The Standard’s Lap Dance for The High Line

Its been a while since we did an architectural feature, lately we’ve been focusing more on public projects, and sustainable initiatives but this project re-piqued my interest as its connected to an urban regeneration project (The High Line) that I have been following for almost a year and a half now.  For any of you who are unaware The High Line is an urban renewal project in New York City that has taken the old elevated freight rail line that runs down the lower west side between 34th street and Gansevoort Street in the West Village, and at the moment most significantly through the meat packing district (MePa) that is sandwiched between the West Village and Chelsae.  The project will turn this former freight line that has been unused since 1980 into an elevated parkway in the style of the Promenade Plantee’ in Paris.

Hotelier Andre Balazs, owner of the Chateau Marmont and The Standard chain of hotels will soon be officially opening The Standard New York on a lot that would have been considered ‘problematic’ before The High Line conversion, but is now considered plum due to its immediate proximity. Which could be understating it a little, The High Line cuts across Balazs’ lot diagonally.

“For the first time I had a hard time imagining what the hotel should look like,” Balazssays. “I usually renovate older buildings, and this was ground-up construction. Add to that the matter of the High Line and it was a unique challenge.” S

As such the Hotel is suspended above The High Line on concrete pilotis, which suspend the hotel 56 feet above ground level and 30 feet above the track. This caused one real estate blogto mention that the Hotel is in a ‘perpetual lapdance’ with The High Line. The design is a bit of a progression through time periods. Overall the building looks a lot like a Le Corbusier, built in the International style. The building is two concrete framed glass walls bushed together at a slight angle. It evokes an open book standing on its end.

“If you had to look at this project from an urban-planning perspective,” says Balazs, “it gets more modern, in terms of building type and décor, the higher you get. The ground floor relates to early in the last century, the time of the High Line. The hotel floors, in the tower, are midcentury—I was looking at Eero Saarinen, Mies van der Rohe, and Arne Jacobsen, who had designed an amazing hotel in Stockholm in the 50s.” S

While many of us plebes would be unable to stay in the hotel once it has had its grand opening the hotel is currently open(ish) as the website states. Some of the rooms are open even though the construction isn’t finished a a pretty affordable rate. Check out the the hotel chain’s website for rates.

One of the things that I find most exciting about these developments is that they prove that things that once were considered eyesores and only worthy of being torn down can be re-purposedinto serious assets.  The park is considered one of the most innovative and influential urban-renewal projects of our time. With an imaginativeapproach to city planning, and some creative reuse of existing infrastructure,  we can come up with some truly stellar results.

Tapestries In Glass

The Residences by Jean Nouvel

While I have not intention of making this blog simply about real estate I do want to make another apartment post. As I mentioned in the 200 Eleventh Ave post a number of new buildings are springing up in the area around the highline and the new residences by Jean Nouvel are part of the regeneration of this area. The marketing write up for the new residence hails it as, “a vision machine,” while I wouldn’t go so far as to call it that, the project is a very unique in that the building has over 1,700 different and distinct pieces of glass to make up the façade of the building. The building’s web site explains it as such;

Interior Common Areas

“The buildings gently curving curtain wall of different sized panes of colorless glass – each set in a unique angle and torque – will sheath one of the most meticulously customized, high performance residential addresses in the nation. This dazzling window pattern will frame splendid views from within the tower while producing an exterior texture that serves as a poetic analog for the vibrancy, density and changeability of New York City.” source

The building is designed with a number of staggered terraces and uses large single pane punched through windows to highlight certain areas. Nouvel has designed a six story vertical garden within the core of the building with built in planter boxes designed to allow plants to fill the interior space.

I mean seriously a building with no two windows the same? Its going to be very unique, but a bit of a pain when it comes to replace those windows don’t you think?
For more information on the building see the site here.

