Now we're even more obsessed with young Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, whose Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) is next set to conquer New York City on its march towards world domination. BIG's hush-hush plan for a crazy new residential tower (featuring a sloping roof planted with green succulents!) on the butt end of West 57th Street was just revealed, in part due to a comic book created about Ingels' work. Here's something even better: An actual rendering of the building shown by Ingels during a discussion at Harvard last night. Someone on Archinect liveblogged the chat, which got started when Ingels proclaimed, "I actually always hated Philip Johnson, I don't think he's a good architect." Here's what happened when the Manhattan tower was unveiled:
Bjarke wants to show us one last thing: a drive- and fly-by video of his project in NYC, for which he's just applied for excavation permits. He describes it as a mating between a European type (of the courtyard apartment) and an American type (of the tower). The soundtrack is Jay-Z's 'Empire State of Mind'! The whole presentation has been over the top, but this takes it. ["In New York / Concrete jungle where dreams are made of / Theres nothing you can’t do, Now you’re in New York..."]
Yep, so that happened. Meanwhile a tipster writes in to share more details on the design ("three sided with an opening to the west and a courtyard on the interior") and the disappointing news that the Durst Organization has decided to nix the facade planting due to feasibility concerns (that might explain the lack of green in the rendering). That's a lot of action for a site that isn't even zoned for residential use yet. Guess Durst is confident City Planning will love the BIG boy.
· Live Blogging Bjarke Ingels with Preston Scott Cohen [Archinect]
· Developer Has Big Plans For 57th Street, But Are They BIG? [Curbed]
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