Foster + Partners first unveiled plans to build the residential tower at 610 Lexington Avenue in 2005, but was stalled by the 2008 recession. Replacing the old YWCA building, the 61-storey structure will sit alongside Mies van der Rohe’s 38-storey Seagram Building and SOM’s 21-storey Lever House, both of which were completed in the 1950s.
The building’s slender shape is intended by the architects to capture “Mies’s philosophy of rationality, simplicity and clarity”, and will feature a sheer glass facade that will stand in contrast to the dark bronze exterior of the Seagram.
“It’s not simply about our new building, but about the composition it creates together with one of the twentieth century’s greatest,” said Foster + Partners architect Chris Connell. “In contrast to Seagram’s dark bronze, our tower will have a pure white, undulating skin. Its proportions are almost impossibly slim and the views will be just incredible.”
A total of 91 apartments will occupy the tower, with many taking up entire floors, while a glazed atrium will connect the residences with a smaller building accommodating a bar and restaurant, as well as a spa and swimming pool facility.
Connell added: “Simplicity of design is often the hardest thing to achieve but in a sophisticated marketplace, people appreciate the timeless beauty that comes from it. Our design philosophy has always extended through the entire building and we will look to create interiors that blend seamlessly with the exterior approach.”
Construction is set to complete by the winter of 2017. Approximately 2000-square-metres of the building will be allocated as commercial space.
Here’s the original project description from Foster + Partners:
610 Lexington Avenue New York City, USA 2005
This 61-storey residential tower at 610 Lexington Avenue continues the practice’s investigations into the nature of the tall building in New York, exploring the dynamic between the city and its skyline. Located on the corner of Lexington and 53rd Street, it replaces the old YWCA building in Midtown Manhattan. Formally, it responds to the precedent set by two neighbouring twentieth-century Modernist icons – SOM’s 21-storey Lever House of 1952 and Mies van der Rohe’s 38-storey Seagram Building of 1958. In the spirit of Mies’s philosophy of rationality, simplicity and clarity, the tower has a slender, minimalist geometric form, designed to complement these distinguished neighbours.
The entrance is recessed beneath a canopy that sits harmoniously alongside the entrance and pavilion of the Seagram Building. The entry sequence continues on a single plane from the street to reveal a glazed atrium that joins the tower to a smaller building on the right. The smaller building houses a bar and restaurant, a spa and swimming pool, the tower contains lounge areas and apartment levels. From the floor of the atrium, the tower rises up like a soaring vertical blade, the view up creating a sense of drama and reinforcing the connection between the summit and the ground.
Some of the larger apartments occupy the entire floor area of the higher levels. The tower’s slender form creates a narrow floor plate, allowing the interior spaces to be flooded with daylight and creating spectacular views across the city from every side. An innovative glazed skin wraps around the building, concealing the structural elements which are further masked beneath integrated shadow boxes. To preserve the smooth appearance of the facade, opening vents in the glazing flap discreetly inwards. The effect is a sheer envelope that shines in brilliant contrast to the dark bronze of the Seagram building.
An Alpine choir pivoted on hydraulic platforms as part of French fashion house Moncler’s Autumn Winter 2014 presentation at New York Fashion Week, which concludes today (+ movie).
Moncler created an audio-visual installation called Winter Symphony to showcase the brand’s Moncler Grenoble ski and winter wear collection at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom on Saturday.
Members of the ten-piece Pendulum Choir stood on small platforms and were strapped to the mechanisms around the torso, legs and feet as they sang an updated version of a traditional Alpine song.
Dressed in down-filled morning suits, the nine singers and one conductor tilted in various directions as pistons behind their backs and under their feet contracted and expanded.
Behind them, sixty male and female choir members dressed in black and white Moncler outfits stood in rectangular boxes stacked four levels high.
Each box was illuminated around the edges, separated from each other so they appeared to float in the darkened theatre.
Lights shining on the choir members flashed as the larger collective joined in singing with the smaller group.
The presentation took place on 8 February during New York Fashion Week, which finishes today.
Faceted concretestaircases connect a string of social spaces inside this SOM-designed campus building for The New School in New York, visible outside the building through huge diagonal windows (+ slideshow).
