Architecture And Design

At the northeast corner of East 61st Street and Second Avenue, a long shrouded condominium project is finally showing us some skin. The 19-story building addressed at 301 East 61st Street exhibits a creamy stone exterior, with inset balconies and vertical fins projecting from a floor-to-ceiling glass curtain wall. The building is being developed by Orlando-based Inverlad Development who purchased the 3,800-square-foot lot for $15.4 million in 2012.
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March 4, 2016

Why Micro-Apartments in Carmel Place Are So Expensive

We’ve been hearing a lot recently about the city’s new micro-apartments. As 6sqft has reported, NYC’s first micro-apartment complex Carmel Place (formerly My Micro NY) at 335 East 27th Street began leasing at the end of last year. The nine-story modular development in Kips Bay has 55 studios that are 260 to 360 square feet. Of these, 22 are affordable and they’ll go from $950 to $1,500 a month. Market-rate units on the other end range from $2,540 to $2,910. According to CityRealty, the average rental price per square foot for New York City apartments overall is $51, while Carmel Place units ring in at $98 per square foot. The idea of micro-housing was presented, in part, to address the need for more affordable apartments. So why is it that the result is what a recent New Yorker article calls “micro-luxury" housing?
Small Is Beautiful–but Not Affordable

March 4, 2016

Live Like Park Slope Royalty Atop a Queen Anne Stone Mansion for $1.85M

There's a lot that's grand about this listing, including the fact that you're steps from Grand Army Plaza (with all of Prospect Park below). But the building that holds this three-bedroom condominium is the kind that turns heads. The historic Queen Anne/Romanesque Revival mansion at 70 Eighth Avenue stands out even in a neighborhood filled with architectural grandeur, with a turret and bell dome, terra cotta ornamentation and stained glass details. This 1,847-square-foot, three-bedroom duplex on the market for $1.847 million would give you a chance to roll up to that bad boy every day. You would have to keep rolling up at least a couple of flights of stairs (there's no elevator to get to this "penthouse") but the landmarked four-story beauty would certainly be an interesting place to call home.
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March 4, 2016

VOA Architects Design 70-Story Mixed-Use Supertall for the Far West Side

Here's a first idea of what may be coming to a valuable far west side corner owned by former governor Elliot Spitzer. First spotted by the eagle-eyed SkyscraperPage, the scheme was prepared by VOA Architects for Highgate Hotels and shows an approximately 70-story, mixed-use tower stacked with a 1,000-key hotel with condominiums above. The site at 451 Tenth Avenue at 35th Street was picked up by Spitzer for $62 million in 2014 through a 99-year lease from Madd Equities. VOA's blog page states, "the project would have been the first new convention hotel in NY since the Marriott Marquis opened in 1985." Judging by the past-tense nature of the description, it seems this exact vision will not come to fruition.
More renderings ahead

VIDEO: Watch the World Trade Center Oculus Get Built in 65 Seconds

Time-Lapse Courtesy of EarthCam

March 3, 2016

VIDEO: Watch the World Trade Center Oculus Get Built in 65 Seconds

When we talk about Santiago Calatrava's $4 billion World Trade Center Transportation Hub, there's always the inevitable mention of how long (12 years!) it actually took to get the project up and running and built. Which is why this stunning time lapse is all the more fitting to mark the Hub's opening today at 3:00pm. The webcam experts at EarthCam teamed up with the project contractor, Skanska USA, to capture all 42 months (June 2011-December 2014) of construction progress for the famed and notorious winged oculus and condense it into a 65-second video.
Watch the full time lapse here

Architecture And Design

The Bedrock Myth: The Evolution of the NYC Skyline Was More About Dollars Than Rocks

Manhattan, and the bedrock beneath it, via imgur

March 3, 2016

The Bedrock Myth: The Evolution of the NYC Skyline Was More About Dollars Than Rocks

The reason so many skyscrapers are clustered Downtown and in Midtown isn't so much because of geological feasibility as because everybody else was doing it. It was long assumed that the depth of our venerable Manhattan Schist bedrock, well-suited for the construction of tall buildings, was the determinant in where the city's towers rose. Though the bedrock outcroppings are indeed at their deepest and closest to the surface in the areas where many of the city's tallest buildings are clustered, it's more likely to be coincidence than cause and effect. The real reason there's a big doughnut hole in the spiky man-made terrain between FiDi and Midtown has more to do with the way the city's dual business districts developed from a sociological and economic perspective between 1890 and 1915.
Find out why the bedrock myth is on shaky ground

