Last night, every French person in Manhattan—as well as every real estate bigwig not on Fifth Avenue or in Downtown Brooklyn—filed into 100 Eleventh Avenue for an evening of cocktails and art with Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel. By now Nouvel's West Chelsea world of windows, aka the Vision Machine, needs no introduction, so what are our thoughts?
[Photo by Wade Zimmerman. Click to expand!.]
The World Architecture News files from inside Jean Nouvel's "nearing completion" 100 Eleventh Avenue, grabbing some nice apartment photos but unfortunately offering nothing by way of the Vision Machine's canopied pool, planted atrium or various methods of suicide. That disappointment aside, those 1,700 windows are still looking awfully yummy. So, interior decorators, what does one do with a room like this?
· Nouvel's vision machine [WAN]
· 100 Eleventh Avenue coverage [Curbed]
Ten apartments have closed so far at West Chelsea's 100 Eleventh Avenue, including one $22 million deal for 10,000 square feet of raw space on floors 17 and 18. Seems like everything's magnifique over at Jean Nouvel's Vision Machine, non? Except for a spot of trouble upstairs in Penthouse C. The 4,818-square-foot 3BR, 3.5BA hit the market in early January for $16.9 million, and it's already gotten a six percent chop, for a new asking price of $15.95 million. C'est la vie these days, perhaps, even for starchitecture, but in case #PHC has trouble keeping it in perspective, someone please take away the noose?
Yesterday's news of a $3.78 million closing at 100 Eleventh Avenue? Small potatoes when it comes to the Jean Nouvel-designed Vision Machine. Today things get more interesting in the West Chelsea sensation. The Post's Jennifer Gould Keil reports that 10 units have closed so far, and the biggest came yesterday: An anonymous "computer/Internet tech whiz" paid $22 million for 10,000 square feet of raw space on the 17th and 18th floors. Only about half the building's listings are online, none of which measure up to an apartment of that size, so we have no floorplan porn to gawk at. But luckily the 100 Eleventh website has a rendering of a tech whiz at home in his new starchitecture, so we have a visual! There is one $22 million unit listed as in contract, but it's a penthouse less than half that duplex's size. In other Nouvel news, a second apartment in the building is now for rent, and that means new interior shots!
[Photo via Flickr/FBQC.]
We've learned a lot about Jean Nouvel's Vision Machine while waiting for the sales stats to trickle in, like what some of those 1,700 windows look like on the inside, and the building's preferred mode of executing unruly members of the help. But the big mystery is the buyers and what they paid, and if their star wattage will be more blinding than the residents in 200 Eleventh Avenue just up the road, which has already snared fashion icon Domenico Dolce. New Observer real estate gossip Chloe Malle has finally unmasked one of the first to close in Nouvel's glass castle, and it's—pause for dramatic effect—Allan Schwartzman! Doesn't ring a bell? Schwartzman is a big-time contemporary art curator and consultant, and a deed filed Dec. 12 says he paid $3.78 million for #12A. Did he get a deal?
A tipster just sent us these photos of Jean Nouvel's 100 Eleventh Avenue, showing what appears to be a noose dangling from the building. "The rope actually runs all the way to the top of the building…literally 200 feet long," he writes. Our Friday tradition of checking in on the Vision Machine just got that much more chilling! Theories welcome in the comments. Here's one: Jailbreak!!!
· 100 Eleventh Avenue coverage [Curbed]
Love it or hate it, 100 Eleventh Avenue is the biggest thing to hit West Chelsea since Bungalow 8. French starchitect Jean Nouvel's mountain of magic mirrors has quietly been closing units for a few weeks now. We say quietly because we're still having trouble digging up any sort of official paperwork on the sales, though we invite the ACRIS junkies out there to set us straight. Now the first rental offering of a sold unit has hit the market. Expensive? Oui.
Yesterday we presented Mr. Curbed's opus, our Best New Buildings of the Decade list, counting down from #10, the Hearst Tower, to the almighty #1, The Standard. Good times! But some fun stuff got left out. Our panelists recommended a wide range of nominees, and of course not everything could make the list. Still, there were tasty little added morsels in their feedback, whether recommending something that didn't quite fit the parameters of the countdown, or offering a passionate opinion on a building that didn't muster enough votes to be included. Rather than let it all rot in the dusty Curbed file cabinet forever, we thought we'd compile some bonus material. Deleted scenes, if you will.