The University Center was designed by architecture firm SOM to provide 35,000 square-metres of teaching facilities and student housing for The New School, allowing the university to pull its activities away from sites around the city and consolidate them onto its Greenwich Village campus.
Conceived as “a campus within a building”, the 16-storey building contains student housing in its nine upper floors, while the seven lower levels accommodate multi-purpose classrooms, design studios, laboratories, an 800-seat auditorium and the main university library.
Social areas, dubbed “sky quads”, are interspersed throughout the building to provide areas where can staff and students can interact, whether relaxing between classes or working on group projects.
Broad staircases create leisurely routes between these spaces. Clad with glass-fibre-reinforced concrete panels, these structures alternate between straight and diagonal trajectories, and some integrate seating areas.
“The University Center transforms the traditional university environment,” said SOM design partner Roger Duffy. “Rather than compartmentalising living and learning spaces, we strategically stacked these functions to create a vertical campus that supports the kind of interdisciplinary learning that has defined The New School since its founding.”
Exterior walls are clad with hand-finished brass shingles, intended to fit in with both the cast-iron facades of the Ladies’ Mile Historic District to the north and the brownstones of the Greenwich Village Historic District to the south and west. These panels also provide solar shading for windows during the daytime.
In addition to the staircases that stretch through the building, SOM added fire-safe staircases that students can use to move quickly between floors. The architects also installed skip-stop elevators that miss out floors during peak hours to speed up movement.
Three dining areas are located on different floors. Other features include bike storage rooms and showers for students and residents, which the university hopes will encourage cycling.
The student housing floors provide accommodation for approximately 600 students and can be accessed via a dedicated entrance on Fifth Avenue. Residents have access to a series of communal facilities in the basement, including a gym, a common room, study areas, art studios, a mailroom and a laundry room.
For nearly a century, The New School has been at the forefront of progressive education, with design and social research driving approaches to studying the issues of our time, from democracy and urbanisation, to technology, sustainability, and globalization. Over the past 15 years, The New School has built on this legacy to grow into a major degree-granting university, with nearly 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students. But, in recent years, as the school outgrew its longtime home in New York’s Greenwich Village and found its real estate holdings spread across the city, from the Financial District to the Upper West Side, this pedagogical model proved challenging to maintain without the physical plant to support it. The University Center both supports and furthers this model through its innovative design and responds to the school’s increasing demand for state-of-the-art, interdisciplinary spaces.
The University Center adds 375,000 square feet of academic and student space to The New School’s Greenwich Village campus. The 16-storey centre houses design studios, laboratories, interdisciplinary classrooms, the main university library, a nine-floor student residence, an 800-seat auditorium, a café, and flexible academic and social spaces for student activity.
Conceived as a campus within a building, the University Center transforms the traditional university environment. Rather than compartmentalise learning, living, dining, and socialising spaces, these functions are situated in a vertical configuration, creating strategic adjacencies and heightening the university’s commitment to interdisciplinary learning. Connections between classrooms, studios, library, cafés, auditorium, and student residences take the form of stacked staircases and “sky quads” that facilitate the chance encounters vital to the cultivation of discussion and debate at The New School.
This innovative interior organisation isexpressed in the exterior of the building. Tightly woven, purpose-built spaces clad in hand-finished brass shingles contrast with the open connective tissue of the stairs and quads visible through a glazed skin. The exterior mediates between the cast-iron facades of the Ladies’ Mile Historic District to the north and the brownstones of the Greenwich Village Historic District to the south and west. Located at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 14th Street, the University Center broadcasts the experimental nature of the school’s new home, creating a dialogue between the campus community, the local neighbourhood, and the city.
A New Kind of Urban Campus
With its 230,000-square-foot, seven-storey campus centre (located in the building’s base) and 130,000-square-foot residential tower, the University Center reimagines the organising elements of a traditional campus, from quads to classrooms and living quarters. Vertical, horizontal, and diagonal campus pathways work together to facilitate movement through the building, while increasing opportunities for interaction among students and faculty from across the university. Academic spaces are flexible and easily adaptable, and can be renovated or reconfigured with no impact on power, data, or lighting to meet changing needs.
Raw finishes and an exposed mechanical system further ensure flexibility in the academic spaces. To bring light into the 30,000-square-foot academic floor plates, clerestory windows line both walls of the main corridor. Horizontal windows and light shelves naturally illuminate classroom ceilings, reducing lighting loads.
