Now that the little legal bump is behind them, the team working on the ever-rising Trump Soho condo-tel in Hudson Square is moving full steam ahead. A few days back, a swarm of creative types gathered on the sidewalk across from the construction site where 15 floors of concrete and steel designed by Handel Architects have gone up. The occasion? Viewing samples of glass with a "metal-mesh interlayer" that might drape the 42 stories.
Panels with "colored glass accents" at the Trump Soho site in Hudson Square.
Workers set up panels of glass atop the sidewalk shed covering the condo-tel's concrete base which, as seen at the Handel website, will hover above the sidewalk along busy Varick Street. The effect created by the patterned glass is something akin to a beaded curtain offering a glimpse of something impossible to possess. The Handel site perhaps says:
The intent of the building design is to express this internal, dynamic life and its relationship to its urban surroundings by creating a singular material expression revealing the public theater of the hotel public spaces through clear glass while concealing the more private functions with translucent glass.The duality of life right there on Varick Street. But, will what we see now be the design crew's winning choice? Only time will tell.
A rendering showing the glass on the lower floors above Varick Street.
A view of the north facade along Spring Street.
The glass was set up to see how it might look to those passing below.
BONUS VIEW of Architecture in Action:
· Trump Clears Hurdle, Although Unfortunately Not Literally [Curbed]
· Trump Soho Hotel [Handel Architects website]
· Trump Soho Ad Has No Obvious Smoking Guns [Curbed]