NEW YORK:Cantilevered and terraced apartments in mid-Manhattan are for sale from €4.9m to €35.5m, reports Emma Cullinan
'ARCHITECTS ARE a new sort of rock star," says New York based Wilbur Gonzalez, who is marketing a new residential tower in Manhattan by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his practice OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture). "In a market that has slowed quite a bit the only thing that is really selling is this sort of product."
Apartments in this scheme, which will be complete in the summer of 2010, range from $7 million (€4.9m) for a single floor apartment of 167sq m (1,800 sq ft) to $55 million (€38.8m) for the quadraplex penthouse of 566.7sq m (6,100sq ft).
Gonzalez illustrates just how important architects have become by saying, "If you had asked someone to name five architects 25 years ago they couldn't have, but that has changed dramatically."
No wonder then that New York has many of the world's famous architects designing away in the city. Herzog and de Meuron - creators of the Beijing Olympic stadium - has designed apartments and an Ian Schrager hotel in Noho; Richard Meier has a riverfront apartment building on the west side; Frank Gehry is designing apartments on Beekman and Spruce Streets; Santiago Calatrava (who also designed Irish property developer Garrett Kelleher's Spire tower in Chicago, see page 1) is working on the World Trade Center site. The Spanish architect has established offices in New York and moved his family there.
Koolhaas has also set up a base in New York, following work on a Prada store in the city, as well as Seattle Library, a building in the Illinois Institute in Chicago (near a Mies van der Rohe building).
The Dutch architect, who started out as a journalist and has written many books, helped to establish his reputation by writing Delirious New York in 1978 which looked at the issue of building on the city's grid system, with its uniform plots and repetitive floor plates leading to a "neutrality of space".
And here he is working on one such grid but - while the footprint is a simple 33ft wide rectangle wedged between other buildings, the building quickly bursts out of that rectangle. It is possible to buy air rights in Manhattan, and this is what they did.
This has allowed the building to cantilever eastward by 30 feet, allowing air and light to itself and its neighbours.
The design relates to the New York set back laws (established in 1916) in which skyscrapers have to recede at the top to allow light into the street and to other towers. Here the step-back and cantilvering allows for terraces on one side of the building and glass floors on the other.
The shape also informed the design of the interior. "We have tried to use the complexity, even strangeness, of the site to introduce unusual qualities to the apartments," says Koolhaas. "Irregular ceiling heights, views around the tower to the north, and overhangs with windows to the city below."
The engineers Cantor Seinuk have devised a system, with the architects, of supporting the cantilever by making the facade structural. The exterior is essentially a self-supporting structural tube of 12in concrete (wrapped in highly polished stainless steel).
The areas of greatest stress, mainly the middle floors, have smaller windows while the higher and lower floors, with less force placed on them, have larger windows.
Floor-to-floor heights are also lower in the central section to add to the structural rigidity here. This gives the building a physical and visible solidity at its core and an lightness at its apex.
Koolhaas, who early in his career entered a competition to design the Taoiseach's residence (never built) in the Phoenix Park with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis, began on this New York project by designing a screening room for the Creative Artists Agency. They later asked if he would design the lobby and then, in turn, the entire building.
The agent Brown Harris Stevens has sold more than half of the off-plan 18 apartments (each taking up a whole floor plate) with many going to those who have already bought in the 60-storey sister building next door, known as One Madison Park.
"There is quite a mix of buyers," says Gonzalez. "People are interested in buildings by big-name architects and this is in a class of own. I've never seen cantilevering like this; this is the most significant apartment building in the last 50 years - anywhere, not just in New York."
The penthouse is still left, for anyone who has $55 million (€39m) to spare. It spans four floors and has a 30ft high livingroom and a pool with a glass bottom that acts as light source for the livingroom.
"It is probably the most spectacular apartment I have ever seen and I've seen a lot of apartments. I've never seen a glass bottom on a cantilever in New York and I am aware of all high end apartments here."
While there is no buyer, there has been interest. "A very well known couple who are fans of the architect have shown an interest," says Gonzalez. "There is no firm commitment on either side but it is useful responding to what real €55 million-client needs are. We have sort of had a dialogue with them and started to customise somewhat to their needs, for instance, in terms of bedroom counts. We'd love them in the building, we couldn't ask for a better buyer but so far the dialogue has helped us programme the apartment."
He says that Irish people have bought apartments in One Madison Park. "As the dollar gets strong there are more Europeans interested. The exchange rate has caused a rush at the very high end of the market - the top four or five per cent. In the last three weeks there has been a lot of European activity in New York."
www.brownharrisstevens.com