Pathways to Discussion and Debate
The University Center’s system of double stairways plays a critical role in the life of the building; it works in conjunction with skip-stop elevators to move large numbers of students vertically through the building. Stacked one above the other, the fire stair is designed for quick circulation, while the broader, open “communicating stair” allows for travel between floors at a more leisurely pace. With faceted walls clad in glass-fibre-reinforced concrete panels, the high-use stairways are a place for chance meetings between students and faculty, and encourage social interaction and interdisciplinary exchange.
Circulation paths that weave vertically, horizontally and diagonally through the building lead into and activate sky quads – interactive spaces that also orient users due to their adjacency to stairways and corridors. Like the “local” and “express” stairs that link them, the sky quads are intended to perform as social spaces, promoting formal and informal encounters between students and faculty, as well as supporting academic and leisure activities. These interactive spaces include student lounge areas, student resource centres with adjacent meeting rooms, study areas, cafés, and pin up spaces for design studios.
To avoid crowded conditions and delays during class-change times in this vertical campus, peak elevator demand is mitigated through the combination of the intuitive system of stairways and a skip-stop elevator system. During peak times, the elevators stop at floors one, four, and six, and stairs are utilised to access the intermediate floors, while at off-peak times, the elevators stop at all floors.
A Commitment to Sustainability and Energy Efficiency
Designed to meet LEED Gold certification from the US Green Building Council, the University Center sets the New York City standard for green technology and building practices with super-efficient LED lights, occupancy sensors, a 265-kilowatt cogeneration plant, and sustainably sourced materials.
Envisioned as a model of energy efficiency, carbon reduction, and sustainability, the building anticipates 31 percent energy savings over a code-compliant school. Both passive and high-tech solutions increase energy efficiency. The envelope of the building is limited to 35 percent glass, which decreases solar heat gain while optimising interior daylighting. The shingled cladding shades the windows up to 20 percent during daylight hours. An ice-storage system, located in the second basement, uses electricity from the power grid during off-peak times to freeze water in a series of chambers; the ice melts during the day, reducing consumption during peak times. Heat recovery wheels recover heat from exhaust air and help heat supply air, saving energy. A green roof, funded in part by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, mitigates the heat-island effect, as well as storm-water runoff, capturing water for both gray-and black-water treatment facilities in the building. Waterless urinals contribute to potable-water conservation. Composting is employed with an in-vessel composter in the cafeteria.
The building serves as a living element of the curriculum, providing on-site training to the next generation of green leaders to students in environmental studies, sustainability management, and urban design. Design elements that demonstrate architectural, structural, mechanical and green building strategies are visible through signage and working exhibits. Back-of-the-house systems have been transformed into instructional spaces for New School students and facilities staff, as well as for professional organisations and unions, who are expected to use the building for hands-on training.
Cross section
Active Design Features
A central stair is the principle design feature in the University Center – a focal point both inside and outside the building. These stairs are intended as the principal means of circulation through the building for the physically able. Through the use of clerestory windows in hallways and on the façade, the University Center provides for daylighting along paths of travel, and the design is organised to encourage walking between destinations, as well as spaces for social interaction. The building provides bike storage rooms and showers to encourage cycling, walking, and running between home and school. The building was recognised by Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg as a model of the successful implementation of the “active design” strategies that are part of New York City’s anti-obesity and health initiatives.
Staircase detail
Student Resources
A co-ed residential tower for more than 600 students occupies floors 8-16 of the University Center. An amenity space on the lower level is accessible only by residents and consists of a large common room, art studios, an exercise facility with gym equipment, soundproof music practice rooms, a study hall, bicycle storage area, mailroom, and laundry room. The University Center has three dining areas: a 280-seat cafeteria on the second floor, an 80-seat library café on the seventh floor, and a 60-seat event café on the lower level off the entrance lobby and auditorium.
The new Dover Street Market store on Manhattan’s Lexington Avenue opened just before Christmas, and displays garments and accessories by both established and emerging fashion designers among a variety of installations.
“I want to create a kind of market where various creators from various fields gather together and encounter each other in an ongoing atmosphere of beautiful chaos – the mixing up and coming together of different kindred souls who all share a strong personal vision,” said Comme des Garçons founder Rei Kawakubo about the concept for the stores.
