New York_architecture
A new Chelsea skyline THE MANHATTAN NEIGHBORHOOD IS NOW HOME TO THREE MODERN LANDMARKS Chicago has Frank Lloyd Wright. Los Angeles has Richard Neutra and Frank Gehry. These widely innovative architects helped give shape – both physical and imaginative – to their respective hometowns. But New York has never had its own, homegrown “starchitect.” The closest it comes is McKim, Mead and White, the firm that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries built the baronial homes of Vanderbilts, Rockefellers and their ilk. But if McKim, Mead and White had a style, it was a general kind of luxurious good taste. Their buildings sought not to stand out from their neighbors but disappear seamlessly into a kind of timeless gentility. But times have changed, and now a new generation of New Yorkers is no longer content with inherited good taste. They want homes that boldly declare their difference from their neighbors’ – buildings with their own aesthetic DNA and, where possible, the pedigree of starchitect branding. Nowhere is this trend more obvious than along the High Line, the new park that occupies a set of elevated train tracks in the far west end of the Chelsea district. Here are three of the most beautiful Manhattan landmarks – buildings the likes of which New York has never seen before.
©Paul Clemence
Chelsea Modern Among the first of the signature buildings to be completed along the High Line corridor, the Chelsea Modern’s innovations seem tame at first glance, at least compared to some of its neighbors. Still, the rhythmic disarticulation of its façade, designed by Audrey Matlock Architects, has a subtle sculptural grace that transcends mere trends. Sheathed in bluish glass, it buckles and billows in ways that poke beautiful fun at the flat planes that make up most of New York façades.
192 aïshti magazine
HL23 The 50-year-old Neil M. Denari is known as an architect’s architect. For decades he has been renowned for designs so forward-thinking that none of them had ever actually been built – until now. Known as HL23 for its location along the High Line at 23rd street, Denari’s first completed building upends traditional notions of architecture. Because he had to work with such a small sight, he created a building that unfurls as it goes up, thanks to a series of cantilevers that, besides buying square footage, endow HL23 with a shape unlike any other building in New York. The result is a surprisingly beautiful cross between an industrial crane and a computer chip, with plenty of air and light throw in. Angled, floor-to-ceiling windows maximize views up and down the High Line. aïshti magazine 193
DESIGN New York_architecture
Nouvel Chelsea The Nouvel Chelsea seems to deliberately ignore the white, billowing luminescence of it neighbor, the extraordinary, Frank Gehry-designed headquarters of media giant IAC. Instead, architect Jean Nouvel has constructed a building of consciously chunky materiality. The Mondrian-like design of its window recall the endless brickwork of traditional New York buildings, but of course with a twist worthy of the Pritzker Prize-winning architect. Each pane is set at a slightly different angle, reflecting light in subtle and complex patterns – a reminder of the choppy waters of the Hudson River onto which the building gazes. Inside the semi-opaque glass cladding lies a six-story-high lobby-cum-garden, where plants and trees seem literally to float in mid-air – a lyrical echo of the High Line’s own version of hanging gardens.
©Paul Clemence
Robert Landon
194 aïshti magazine