Architecture And Design

Pace Gallery Files for New West Chelsea Building Designed by Bonetti/Kozerski Studio

Rendering of new building (L) and view of current site (R) via Weinberg Properties and Pace Gallery

February 1, 2016

Pace Gallery Files for New West Chelsea Building Designed by Bonetti/Kozerski Studio

Last week, Weinberg Properties filed building permits to construct an eight-story gallery and office building for Pace Gallery at 534-540 West 25th Street. Sited squarely in the Chelsea arts district between the High Line and Eleventh Avenue, the 50,000-square-foot structure will replace an existing one-story building that has served as Pace's flagship location. The renowned international contemporary art gallery has three other locations in the city, as well as outposts in Menlo Park, London, Beijing, and Hong Kong. According to a press release (PDF) from last spring, "Bonetti/Kozerski Studio, in coordination with Pace’s President Marc Glimcher, have conceived an exciting design concept that re-imagines the conventional functionality of a contemporary art gallery."
Get the scoop on the new design

February 1, 2016

Why Is There a Sixth-and-a-Half Avenue in Midtown?

By Michelle Cohen

If you've never heard of it, that may be because this quarter-mile, pedestrian-only street is nearly hidden among the office towers of Midtown. Sixth-and-a-Half Avenue was the first fractional street in the city’s grid system, created in 2012 by the Department of Transportation to encourage people to use the public plazas and covered areas that form a path between 51st Street to 57th Street.
So where is it?

Graphs Show How Skyscrapers Relate to Their Cities–and Whether We Need More of Them

Graph: The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat

February 1, 2016

Graphs Show How Skyscrapers Relate to Their Cities–and Whether We Need More of Them

By Michelle Cohen

Tall buildings help make cities great. Except when they don’t. Citylab looks at a new study and graphs that show where skyscrapers fit into what makes cities great–and suggests that the middle is where the magic happens. 2015 was a record year for the skyscraper; 106 tall buildings (higher than than 656 feet) went up across the globe, according to The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), more than in any previous year; emergent countries that appeared at the forefront of the global economic stage with the dawn the 21st century (China, Indonesia, UAE, Russia) show a big uptick in building upward. The majority of newly-built skyscrapers have risen in Asian nations—especially China–but the United States is in sixth place, with just two skyscrapers completed in 2015.
More infographics this way

Architecture And Design

January 29, 2016

Design Firms Launch Kickstarter for Hyper-Accurate,12-Foot-Long Model of Manhattan

By Emily Nonko

Could this become the coolest New York souvenir ever? Two Manhattan-based design firms, TO+WN Design and AJSNY, have teamed up to sell a model of Manhattan that will blow all the others out of the water. Using detailed aerial scans of the city, the firms created a 12-foot-long model of Manhattan that represents every last landmark, skyscraper, brownstone, park and event hall. Impressively, they've managed to replicate current-day Manhattan down to a 1:5000-scale–and they're calling their mini Manhattan a "Microscape." If you want a piece of this, you're not the only one. The project's Kickstarter, which recently launched with an $8,000 goal, is already more than $17,000 funded with 26 days left.
Learn more about the microscape

January 29, 2016

New Renderings of FXFOWLE’s Curving Harlem Condo, Circa Central Park

By Ondel Hylton

Since 6sqft checked in last November, Harlem's most anticipated condominium building, Circa Central Park, has wrapped up its structural frame and is preparing to be covered in its glass, metal, and brick skin. Now, as we await sales to officially launch, the building's designers, FXFOWLE Architects, give us our first full look at the building inside and out.
Lots more info and renderings

January 28, 2016

NYC Creatives Pimp Out Their Pad on Airbnb With ‘Netflix and Chill’ Theme

By Michelle Cohen

With Valentine's Day approaching, the "Netflix and chill" pick-up line is going to be getting a lot of use, but this Airbnb listing takes the meme to a whole new level. New Yorkers Tom Galle, who works in advertising, artist Moises Sanabria, and Alyssa Davis, an engineer who works for Art404, have decked out Sanabria and Davis’s one-bedroom West Village apartment as a “Netflix and Chill” zone and put it on Airbnb for $400/night.
Any takers yet?