A selection of artists and designers created graphics and 3D pieces for the interior to form different environments across the seven storeys.
On the ground floor Kawakubo arranged wooden sticks haphazardly across part of the ceiling above scaffolding poles, which are used to support the rails displaying Comme des Garçons’ own designs.
White beams are clamped together to create angled shelves for Dover Street Market merchandise.
More scaffolding is used to form the section for Japanese designer Junya Watanabe on the floor above, where a kiosk for Moscot sunglasses is also located.
A globular tunnel painted purple on the inside covers the staircase connecting levels three and four.
Wooden structures and lattices are dispersed across the fifth level, some large enough to walk through.
The top two floors are decorated with a mix of patchwork wall hangings, illuminated lettering, translucent display units and metal columns.
American designer Thom Browne‘s apparel is presented in a glass room modelled like an office.
As well as New York and London, Dover Street Market also has an outpost in Ginza, Tokyo, which opened in 2006.
The decision follows a six-month study that investigated options for its retention. “The plans approved today are the result of a recommendation from the architects after a diligent and thoughtful six-month study and design process that explored all options for the site,” said Lowry.
“The analysis that we undertook was lengthy and rigorous, and ultimately led us to the determination that creating a new building on the site of the former American Folk Art Museum is the only way to achieve a fully integrated campus.”
Williams and Tsien have described the move as “a missed opportunity to find new life and purpose for a building that is meaningful to so many”.
“The Folk Art building was designed to respond to the fabric of the neighbourhood and create a building that felt both appropriate and yet also extraordinary,” they said.
“Demolishing this human-scaled, uniquely crafted building is a loss to the city of New York in terms of respecting the size, diversity and texture of buildings in a midtown neighbourhood that is at risk of becoming increasingly homogenised.”
American Folk Art Museum building – photograph by Dan Nguyen
The bronze-clad museum first opened its doors in 2001 to exhibit a collection of paintings, sculptures and crafts by self-taught and outsider artists, but relocated to a smaller site on Lincoln Square, further north in Manhattan, after the building was sold to MoMA in 2011 to pay off a $32 million loan.
However, Williams and Tsien believe the building already holds a “powerful architectural legacy”.
“The inability to experience the building firsthand and to appreciate its meaning from an historical perspective will be profoundly felt,” they said.
Diller Scofidio + Renfro‘s expansion will add approximately 3700 square metres (40,000 square feet) of new galleries and public spaces to the museum.
It will extend across two sites west of the museum’s midtown Manhattan building, including both the folk art museum site at 45 West 53rd Street and three floors of a new residential tower underway next door, allowing the existing lobby and ground-floor areas to be transformed into a large public space.
Scroll down for the full statement from Glenn D. Lowry:
Message from Glenn D. Lowry Director, The Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art’s Board of Trustees today approved initial details of a major building project that will expand the Museum’s public spaces and galleries to provide greater public accessibility and allow the Museum to reconceive the presentation of its collection and exhibitions. Working with Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the renowned interdisciplinary studio based in New York City, the Museum has developed a plan to integrate its current building with two sites to the west of the Museum’s midtown Manhattan campus into which it will expand: three floors of a residential tower being developed by Hines, at 53 West 53rd Street; and the site of the former American Folk Art Museum, at 45 West 53rd Street. The plans include new gallery space on three floors within the tower, and a new building on the site of the former museum.
The plans approved today are the result of a recommendation from the architects after a diligent and thoughtful six-month study and design process that explored all options for the site. The analysis that we undertook was lengthy and rigorous, and ultimately led us to the determination that creating a new building on the site of the former American Folk Art Museum is the only way to achieve a fully integrated campus.
As a major component of the Museum’s desire for greater public access and a more welcoming street presence, the preliminary concepts approved today will transform the current lobby and ground-floor areas into an expansive public gathering space, open to the public and spanning the entire street level of the Museum, including The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. In advance of these plans, the Museum will increase free public access to the Sculpture Garden later this year.
The extension of MoMA’s galleries to the west on its second, fourth, and fifth floors will add a variety of spaces and allow the Museum to present an integrated display of its collection across all disciplines—photography, architecture, design, film, media, prints, drawings, performance, painting, and sculpture. These carefully choreographed sequences will highlight the creative frictions and influences that spring from seeing these mediums together.