Stuff You Should Know: How Air Rights Work

Image of One57 © Wade Zimmerman courtesy of Agence Christian de Portzamparc (ACDP)

March 3, 2016

Stuff You Should Know: How Air Rights Work

By Diane Pham

“For whoever owns the soil, it is theirs up to Heaven and down to Hell.” Most folks outside the architecture and real estate industries are likely to believe that putting up a new skyscraper is simply about finding an empty lot to build up. However, those in the know understand that it takes much more than a stretch of space and a good […]

March 3, 2016

Grand Carroll Gardens Brownstone With Original Details Gets a Price Chop to $6M

The story of the historic townhouse at 46 First Place in Carroll Gardens is just as much a story of its owner, Kathryn Sennis, who has lived in and worked from the elegant 1899 brownstone for nearly 32 years. In 2012, Sennis, a psychotherapist, opened Who's On First? Children's Enrichment Studio with her daughter here, offering art classes, parties, baby yoga and programs for parents and children, including foreign language classes and parenting groups. Ms. Sennis's story was highlighted in the Observer last May, where she told of buying the townhouse in 1981 for $250,000 from an “elderly Italian woman,” how her presence confused the neighbors at the time ("you ain't even Italian!") and how much the neighborhood has changed since then. She also talks of the extensive, exhaustive renovations she painstakingly undertook. She rents out the upper two floors, and her daughter uses the garden level of the four-family home. It’s a Brooklyn story like so many others–though in this case it's one with a $6 million price tag attached.
Tour the inside

Renzo Piano’s Ship-Like Academic Center Coming to Columbia’s Manhattanville Campus

By Ondel Hylton and Julian Friedman

On a triangular lot, where north-skewing West 125th Street meets West 129th Street, the Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) and Dattner Architects have crafted a 56,000-square-foot, ship-like structure for Columbia University's Manhattanville Campus. Known as the University Forum and Academic Conference Center, the three-story building will host academic conferences, meetings, and symposia. It will contain a 430-seat auditorium, meeting rooms, and gathering spaces. According to Piano's page, "The building looks like a ship levitating above the light and transparent Urban Layer." Its prow points westward and may be just small enough to sail under the Riverside Drive Viaduct and into the Hudson River.
More details ahead

March 3, 2016

New Renderings and Video Released for Sheepshead Bay’s Waterfront Vue Condominium

Rybak Development's latest venture named the Vue Condominium will add a bit of pizzazz and a sizable plaza to a popular stretch of Emmons Avenue in Sheepshead Bay. Rising from a prominent, full-block parcel at the intersection of Emmons and Sheepshead Bay Road, the envisioned eight-story structure replaces former neighborhood fixture the El Greco Diner, whose site was snapped up by Sergey Rybak and Jason Reznik for $13 million in late 2014. The project first appeared one year ago, and now a handful of renderings and a video have been released by the developers. The 175,000-square-foot structure will be the first LEED Certified building in south Brooklyn and will house 58 condos, 26,000 square feet of retail, two commercial office units, and a 134-car garage shared by tenants and businesses. The 9,000- square-foot plaza will take up a quarter of the development site and will have raised planters, ambiance lighting and bicycle parking.
Watch the video and see more renderings

March 2, 2016

Six Architects Reimagine the MetLife Building As an Eco-Friendly Tower of the Future

Earlier this week, the six finalists in the "Reimagine a New York City Icon" competition were announced (h/t NY Yimby). The competition to reimagine the MetLife Building, sponsored by Metals in Construction magazine and the Ornamental Metal Institute of New York, isn’t part of any real-life plans for the iconic Midtown tower, but when great minds get to this kind of imagining, great ideas are born. Architects and engineers were asked to "reimagine 200 Park Avenue with a resource-conserving, eco-friendly enclosure—one that creates a highly efficient envelope with the lightness and transparency sought by today’s office workforce—while preserving and enhancing the aesthetic of the building’s heritage." Designed by Emery Roth & Sons, Pietro Belluschi, and Walter Gropius, the 59-story MetLife Building, located to the north of Grand Central Terminal, opened in 1963 as the Pan Am Building. MetLife bought the building in 1981, and though they sold it in 2005, the architectural icon keeps their name. Below are the finalists' descriptions and renderings for the tower's eco-friendly future.
See what the finalists came up with

