We waited last week, like pre-cellular teens by the phone, for the latest iteration of starchitect Frank O. Gehry's 75-story Beekman Street Tower to materialize in our inbox, the way the last one did, but not a peep. Then the Times' weekend Arts & Leisure hits our doormat with the big splashy collection of renderings you see above, and we realized: Frank loves Nicolai O. more than he loves us.
A box of tissues and a carton of Ben & Jerry's later, we've recovered our senses and are willing to share with you the photo album showing some of the "70-plus versions" of the skyscraper. We're going to assume that the one on the far right is the most polished and "final" of the bunch. Ouroussoff's poetics start on page 3:
The massing is a response to the bulky McKim, Mead & White municipal building to the north and the 1913 Woolworth Building, its nearest competitor. In its scale and proportions, it also calls to mind Moscow's so-called wedding cake skyscrapers, a legacy of the Stalinist 1950's. But the titanium cladding will be rippled, as though etched by rivulets of water. ... Inside the apartments, those curves will be repeated, giving many of the ... apartments distinct identities.Oh, Nicolai, it's like you read our hearts: the marriage, the tears, the eventual headaches of residents trying to position the bed in their weirdly shaped units.
· Skyline for Sale [NYT/Ouroussoff]
· 200 Beekman Update: What? Where? When? [Curbed]
· BREAKING CURBED EXCLUSIVE: Gehry/Ratner Renderings! [Curbed]