The expansion will add approximately 40,000 square feet of new galleries and public areas, providing 30% more space for visitors to view the collection and special exhibitions. The additional space will allow the Museum to show transformative acquisitions that have added new dimensions and voices to its holdings, drawing from entire collections of contemporary drawings, Fluxus, and Conceptual art; the archives of Frank Lloyd Wright; and major recent acquisitions by such artists as Marcel Broodthaers, Lygia Clark, Steve McQueen, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, Mira Schendel, Richard Serra, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and Cy Twombly, among many others.
Our vision for MoMA’s next phase will be completed over the coming years, and I look forward to updating you on our progress.
News: architecture firm Snøhetta has concluded the first phase of a major overhaul of New York‘s Times Square, continuing the initiative started in 2009 to pedestrianise large sections of the popular tourist destination.
The $55 million reconstruction project is the largest redesign of the square in decades and encompasses the transformation of five public plazas between 42nd and 47th Streets, which will be entirely reconstructed to remove any traces that vehicular traffic once ran through the square along the Broadway.
Rendering by Snohetta and MIR
Snøhetta completed the redevelopment of the plaza between 42nd and 43rd Streets just in time for the New Year’s Eve celebrations. It features flattened-out curbs that create single-level surfaces for pedestrians, as well as new benches and paving surfaces.
Working alongside engineers Weidlinger Associates and landscape architect Mathews Nielsen, the architects plan to open a second plaza by the end of 2015 and complete the entire project the following year.
Rendering by Snohetta
This stretch of the Broadway was first closed to traffic in 2009 as part of an initiative by New York mayor Michael Bloomberg to provide additional space for more than 400,000 pedestrians who pass through Times Square every day. Since then the square has seen a 33 percent reduction in traffic-related injuries, as well a 180 percent increase in shop lets around the square.
“Since we first introduced temporary pedestrian plazas in Times Square, we have seen increased foot traffic and decreased traffic injuries – and businesses have seen more customers than ever,” said Bloomberg. “With more than 400,000 pedestrians passing through Times Square every day, the plazas have been good for New Yorkers, our visitors, and our businesses – and that’s why we’re making them permanent.”
Once complete, the restructuring will add 13,000 square-metres (140,000 square-feet) of new pedestrian space to Times Square. It will feature ten solid granite benches, as well as two-tone paving slabs with embedded metal discs, designed to reflect the neon glow from surrounding signs and billboards.
“With innovative designs and a little paint, we’ve shown you can change a street quickly with immediate benefits,” said transportation commissioner Sadik-Khan.
One thousand editions of literary journal The Paris Review cover the ceiling of skincare brand Aesop‘s new store in Chelsea, New York (+ slideshow).
The Aesop Chelsea store is located a few streets away from the journal’s New York headquarters. “I first discovered The Paris Review in a vintage Melbourne bookstore many years ago,” said Aesop founder Dennis Paphitis. “I have since that time tried diligently to read every issue in a sober state.”
The walls are lined with monochrome extracts of 60 years of The Paris Review, including photographs and letters, while the issues on the ceiling are in full colour.
One side of the store features a cast-iron sink with tube lights fitted into the wall above. The opposite wall displays Aesop products on five freestanding black lacquered shelves.
A small black wooden table in the centre of the store displays more issues of The Paris Review, while a 1950s-style wooden cabinet acts as the counter at the rear of the shop. The floor is covered with black slate tiles.
Sunglasses by accessories designer Linda Farrow are presented on golden beams embedded into gravel mounds at this pop-up shop in New York by design studio Neiheiser & Valle (+ slideshow).
Neiheiser & Valle‘s installation inside a shipping container was created to display Linda Farrow‘s eyewear as part of the BOFFO Building Fashion series of pop-up shops. The container is filled with and surrounded by piles of stone chips, into which V-shaped beams are embedded horizontally.
Farrow’s sunglasses are displayed in rows along the length of the golden girders, which face both up and down so the eyewear is nestled within the V or balanced on top. “Eyewear mediates our vision and moderates our intake of light, but it also has the power to transform and transport,” said Neiheiser & Valle.