January 28, 2016

A Former Engraver’s Studio in Sniffen Court, Now a Townhouse, Asks $6.45 Million

By Emily Nonko

Who wouldn't want to live in a townhouse with lots of interesting history, located in one of just a few private mews in New York City? Enter this listing at 156 East 36th Street, a Murray Hill townhouse that originally served as stables during the Civil War era, then was converted to an engraver's studio in 1915. The Romanesque building is also a part of the Sniffen Court Mews, which is blocked from the public by a private gate off East 36th Street. Sniffen Court was constructed between 1863 and 1864 as a collection of carriage houses–the off-street placement helped solve noise and odor issues related to the horses. The stables were in use until the early 1920s, when automobiles replaced horses, and eventually they were converted to residential.
Read more about this house

January 27, 2016

Intergalactic Mill Basin Mansion Returns for $17M With a Two-for-One Deal

By Michelle Cohen

The StarMansion from “Star Trek: Mill Basin” has landed on the market once again after few interplanetary laps–one of which included a precipitous price-drop from $30 million to $17 million in 2014–this time even bigger and better with some stellar cargo added. The slightly notorious former mob manse currently belonging to the family of “the Russian-American Paris Hilton” (h/t Curbed) is also the one-time second-most expensive home in Brooklyn (after this massive pad at One Brooklyn Bridge Park). With some seriously tricked-out custom interiors and features like a "circular meditation room,” 257 feet of waterfront, indoor parking for six cars, a Lalique fireplace mantel, 1,000-square-foot pool, spa, outdoor pavilion with kitchen, three-boat marina and water views from every room, the waterfront mansion is still asking $17 million, but with a sweet two-for-one deal attached: The next-door “guest house” property–formerly listed at $8 million–is included in the price.
Take the journey

There’s a James Turrell Light Installation Hidden in This Midtown Office

Turrell’s installation at the Guggenheim via flickr CC

January 26, 2016

There’s a James Turrell Light Installation Hidden in This Midtown Office

By Dana Schulz

You may have thought your company's new espresso machine was fancy, but it's got nothing on this trippy new sculpture hidden in a Midtown office. Designed by famed light installation artist James Turrell (you may remember his wildly popular "Aten Reign" that filled the Guggenheim's rotunda with shifting artificial and natural light a couple years ago), "Three Saros" is a 24-foot, two-story volume that "transports spectators into an ethereal, prismatic sea of light"—likely also reducing smoking breaks and water cooler kvetching.
More on the work here

January 26, 2016

Sebastian Errazuriz’s Meticulously Crafted Chest Is an Interactive ‘Mahogani Explosion’

By Ana Lisa Alperovich

If you read 6sqft regularly, you probably know by now that we can't get enough of New York designer Sebastian Errazuriz's industrial designs. We've previously featured his quirky, spiky-skinned chest, a giant golden cow piñata on show in Sunset Park, and more recently, his yawning video installation looping in Times Square. If you haven't tired of him yet, get ready for another of his fantastical creations: Mahogani Explosion, a seemingly boring wooden chest that "explodes" to the sides as it’s opened.
Learn more about this explosive cabinet

Could This Modern Residential Tower Replace the Historic Barney’s Building at 115 Seventh Avenue?

By Ondel Hylton

Bargain hunters were distraught when Loehmann's shuttered their NYC locations two years ago. It perhaps hit hardest at their Chelsea location, at the northeast corner of 16th Street and Seventh Avenue. Later that year it was announced that upscale retailer Barney's would be opening a five-level store in the space, which also happens to be the site where they were founded in 1923, and remained until 2007. Next door, at the southeast corner of Seventh Avenue and 16th Street, also once part of Barney's downtown flagship, 6sqft has uncovered a rendering showing a modern residential tower with a retail base that may replace the historic Romanesque-style building.
Get the full story right here

January 25, 2016

Download Ikea’s Adult Coloring Book for Free!

By Rebecca Paul

Adult coloring books are all the rage these days and we couldn't be happier. While there are many different types available for purchase (check out this coloring book-notebook combo or this architectural-inspired rendition), Ikea has just released their own version, which is free to download (h/t Curbed). From decorative houseplants to POÄNG chairs and KALLAX shelving units, each of the five pages includes a collection of Ikea products arranged in fun geometric patterns.
READ MORE

January 25, 2016

First Look at JDS Development’s Boutique Condos Coming to Williamsburg

By Heather Cooper Vivares

Near the Williamsburg waterfront and steps away from Bushwick Inlet Park (home to the famed Smorgasburg), Largo Investments and minority partner JDS Development have hatched plans to build a boutique condominium building at 71-73 North 7th Street. The four-story, 15,000-square-foot development will expand upon the structural bones of an existing single-story building, ultimately creating four capacious apartments.
More details on the project

