Whoa. Here's the architectural reveal of the month: Steven Holl's towering residential/hotel tower that's being developed by Extell on Tenth Avenue between 30th and 31st Streets, across the street from the Hudson Rail Yards. Holl disclosed his involvement in this project on the Charlie Rose Show Monday night, and showed off some early renderings of the tower and the plan to build a bridge to connect it to the 30th Street spur of the High Line. Per CityRealty, "The rendering seemed to indicate that it would be more than 50 stories tall and that it would rise in three major setbacks and that the silhouette of the slender tower would somewhat resemble an elongated, angled 'S.'" Hard to get a sense of the S in the rendering above, but screengrabs from an alert member of Wired New York shows the sway. Early verdict: pretty damn awesome.
The more interesting angle, though, concerns the High Line. The 30th Street spur juts off the Hudson Yards portion of the raised train tracks (good photos of the spur here). That makes it part of the upper third of the High Line, the portion that Friends of the High Line says isn't yet guaranteed to survive the Hudson Yards redevelopment process. Yet Extell now says they're going to invest $2 million in a bridge from Holl's tower to the 30th Street spur—pretty good evidence, one might conclude, that the upper third of the High Line's going to survive the redevelopment around it just fine.
· New Extell mixed-use tower [Wired New York]
· Steven Holl designs major mixed-use tower on Tenth Avenue [CityRealty]