The gravel mounds are piled up against mirrored walls, creating the illusion of infinite dunes. Gravel also surrounds the exterior of the shipping container, providing continuity between the small interior and the large warehouse in which it sits.
The installation opened last week at the SuperPier site, located on 15th Street at the Hudson River Park in New York City, and will continue until 24 December.
Piled up construction materials seem to be a popular choice for installations in the USA at the moment. The entrance to this year’s Design Miami exhibition last week was marked by a giant mound of sand.
Photographs are by Naho Kubota, unless otherwise stated.
More information from the designers follows:
Boffo Building Fashion 2013 Linda FarrowW + Neiheiser & Valle
Thursday, December 12th, 2013 the second installation in the AIA award winning BOFFO Building Fashion series opened with a three week fashion and architecture retail installation by Linda Farrow + Office of Neiheiser & Valle. A shipping container and surrounding warehouse space at the SuperPier at Hudson River Park (15th Street) in New York City, will be radically transformed, inviting visitors to a unique public art experience.
An endless landscape of stone and light by Neiheiser & Valle adjacent to the Hudson River provides the backdrop for more than just Linda Farrow’s collection of luxurious eyewear, but an experience that transforms the brand for its New York City fans.
This BOFFO Building Fashion project is designed to transport the visitor from the dark winter of New York City to an infinite landscape of stone and light. Neiheiser & Valle state, “Eyewear mediates our vision and moderates our intake of light, but it also has the power to transform and transport.” For this installation, the architectural elements are minimised while the spatial qualities essential to both vision and illusion – deep space, radiance, and reflection – are maximised.
The only objects present are the Linda Farrow glasses, suspended against an undulating environment of rich material qualities – coarse piles of stone, gold displays, ethereal mirrors, polished marble, and crisp light. Parallel walls of mirrored reflection multiply the space in both directions, creating an infinite field that is both heavy and light, an expansive landscape paradoxically contained within the confines of a shipping container, an oasis of luxury and warmth unexpectedly discovered in a cold warehouse by the Hudson River.
The installation will offer a selection of eyewear from the Linda Farrow collection, as well as its celebrated international designer collaborations. Unveiling for the first time the SS14 collaboration collections with Suno and 3.1 Phillip Lim, as well as continuing collaborations with designers like Dries Van Noten, Jeremy Scott, Oscar de la Renta, The Row, and Prabal Gurung.
Alongside the eyewear collection, the installation will offer a capsule collection in celebration of the Linda Farrow tenth anniversary of the relaunch of the brand. Expanding into lifestyle for the first time, the capsule collection is a luxurious selection of collaborative projects created with leading designers including shoes by Nicholas Kirkwood, lingerie by Agent Provocateur, jewellery by Mawi and the first Linda Farrow handbag, among other items and will be the exclusive brick & mortar to carry the capsule in New York.
“2013 has been a milestone for Linda Farrow. To be able to celebrate a ten-year anniversary with such exciting projects like the capsule collection, and now partnering with a storied project such as BOFFO Building Fashion series, is incredible,” say Simon Jablon and Tracy Sedino of Linda Farrow.
Photograph by Evan Joseph
Linda Farrow offers what most eyewear companies can no longer offer: “innovation” in the purest sense of the word. Established in 1970, the Linda Farrow brand of luxury eyewear rose quickly to acclaim amongst stylish Londoners and international jet set. Originally a fashion designer, Linda Farrow was one of the first to treat sunglasses as fashion, producing collection after cutting-edge collection.
A tireless experimenter, Farrow pioneered many of the shapes and styles that remain stylish today. Linda Farrow’s long tradition of originality has been kept current by the use of collaborating with the most exciting designers to date, who bring a new perspective, whilst respecting the values which have made Linda Farrow a by-word for style, exclusivity and excellence.
Linda Farrow has never lost sight of what its fundamental values are; to create innovative products at a luxury level. Today renowned for its collaborations with many of the world’s most acclaimed designers (Dries Van Noten, Oscar de la Renta, The Row, Matthew Williamson, Alexander Wang, Jeremy Scott, Kris van Assche among them). Its unprecedented range of vintage sunglasses (over 2000 original designs from the 70s and 80s), and its uncompromisingly luxurious 18K and Luxe lines, Linda Farrow has established itself as one of the most exciting brands in fashion today.