January 24, 2016

Friedland Properties Finally Settles on Design of 2230 Broadway

By Heather Cooper Vivares

Foundation work continues apace on Friedland Properties' and Rose Associates' upcoming 72-unit apartment tower at the southeast corner of Broadway and West 80th Street. Tentatively addressed as 2230 Broadway, the building will rise 18 stories and 227 feet to its rooftop stair bulkhead. This stretch of Broadway on the Upper West Side enforces a 210-foot height cap (to its highest occupiable floor) to keep new developments in scale with their surrounding historic context. According to building permits, Stephen B. Jacobs Group are the architects. Evidently, the project has gone through several iterations of design, but it seems the team has settled on this recently posted conservative red brick building with a light stone base and cornice lines. The new rendering is also in line with DOB filings and an elevation posted at the construction site.
More on the building

January 22, 2016

New Renderings for Chinese Lantern-Inspired Skyscraper at 470 Eleventh Avenue

By Ondel Hylton

Reaping the seeds of the Bloomberg administration's sweeping 2005 rezoning of the far west side, a consortium of developers led by Siras Development hopes to begin construction this year on a dramatic 720-foot skyscraper at 470 Eleventh Avenue. Anchoring the southeast corner of Eleventh Avenue and 38th Street, the 47-story tower will soar from a quarter-acre site across from the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center that the developers purchased in 2014 for $110 million. The mixed-use project dubbed Hudson Rise will boast a total of 380,000 square feet split between a commercial podium, 328 hotel rooms/hotel condos, and topped by 40 condominiums that that will be marketed to Chinese buyers. Archilier Architects are the tower's designers, and though the firm has designed numerous large-scale developments in China, this will be their first in New York. Said to be inspired by traditional Chinese lanterns, the tower will be one of the most spatially complex skyscrapers in the city, distinguished by a vertical stack of alternating, cantilevering, and interlocking volumes that are clad in an array of facade treatments.
More details and renderings ahead

January 22, 2016

SOM Architects Reveal New Renderings of Hudson Yards-Adjacent Manhattan West Towers

By Michelle Cohen

Architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) has released new drawings of the Brookfield Properties-developed Manhattan West project located between 32nd and 33rd Streets and Ninth and Tenth Avenues, Dezeen reported today. The glass-clad Manhattan West towers–punctuated by green public space–will be rising next to the Hudson Yards development. The five-million-square-foot project will include two office towers, a rental tower with 844 apartments at 435 West 31st Street, retail space and a new landscaped public plaza designed by James Corner Field Operations, the firm responsible for the design of the High Line.
Take a look at the latest images

January 21, 2016

VilLA NM Is a Futuristic Living Experiment With Ramps Inside and Reflective Windows Outside

By Ana Lisa Alperovich

VilLA NM is not meant for everyday living, but for weekends and stolen moments away from the hectic New York City life. None of the clutter of regular life can be found within its futuristic shell, created by Dutch architecture firm UNStudio. All white and smooth on the inside, dark like the soil on the outside, this Upstate home is the rural retreat dream of any idealistic, glamorous urbanite.
Learn more about the home

Architecture And Design

January 21, 2016

Drab Tribeca Office Building to Get Pocket Parks and Rooftop Lounges for Employees

By Ondel Hylton

Basking in the star-power of Herzog & de Meuron's 56 Leonard, the mid-century Tribeca office block at 250 Church Street is prepping for a major overhaul by its owner Philips International. Now that the city's Human Resources Administration/ Department of Social Services (HRA/DSS) has hightailed it out of the building to consolidate its offices inside 4 World Trade Center, the Philip Pilevsky-led team will transform the full block-front property into a sleek, amenity-filled workhouse in the hopes of luring young techies and media companies.
See more of the project

January 20, 2016

The Best Address for Less: Live in the Dakota for $1.85M

By Michelle Cohen

While it’s not exactly what we’d call affordable housing, you don’t have to be as rich as Yoko Ono or as famous as Lauren Bacall (whose apartment recently sold for $21 million) to live in the iconic Dakota overlooking Central Park. This pint-sized top-floor aerie on the Upper West Side offers a seriously rare chance to rub elbows with venerable co-op’s celebrity residents–and the memories of notable residents past–for a relatively earthbound $1.85 million. Though there’s still the nearly $3,000 monthly co-op fee to contend with, it’s not often that a space here that isn’t a storage unit finds its way to the market for less than four or five million at the very least; there are currently three eight-figure units listed, including Roberta Flack's pad and Judy Garland's former home. And the one-bedroom apartment itself is just the bright and elegant pre-war gem you’d imagine it to be.
Have a look around this rare little gem