March 2, 2016

Police Building Penthouse Gets a $5 Million Price Cut With New Views of Its Secret Room

By Emily Nonko

Remember that $40 million penthouse that occupies the cupola of 240 Centre Street, the 1909 Beaux Arts NYPD headquarters in Nolita? It's hard to forget a four-story, 6,000-square-foot apartment that comes with insane outdoor space (right outside the cupola!) and a secret room originally only accessible to clock mechanics. The Police Building was converted to condos in 1988 but this particular apartment, which both Calvin Klein and Steffi Graf have called home, was recently remodeled. The condo hit the market in November to quite a bit of fanfare, but apparently buyers aren't biting. Sotheby's has recently listed the penthouse for a $5 million discount -- a cool $35 million -- and also offers some new interior photos to obsess over.
See the extravagant interior

March 2, 2016

Bring Tomorrow’s Weather Indoors With Tempescope

By Ana Lisa Alperovich

Weather in New York is anything but predictable these days, with 60-degree days followed up by below-freezing winds. But while fluctuating temps have been irksome, we've found a fun little gadget that makes unpredictable weather a serene and beautiful thing. Meet Tempescope, an ambient physical display devised by Ken Kawamoto that physically visualizes impeding weather conditions like rain, clouds and lightning. The minimal device is designed to receive weather forecasts from the Internet and reproduce the next day's sky inside your home.
Learn more about this cool gadget

March 2, 2016

$4.75M Neo-Federalist House in Park Slope Has Private Parking and Neighborhood Ties

Built in 1913 by Charles Neergaard, a patriarch of the family who founded the neighborhood mom-and-pop pharmacy of the same name in the late 19th century (with two locations, Neergaard Pharmacy is the oldest family-owned drugstore in Brooklyn), this Neo-Federalist home at 234 Eighth Avenue has a lot going for it. For one, it's a block from Prospect Park. It's on a corner lot. And, probably best of all in a neighborhood dubbed "No Place to Park Slope," it comes with private curb-cut driveway parking. All of this is tangential to the fact that this is a 4,000-square-foot renovated 1913 townhouse in perfect condition in one of the most coveted parts of north Park Slope.
Get a room-by-room tour of this unique residence

March 2, 2016

POLL: Should the City Spend Money and Time Hiring Starchitects for Public Projects?

Yesterday, 6sqft took a closer look at the Department of Design and Construction’s Design Excellence program, a city initiative where high-profile architects design public facilities, and the fact that many of these projects are long delayed and way over budget. The Rafael Vinoly-designed NYPD station house on Staten Island known as “The Stapler” is perhaps […]

March 2, 2016

Grand, Under-Construction Carnegie Hill Townhouse Could be Yours for $18M

Pre-war architecture is alive and well on the Upper East Side. At 178 East 94th Street, along a bucolic, tree-lined stretch of Carnegie Hill, a six-story, 7,650-square-foot, single-family home is squeezing into place as if it's been on the brownstone block for decades. The 36.5-foot-wide home is being built and designed by Daniel Kohs, owner of Long Island-based Madik Realty. Called the Danville House, the home hit the market earlier this month for $18 million. The sole exterior rendering accompanying the listing shows a red-brick exterior accentuated by vertical piers, culminating into pointed and spherical pinnacles. It's crowned near its apex by an open colonnade not unlike that of Murray Hill's Morgan Lofts.
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Starchitect-Designed Public Projects Are Often Long Delayed and Way Over Budget

Bjarke Ingels’ design for the NYPD 40th Precinct station house in the Bronx, part of the Design Excellence program