Neiheiser & Valle is a multidisciplinary design practice committed to both playful experimentation and serious research. Ryan Neiheiser and Giancarlo Valle see design as a conversation, a loose exchange of forms and ideas, an open dialogue with their histories and surroundings. They approach each project with an intellectual curiosity, an artistic rigor, and a strong commitment to realising their ideas in the world.
This New York loft conversion by local architect Ali Tayar is divided using bespoke prefabricated panels based on a Swiss modular housing system from the 1960s (+ slideshow).
Tayar designed the home for Maryana Bilski, a creative director he previously collaborated with on the interior of a hotel in Switzerland, who oversaw the restoration of the 1872 cast iron building in the city’s Soho district.
Bilski commissioned a small steel-framed pavilion on top of the building, hidden behind a mansard roof and based on a system devised by Swiss architect Fritz Haller in 1967. “As a boy in Switzerland, my partner lived in the first Haller modular house. This was like an extension of that childhood home, here in New York,” Bilski said.
Wanting to continue the idea of this modular construction in the apartment below, Tayar created a bespoke prefabricated system using 1.2-metre-square aluminium panels to build freestanding boxes that house the master and guest bedrooms, and kitchen units and appliances, as well as modular ceiling panels.
“Fritz Haller’s idea of modular architecture informed my whole education,” he said. “So I conceived of the interior of the original loft, below the penthouse, as a custom-made prefabricated system based on the geometric model Haller had developed.”
“The interior is completely free of the building shell,” said Tayar. “It came in boxes and got installed. It can be uninstalled, put back in boxes, and taken out.”
Porthole windows in some of the aluminium panels used to construct the bedrooms allow light to enter during the day and seem to glow at night, while the bright orange panels used for the kitchen inject a hit of colour into the predominantly neutral interior.
Original wooden columns that appear throughout the space influenced the choice of larch for the ceiling, kitchen units and for storage panels clipped onto the bedrooms.
Tayar designed an expansive sectional grey sofa to create a large lounge area, while the antique chairs and settee nearby flank chrome and glass coffee tables designed by Haller.
A staircase leads up to the penthouse, where the glazed walls provide views across the city.
Designing interiors for the Omnia hotel in Zermatt, Switzerland, Ali Tayar of the Parallel Design Partnership developed a close working relationship with Maryana Bilski, the project’s American expat creative director. Tayar subsequently designed a carbon-fiber yacht for Bilski’s Swiss partner. When the couple were planning a move to New York, they turned again to Tayar for their duplex, the final phase in an almost decade long rehabilitation of one of SoHo’s finest cast-iron buildings.
As at the Omnia, Bilski oversaw the SoHo project. She worked with Bialosky + Partners Architects on a painstakingly authentic restoration of the 1872 building’s facade, elaborately ornamented in the style of France’s Second Empire-even recasting replacement elements in iron rather than less-expensive fiberglass.
Then, on a flat section of the roof, hidden by a Haussmann-esque mansard, she asked the firm to erect a small steel-framed glass penthouse pavilion, using a modular system devised by the Swiss architect Fritz Haller in 1967. “As a boy in Switzerland, my partner lived in the first Haller modular house. This was like an extension of that childhood home, here in New York,” she says.
The 1,300-square-foot penthouse pavilion was also an extension of Tayar’s studies at Germany’s Universität Stuttgart and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Instead of subdividing the 4,500 square feet of loft space with conventional studs and plasterboard, Tayar constructed his two principal architectural elements from 4-foot-square modules in grey anodised aluminium, used either on their own or with larch panels snapped in.
These pods contain the master suite and the guest suite, the former raised because the windows at the front of the loft are higher. Translucent portholes puncture the panels of both pods, letting light in during the day and out at night. Similar panels, only bright orange, sheathe the front of a third unit, a freestanding wall with a grandly scaled version of the Pullman kitchen built into the back. The ceiling’s perforated larch panels are modular, too.
He limited his palette to just a few materials, starting with the honey-colored larch – a softwood not normally associated with luxury construction but chosen to coordinate with the original Doric columns. There is also granite for the two baronial fireplace surrounds, the bathroom’s walls and tub and sink surrounds, and the kitchen’s counter and backsplash. The only strong colour is the orange of the kitchen panels.