January 20, 2016

Units Come Online for 180 East 88th Street, Tallest Building Between 72nd Street and Albany

By Ondel Hylton

In spite of a bristling array of glass spires erupting into our man-made mountain range and a global high-rise boom remodeling world cities into alien, cutting-edge anonymity, Manhattan stubbornly manages to appear tellurian. But Joseph McMillan's integrated real estate investment and design company DDG has emerged as one firm genuinely committed to nurturing and progressing our architectural zoo of a city. Their past projects–345 Meatpacking, 41 Bond Street, XOCO 325, and 12 Warren– transcend common architectural styles, clad in a unique palette of materials and composed of an uncanny mashup of parts informed by context, nature, and technology. DDG's latest exotic specimen comes to the architecturally conservative Upper East Side 'hood of Yorkville, at 180 East 88th Street (1558-1556 Third Avenue). The 32-story, 521-foot development will not only be the team's first uptown building, but also their first high-rise. DDG purchased the three-lot parcel from Muss Development for $70 million in 2013, and groundwork earnestly began last spring.
Lots more details and renderings this way

January 20, 2016

Tsumiki Are Legos Reimagined Using Japanese Design Principles

By Rebecca Paul

We can't deny that we're big fans of LEGO bricks here at 6sqft. They incite within us welcomed nostalgia for a simpler time when our love for design and architecture was just budding. However, now that our taste has evolved we can see how the brightly colored squares may not be complementary to a more adult interior aesthetic. The folks at the Tokyo architecture firm Kengo Kumo and Associates agree and have reimagined the classic LEGO with a minimalist Japanese twist. Their new blocks, also known as Tsumiki, are shaped like an inverted V and made from wood certified by the Forest Stewardship.
More on the blocks

Staten Island’s Abandoned Farm Colony to Undergo $91M Development for Senior Housing

Rendering via Nancy Owens Studio

January 20, 2016

Staten Island’s Abandoned Farm Colony to Undergo $91M Development for Senior Housing

By Dana Schulz

Over a year ago, 6sqft shared the news that Staten Island's abandoned farm colony was set to undergo a massive rehabilitation that included a large senior housing building and a massive public park. And just yesterday, the City Council approved the New York City Economic Development Corporation's plan to sell 45 of the site's 96 acres to Staten Island developer Raymond Masucci for $1, according to the Times. Mr. Masucci will pour $91 million into the project, dubbed Landmark Colony, rehabilitating five crumbling Dutch Revival-style structures, tearing down five more but saving their stones for reuse, preserving a 112-year-old dormitory "as a stabilized ruin," constructing 344 condominiums for the 55 and older crowd, and designing 17 acres of public outdoor space.
More on the project and the history of the site

Confirmed: Calatrava’s WTC Transportation Hub Will Open First Week of March!

Santiago Calatrava: WTC Transportation Hub , New York (Photo: Mega Projects and Skyscrapers, via YouTube)

January 19, 2016

Confirmed: Calatrava’s WTC Transportation Hub Will Open First Week of March!

By Michelle Cohen

The Port Authority has announced today in a press release that the World Trade Center Transportation Hub—anchored by architect Santiago Calatrava's Oculus–will open the first week of March. The hub will link the World Trade Center PATH station and "enable travelers to have a seamless connection with 11 New York City subway lines and the East River ferries in addition to access to PATH trains."
What about the mall?

January 19, 2016

Redtop Architects’ East Village Townhouse Is a Modern Interpretation of the Split-Level Home

By Rebecca Paul

This gorgeous four-story townhouse in the East Village was designed by Redtop Architects for a young, growing family. The firm's visionary design combines elements of mid-century modern appeal with contemporary style for a unique look and feel that radically transformed this townhouse from drab to fab. The foundation for the home's interior spaces is designed around an open central channel connected by a wide steel staircase that provides ample natural light and space–a modern interpretation of the split-level home.
See it all, right this way

January 19, 2016

Sebastian Errazuriz’s Latest Creation Is a Cabinet That Functions As a Kaleidoscope

By Ana Lisa Alperovich

"The Space Between the Void (Kaleidoscope Cabinet)" is yet another attempt by New Yorker Sebastian Errazuriz to deconstruct the paradigm that a cabinet should simply be a box with two doors. 6sqft previously featured his Wave Cabinet and his Magistral Chest, but the psychedelic design of his latest creation deserves a special mention of its own. The Kaleidoscope Cabinet consists of a reflective storage unit that visually multiplies whatever is placed inside it, and it even has a peephole that functions just like its namesake children's toy.
Learn more about this mind-bending cabinet

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