Glass may still be the building material du jour, but haven't you heard? The stuff will bake you from the inside out and, perhaps worst of all, fade your furniture. The Wall Street Journal investigates what Richard Meier hath wrought and introduces us to one particular buyer who was forced to give in to the allure of (the horror!) shades:
Seeking views, Sara Antani bought a 17th-floor condo last August in a new Manhattan high-rise with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Hudson River. She got her vistas. But she got other things she didn't bargain for. The strong and relentless western light forced her to don sunglasses while reading. It made watching television and using her laptop computer almost impossible. The air conditioning could barely keep the temperature tolerable as sun baked the $1.5 million apartment on summer afternoons. And the sun bleached her pair of brightly colored European sectional sofas, which cost $20,000.
In June, Ms. Antani gave in, spending $12,000 on motorized shades that she keeps lowered during the day. "I love being able to see everything," says Ms. Antani, a 23-year-old graduate student. But "the sun's just in your eyes; you can't focus. Everything is so bright."OK, New York City is barren and if you're reading this, chances are you're just trying to kill time until you're allowed to skip out as well (us too!), so let's have some fun and play a little guessing game. At first we were thinking The Atelier, because it seems like a building that would be filled with 23-year-old grad students with $20,000 sofas. But the smart money is on 10 West End Avenue, since it appears in the story-accompanying interactive element of notable new glass buildings. Thoughts?
· People Who Live in Glass Houses [WSJ]
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