March 1, 2016

Starchitect-Designed Public Projects Are Often Long Delayed and Way Over Budget

By Ondel Hylton and Julian Friedman

The big news last week was the Port Authority's decision not to hold an opening ceremony for Santiago Calatrava's World Trade Center Transportation Hub (followed by their sudden flip flop), citing the fact that it was six years delayed and that final construction costs came in around $4 billion in taxpayer dollars, twice what was projected. Though the Hub has become notorious for these reasons, it's hardly the only public project to face delays and skyrocketing costs. In fact, it's not even close to being the worst of the lot that are draining tax payer dollars. DNAinfo took a look at the Department of Design and Construction’s Design Excellence program, a city initiative where high-profile architects design public facilities. Take for example the NYPD station house on Staten Island known as "The Stapler." Its original cost was projected as $3 million, but when it opened in 2013 this rose to a whopping $73 million. DDC, ironically, blames the emphasis on design for the problems, as well as a faulty budgeting process (cost estimates are calculated before actual designs are selected).
More details ahead

March 1, 2016

Kid’s Caravan Bed Provides the Excitement of an RV From the Comfort of Home

By Rebecca Paul

This funky kid's bed was designed to mimic a caravan, and we secretly wish they also made it in adult sizes! Not only is it cozy and playful, but it's also super functional and equipped to handle even the most rugged camper. The bed is packed full of hidden storage space including the helm as the perfect home for toys stuffed animals or blankets. Plus the base of the bed double as a full-sized pull-out drawer.
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March 1, 2016

First Look at Pair of Apartment Houses Coming to 220-222 Withers Street in East Williamsburg

By Emrys Fitzgerald

Here's our first glimpse of a pair of four-story residential buildings at 220-222 Withers Street in East Williamsburg. Renderings recently published by the site's owner, BK Developers, depict two identical, eight-unit buildings faced with a routine exterior of red brick, multi-pane windows, and dark metal trim. Three floors are flush to the streetwall, while the fourth is setback. Within each 5,000-square-foot building, the first and second floors will each house a single unit while the upper two levels will contain a duo of duplexes.
More ahead

March 1, 2016

Williamsburg Hotel/Residential Tower at 500 Metropolitan Avenue Rises Above Ground

Not to be completely outdone by Bjarke Ingels' Via 57 West, Williamsburg is getting its own highway-fronting pyramidal pile. Alongside the bucolic banks of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the concrete frame of 500 Metropolitan Avenue has finally climbed above street level, now reaching its third floor. The uniquely massed 200,000-square-foot, mixed-use project ascends near the Metropolitan Avenue-Lorimer Street station of the G and L lines, and from a V-shaped lot that borders five streets: Metropolitan Avenue, Union, Keap, Ainslie and Rodney Streets. Its stepped, ziggurat-like form will soar 14 stories and 172 feet above the low-slung area, making it among the tallest structures in the 'hood.
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February 29, 2016

RAAD-Designed Bushwick Building May Have the World’s Largest Urban Farm

Design firm RAAD is no stranger to boundary-pushing projects (their founder James Ramsey is a co-creator of the Lowline underground park), and their latest endeavor may grant them bragging rights as the designers behind the city's, perhaps even the world's, largest urban farm. Brownstoner spotted conceptual renderings (read: the developer has not filed permits nor have they confirmed they'll move ahead with RAAD's vision) for 930 Flushing Avenue in Bushwick, part of the Rheingold Brewery mega-development. The mixed-use project, officially known as 1 Bushwick, would offer commercial, retail, residential, hotel, cultural, and agricultural spaces. The aforementioned rooftop farm would be nearly 165,000 square feet; Brooklyn Grange, which is currently the world's largest rooftop soil farm, occupies 108,000 square feet across two sites. A description of 1 Bushwick says: "Guests relaxing in the rooftop pool will be regaled by a rare experience: views of the skyscrapers of Manhattan — and cornfields."
More renderings and details

Beyond Bars: Designers Reimagine Rikers Island As a Destination

Curtis + Ginsberg Architects’ “city blocks”

February 29, 2016

Beyond Bars: Designers Reimagine Rikers Island As a Destination

The 413-acre plot of city-owned land, most of it landfill, that makes up Rikers Island is known more for its impenetrable prison than its waterfront property and breathtaking city views. Recently City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito called for the closing of the jail complex, reports Crains, calling it an "ineffective, inefficient,” symbol of outdated policies and approach to criminal justice. An independent commission headed by Jonathan Lippman, the state's former top judge, is creating a blueprint for accomplishing the prison’s closing. There is significant opposition to the idea, though others, from Gov. Andrew Cuomo to the New York Times editorial board are behind it.
Find out what could replace the jail

February 29, 2016

Riverside Center’s One West End Avenue Tops Off, Cantilevering Pool and All