Jean Nouvel's Long-Awaited 53W53 Reveals Its Cushy Sales Office

French starchitect Jean Nouvel has been working on the skyline-changing supertall at 53 West 53rd Street (christened 53W53) for a decade now, but it's only in the past year that momentum on the skyscraper has picked up. The first interior renderings for the building, which were created by Thierry Despont, were revealed last winter. And though residents won't move in until 2018, sales for the 139 units finally launched in September, with the least expensive asking $3 million, and the priciest going for $50.9 million. (For now; there's a cloud-grazing penthouse that has yet to hit the market.) For that price, prospective buyers not only get a ridiculously long list of amenities (lap pool, home theater, concierge service, you get the idea), but also bragging rights. The building is one of only three Nouvel structures in the city (along with 100 Eleventh Avenue and 40 Mercer Street), and is one of the more graceful additions to the now skyscraper-clogged stretch directly below Central Park. The building's sales office recently began taking appointments, and we went got a tour, which you can check out below.

The sales gallery itself has several components, including a digital board where buyers can view the pricing, floor plans, and views from all of the building's units (including the yet-to-be-revealed penthouse on the 82nd floor); photos of Nouvel's past work, such as the Burj Qatar in Doha and his other Manhattan buildings; scale models of the building and its amenities; and a unit showcasing Despont's interiors. The models are truly impressive: A larger one shows 53W53's entire lobby (and is made using the same materials found throughout, including American oak and black marble), along with cushy perks for residents, such as a full-service gym, wine room, and a lounge with Central Park views. The teeny-tiny versions represent Despont and Nouvel's designs for the spaces, albeit in scaled-down form. The full building model, meanwhile, shows off MoMA's galleries within 53W53, which will be visible from the street. See more details in the gallery below:

From there, prospective tenants are led into the model residence, which is comparable in size to one of the building's larger two- or three-bedroom apartments. (It's not representative of any one unit in particular.) With five rooms, it provides an introduction to both Despont's design for the building—which, true to form, includes luxe materials like Italian marble and Verona limestone—and the way Nouvel's architecture influences the interiors. The diagrid that zig-zags along the outside of the building shapes how each apartment is configured, with beams strategically placed inside that mirror the steel grid outside. Take a look around, and get more details, in the gallery below.

· 53W53 [Official]
· At Last, Jean Nouvel's Supertall MoMA Tower Hits the Market [Curbed]
· All 53W53 Coverage [Curbed]