Lower Manhattan, arguably the original home of the skyscraper, has seen its profile altered over the years by new buildings of varying size and quality. In the past half-dozen years, two new and very tall ones have taken the trend in different directions—the new 1 World Trade Center, replacing the destroyed original, and 8 Spruce Street, designed by controversial architect Frank Gehry, whose work does not inspire neutrality. The two standouts can be seen above, with 1 WTC on the left, and 8 Spruce on the right.
I've not been a big fan of Gehry's; his plan for Atlantic Center in Brooklyn, including the new Barclays arena, was (my view) fortunately abandoned for other designs, and his Cleveland Clinic building in Las Vegas seems (again, my view) a silly trick.
But this time, I find myself on the other side, almost in love with a building that has taken a small space and a tall (78-floors of apartments) profile and made it an interesting place that can't be easily defined as modern, post-modern, surreal, digital—just to name a few of the adjectives that have been tacked on it. For more details and a review by the New York Times, click HERE.
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