Hasta La Ideas

If you happened to have been reading this blog two years ago, or really most any design-interested blog, you might recall that a healthy chunk of 2009 was spent talking about Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards, the massive project in that borough by developer Forest City Ratner, which included a new basketball stadium, housing, shops, etc. And what was not gold to report? To name just a few red letter stories, there was Frank Gehry‘s firing, the NY vs. Kansas City battle, and the constant stream of lawsuits, protests, books and even songs. It was all golden. But since last year, once the project started that slow process of actually being built, the national headlines went a bit quiet. However, as of yesterday, it came back to life, with the unveiling of the plans for the residential portion of the development. Designed by ShoP (which joined then-known-as Ellerbe Beckett in replacing Gehry), and in collaboration with Arup and XSite Modular, the series of towers are set to be built using prefabricated modular construction. The largest tower, coming in at 32 stories, will be the world’s tallest modular structure to date. Not only will that help speed up construction, which is thought to begin early next year, assuming the developers can get through another set of lawsuits, but building modular is believed to help save a considerable amount of money. In certain angles, we think the towers look somewhat attractive, but not everyone shares that opinion. Whatever the case, assuming Forest City manages to get them up, the buildings will at the very least have an interesting story behind their construction.

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