capital A work of Architecture”. One odd take away for me was the thought that the authors use of the term ‘latter-day’ was a clever wink/wink reference to the Church of Latter-day Saints. A little known fun fact - most or all of the founders of shoP are Morman. Feel free to fact check that for me… 
Here is a snippet of a recent article from Architectural Record, written by Izzy Kornblatt.
And all this despite the tower’s architect, Gregg Pasquarelli of SHoP, facing the same constraints as everyone else, from intricate building codes to the need to allocate square footage with maximum efficiency and that ultimate criterion—the tower’s chances of profitability in the eyes of financial backers. SHoP’s achievement, then, is creating a work of “capital-A Architecture” within and in spite of an economic system that is indifferent to the concerns of architecture as a discipline. We are not dealing with yet another attempt to dress up the ordinary products of the building industry in elegant garb; that one can vehemently like or dislike this tower is a sign that it is something far more interesting. Indeed, this is architecture that attempts a serious undertaking—to provoke its audiences to contend with what it means to build such a tower in Brooklyn today.
Needless to say, in the shrinking of the domain of Architecture, where architects no longer have control over many aspects of their projects, much has been lost. The Modernist ambition to remake social relations by reconfiguring the built world would seem to be a particularly tragic casualty, though its causes of death are multifold. But, unlike Rem Koolhaas’s OMA and its many disciples, SHoP has not responded to the present situation by attempting a latter-day resuscitation of that ambition. The Brooklyn Tower neither seeks to disrupt or reconfigure how its occupants live, nor to mount a critique of the institutions that created it. The building is unapologetic as a moneymaking proposition on the part of its developer, Michael Stern’s JDS Group, and it has been a success so far: even though the tower’s interiors will not be complete until 2024, the expansive, multimillion-dollar condos on its upper floors are already selling briskly, according to JDS managing director Marci Clark. Even its rent-controlled apartments—the inclusion of which earned JDS a tax break—start at more than $2,600 per month.
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A mere 15 or so years ago, this view was pretty much all old buildings. It was like looking at Brooklyn as it existed in the 1940s (because it pretty much was). I’m glad I was able to see it then, but it looks great today too. This building is magnificent.
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There needs to be some clever way to conceal these contraptions when not in use; they are an unfortunate addition to an otherwise lovely crown. I can practice ‘selective noticing’ - but rather not… 
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‘selective noticing’ 
I do the same! not always work…
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Most architects do care about these things, and it’s not all that tricky to engineer. So almost all BMUs do have a way they can be retracted down so they’re not visible when not in use.
But I think sometimes that mechanism breaks, and since it’s purely an aesthetic thing, fixing it isn’t given priority. One can’t expect the average maintenance manager to care as much about aesthetics as an architect.
Or perhaps in some cases the mechanism does still work but it’s simply easier — less work — for the maintenance staff to just leave it up; they might not care. I mean I hope that doesn’t happen too often, but I can imagine it.
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