The critical reaction to Jean Nouvel's mountain of broken glass at 100 Eleventh Avenue has been mixed so far, but here comes a heavyweight to shape the discussion moving forward. The New Yorker's Paul Goldberger, author of one of our favorite architecture takedowns of all time, sizes up Nouvel's Vision Machine in West Chelsea, and...he likes it! In a piece that's also a Nouvel career retrospective as well as a public spanking of the City Planning Commission for decapitating Nouvel's MoMA Tower ("The commission wanted, in effect, to landmark the sky"), Goldberger explains why the facade gets him hot:
When the whole thing is put together, it looks like a vast, reflective Mondrian, or like huge glass shingles, randomly assembled. Each of the angled windowpanes—there are more than sixteen hundred—reflects light slightly differently, making the building glitter like sequins in the afternoon sun. If you are tired of the way every modern building feels flatter and thinner than the one before it, well, so is Jean Nouvel.
And, kaboom, he also got inside!
Our October wish of closings at Jean Nouvel's 100 Eleventh Avenue—aka Vision Machine, Shattered Glass, Prison Pal, Money Pit, etc.—actually came true! That's the tasty little crumb baked deep inside architecture critic James Gardner's review of the building, and a building rep confirms that some condos have closed. Here's the rub: Because of the freshness of the sales and the usual lag between closings and those deeds hitting the public realm, we have no intel on what sold, to whom, for how much. What we do have, however, is Gardner's review, and dude is not digging the Vision Machine. In fact, he says it pretty much goes against human nature.
What would Friday be without a journey to the far West Side for a look at Starchitect trickster Jean Nouvel's Vision Machine? A big bore, that's what! So forget about lawsuits and rent control for a minute and get a load of the puzzle of steel rising at 100 Eleventh Avenue. Precision abounds amidst this tower of visual tricks. Hard to believe that some folks worry Mr. Nouvel might come up short when putting the pieces together. This cryptogram of condos still has lots of units on hand for folks who can reach into the old top-hat and come out with a clump of cash.
· 100 11th Ave. [nouvelchealsea.com]
· 100 Eleventh Avenue coverage [Curbed]
Jean Nouvel's 100 Eleventh Avenue has been Porky Pigging it until now—smartly dressed up top, flapping in the breeze down below—but those days are over! Last month the Windows on West Chelsea was finally getting some of that fragmented glass installed on its bare base, and now that process is almost complete. We could be going out on a limb here, but the Vision Machine might just be the finest Pritzker Prize-winner designed building located next to a minimum-security women's prison in the world. And now for the most tantalizing tidbit: We hear closings will start soon, perhaps in a couple of weeks. Which reminds us, can somebody spot us $22 million? We really don't want to take that hit to our credit score.
· 100 Eleventh Avenue coverage [Curbed]
· 100 11th Ave. [nouvelchelsea.com]
"I gave some out-of-towners the MP/High Line/Hudson River Park tour earlier this week. They thought the Nouvel building at 100 11th Ave was a 1970s building that was under renovation with the glass being removed and I had a hard time convincing them that it is a new building and the glass was going on not off. They also asked if there were plans to tear down that 1960's building straddling the High Line (Standard Hotel) or renovate it... Truffles they thought was an office building. I was trying to explain how one side was affordable housing for middle class people who only make like $100,000 a year and they found that amusing... It was like the Emperor and his new clothes, really." —Sai Baba [Jean Nouvel's 100 Eleventh Ave. Meets Street, Blows Minds]
If it's Friday, it must be time for an update on the big box of broken glass at 100 Eleventh Avenue. Better known in unconquered lands as the Vision Machine, this arching tower is brought to us by our favorite Frenchman, Jean Nouvel. The enigmatic Man in Black, most recently seen in these parts while knocking away gnats downtown, has imagined a hall of mirrors for the base of this cluster of condo-liciousness overlooking both the Hudson River and the High Line Park. The latest from the scene: big panels of canted glass are being installed around the base fronting both Eleventh Avenue and West 19th Street. As if that weren't enough, word from the world of foodies is that starchi-chef Thomas Keller could be opening an eatery here as early as this fall. That could make for the perfect place to celebrate with some champagne when Mr. N's next big New York thing gets the a-okay come autumn and starts digging out in midtown.
· 100 Eleventh Avenue coverage [Curbed]
The Feedbag reports that chef Thomas Keller, Great Lord Per Se, is opening a new restaurant in "one of the new high-rise buildings in Chelsea on the West Side Highway," probably in the fall. Of course, of the new buildings along the West Side Highway, only one that we know of offers renderings of a street-level restaurant: Jean Nouvel's 100 Eleventh! Could the Vision Machine really be done in the fall? Oh pretty please. Also, better gastronomical amenity: a Thomas Keller restaurant downstairs, or cutting the line at Grimaldi's? [The Feedbag]
Get daily updates and breaking news alerts from Curbed NY delivered straight to your inbox:
Loading comment form...