“Furnishing the apartment was a matter of weaving together the history of the building with the history of the clients,” he says. The result takes a long view of modernism – one that starts with its birth in the second industrial revolution of the mid-19th century, the world of the crystal palace and the cast-iron facade, and continues to develop up to the present. The first purchase was a set of Danish 1950’s dining chairs, fine-boned in rosewood and leather.
That was easy. “I know what I like,” Bilski says. Finding a suitably expansive sofa for the living area was harder. After rejecting several contemporary models, she suggested Tayar design something himself, and he came up with a 15-foot-wide gray sectional with black lacquered elements, a nod to her admiration for Eileen Gray. Less monumental are a pair of Haller’s glass-topped chrome cocktail tables and a century-old settee and armchairs.
In the dining area, a massive silvery table base supports an enormous oval of granite. “It was the biggest piece we could find,” Tayar says. Bilski adds, “It truly anchors the space. They had to bring it in with a crane. I can’t believe they’ll ever be able to take it out again.” The entry’s console table, a long slab of Japanese cedar topping elegantly splayed carbon-fiber legs, is a custom design very similar to a table in his own apartment.
Art offers a link to the Omnia in particular and Switzerland in general. A large black-and-white photograph of the Alps, taken by the late Balthasar Burkhard, hangs in the living area. “We used a lot of his work at the hotel. That one was a gift from him when the project was complete,” Bilski says. Meanwhile, two striking wrought-iron sculptures came from the original Haller house.
As for the entry’s huge Keith Haring graffiti drawing, it was purchased in 1997 from a gallery in SoHo but immediately whisked off to Europe. Bilski couldn’t wait to bring the Haring home.
London designer Paul Cocksedge’s first solo exhibition, at Friedman Benda in New York, features a table folded from a single sheet of steel (+ slideshow).
Paul Cocksedge‘s Capture exhibition at New York City’s Friedman Benda gallery includes two new pieces by the designer.
The first is a table made from a curved Corten steel sheet, which balances on one end and curves back on itself to create the top.
The half-ton sheet folds at an angle so the top and base point in different directions.
His second new design is a large black domed lamp, which glows with a white light across the entire 1.6-metre-wide base.
Hand-spun from aluminium, the hemisphere is tilted to direct the light at an angle.
Friedman Benda will present Paul Cocksedge: Capture the British designer’s inaugural solo exhibition, 12 September – 12 October 2013.
Capture will introduce new works developed by Cocksedge over the last four and half years that push the mediums of light and structure, including a large-scale light installation, a collection of dramatic, seemingly impossible, hand-wrought dome lamps, and Poised, a series of unyielding steel tables inspired by the delicacy of paper. Known for exploring the limits of technology, materials, and manufacturing capabilities, Paul Cocksedge Studio has produced both commercial and experimental work, as well as a series of high-profile public installations around the world. Capture finds Cocksedge presenting a new series of concepts informed by his studio’s commitment to technological ingenuity, expanding the boundaries of physics, and the creation of works that are both thought provoking and unexpected.
The works include Capture, a 1.6-metre hand-spun aluminium dome that appears to “hold” the peaceful glow of a warm white light. The piece is informed by a process of reduction – a recurring theme in Cocksedge’s work – as it subtracts the typical infrastructure around light, instead creating a hemisphere that seems to stop light from escaping.
For White Light, Cocksedge will create a room within the gallery in which everything and nothing changes. For this work, the designer will create an illuminated mosaic of precisely calibrated and positioned coloured panels on the ceiling of the gallery. The ceiling will slowly fade from a spectrum of colours to a warm white light, while the room itself will remain unchanged, demonstrating the ways in which we do and do not perceive the interplay of colour and light.
The inspiration for Poised comes from the elegance and amenability of paper. Half a ton in weight, the steel table appears improbable upon investigation. Created following an intensive series of calculations regarding gravity, mass, and equilibrium, the table looks as though it is about to fall, but is perfectly weighted and stable.
In addition to these new works, Cocksedge will present three architectural models that take conceptual threads from Capture and White Light and reapply them to architectural settings outside of the gallery space. Central to Cocksedge’s work is an appreciation for the ways in which people respond to and interact with his designs. As a result, potential real world applications of these new works will be explored in a series of architectural models.
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