Residence Interior View

Proximity To the High Line

200 Eleventh Ave

The Living Room

The 'Sky Garage'

Anyone who has spent time in Asia has no doubt encountered the car elevator, due to the lack of available space many buildings have car parks that operate like giant sandwich vending machines, or in some cases send the cars up to higher levels to be parked. The Hyundai department store in the town I lived in operated one of these. The building had a rotating circle outside the entrance to the parking elevator that would allow the valets to turn the car around after getting it on and off its shelf. Well the idea has officially come to North America, for the super wealthy at least. 200 Eleventh Ave NYC is a new 19 story tower designed by architect Annabelle Selldorf with stainless-steel facades that rise above a cast gunmetal-glazed Terra-cotta base.

To use the ‘Sky Garage’ tenants pull in through the street level gate and then into the car sized elevator. Using an electronic coding system the elevator then takes the tenant and their car up to the appropriate floor so that they can pull into their own garage. No longer will Mr Jones have to cart all his groceries up in the elevator or get the concierge to help him, he can simply unload his groceries straight from the trunk into his own apartment.

The building includes 16 units in multiple configurations including; simplexes, terraces, duplexes, and a couple different penthouse configurations. As illustrated by the photos the units are as swanky as an apartment with in apt garages should be, and they come with the price tag to boot. A cool $14million will give your car a garage that other cars will be jealous of.

The View From the Kitchen

Interestingly this development has shot up in the area adjoining the High Line, along with a number of other developments.

The Penthouse

The High Line and Elevated Parkways

In New York City an organisation called “Friends of the High Line” are in the process of converting a previously abandoned freight viaduct that runs along the lower west side of Manhattan from a ‘lost space’ to a new elevated park reserved for pedestrians. The idea is not new, there is currently another elevated park in Paris called The Promenade Plantée. The project is designed to increase the available parkland in the city by turning what some have considered a blight into a unique advantage, looking through some past entries about this online it is clear that there was much debate and a serious push to have the whole structure removed. Link I for one am happy that the friends of the high line have been successful in getting the go ahead to convert the structure to an urban promenade. Unique parks and themaintenance of structures of historical significance is a big plus to me.

Structures like this begin to make us relate to the city in further levels, most people are only used to considering a city from the ground level, sure we have subways and underground structures, and sky walks in some urban areas but most don’t really consider them when thinking of the strata of an area. Subways are underground and you don’t really see anything so its easy to have no awareness of the city that you pass through on your way between your usual stations and sky walks tend to insulate us from the city by being too much like the interior of the buildings they connect. Elevated walkways like thePromenade and the future high line allow us to experience the city from above while still being in contact with its sights and smells, I have a feeling that once completed this project will become a valued part of the neighbourhoods it connects.

The High line has a specific vision;

Friends of the High Line believes the historic High Line rail structure offers New Yorkers the opportunity to create a one-of-a-kind recreational amenity: a grand, public promenade that can be enjoyed by all residents and visitors in New York City. When the High Line is converted to public open space, you will be able to rise up from the streets and step into a place apart, tranquil and green. You will see the Hudson River, the Manhattan skyline, and secret gardens inside city blocks as you’ve never seen them before. You will move between Penn Station and the Hudson River Park, from the convention center to the Gansevoort Market Historic District, without meeting a car or truck. The High Line will be a promenade—a linear public place where you will see and be seen. You will sense New York’s industrial past in the rivets and girders. You will perceive the future unrolling before you in an artfully designed environment of unprecedented innovation. It will be yours—public in the truest sense of the word. Public dollars helped build it in the 1930s. Public legislation empowers us to make it a place anyone can visit. It will be proof New York City no longer casts aside its priceless transportation infrastructure but instead creates bold new uses for these monuments to human power and ambition. source

There is a great collection of pictures of the high line in its current state here

There are three other projects in the works for structures like these; the Bloomingdale Trail in Chicago and on old Reading Viaduct elevated rail in the Callowhill section of Philadelphia Pennsylvania

Link List
http://www.thehighline.org/

http://www.citynoise.org/article/6957

http://www.promenade-plantee.org/