Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Coming soon: skyscrapers with holes in them

From the NY Observer:

When Two Trees Management bought the old Domino Sugar site from CPC Resources and a reluctant Katan Group, a local developer told The Observer that Jed Walentas would be “crazy to go back to ULURP” for a rezoning of the site, which had already been approved for thousands of high-rise apartments.

But going back to to everyone’s favorite acronym (to pronounce, at least) is exactly what Mr. Walentas intends to do. He and SHoP, the New York-based architecture firm that Bruce Ratner tapped to design the Barclays Center and Atlantic Yards after Frank Gehry proved too expensive, called a group of reporters to SHoP’s offices near City Hall on Friday to show off their plans for the site.

The first thing Mr. Walentas spoke about was Two Trees’ desire to expand the amount of parkland included in the project—adding two new acres—and to make it more accessible to the public.

He criticized the open space in the old site plan as something that “felt very much like a privatized front lawn for people who lived there,” and spoke about his desire to pull the buildings back inland to make more space for the quarter-mile-long waterfront park, as well as add a new public street between his buildings and the waterfront.

But the extra park space comes at a price: the towers will have to rise higher to make up for the smaller footprints. The tallest tower on the site would rise to 598 feet, or about 60 stories—much taller than the 340-foot maximum height in the currently approved plan.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually seems like a good idea to me, but the question is will they really do it or are they just negotiating for taller buildings.

Anonymous said...

Go taller to allow more green public space & access - no brainer - if they wish these designs (no issue with that) than the City should extract a price for public good - if that is green space that the owner will maintain, including rest facilities and play space all for the public so be it.

Anonymous said...

LOL!
Polish architecture!

Anonymous said...

Dunkin Dowels?

Anonymous said...

I think that the person who came up with this design spent way too much time with a Lego kit as a kid.

Anonymous said...

This was designed by the scavenger pigeon lobbyists