Chop Off That Top! How to Turn Manhattan Into an Architectural Museum
Jean Nouvel's proposed tower next to the Museum of Modern Art in New York was one of the most promising buildings to rise in Manhattan in the next years. Now, New York's City Planning Department knocked the building into shape due to doubts concerning its architectural excellence.
New York is having a tough ride. After a long time of architectural blandness,
the excess of the years before the current credit crisis blessed the city with
some fairly innovative and beautifully modern building proposals. When the crisis
reached its peak though, many of these sketches were away for financial reasons.
One example for this is Herzog and de Meuron's Jenga-style glass tower. Others
barely survived the credit crunch: Frank Gehry's Beekman Tower is under construction
— albeit modified for a smaller budget — and is turning into a massive building
that will redefine the Lower Manhattan skyline.
And what cheer went through the architectural scene when Pritzer price winner
Jean Nouvel revealed his plans for a 75-storey building at 53rd street, right
next to the Museum of Modern art (which would actually use some of the buildings'
floors to expand its exhibition space). The tower slopes back dramatically as
it soars into the sky, supported by a network of irregular steel beams, the glass
facade flush with the steel. The building would have reached a height of 381 meters,
teh height of the Empire State Building without its spire. The proposal had the
power to become New York's next architectural icon, on par (not just in size)
with giants like the Empire State and the Chrysler Building. But this is obviously
something that not everybody was happy with.
On Wednesday, September 9, New York's City Planning Department rejected the proposal
and demanded that the building be cut by 61 meters (200 feet). According to city
planning commissioner Amanda Burden, the building (or its top) does not meet the
aesthetic standards that would be necessary for a building that wants to compete
with New York's most famous landmarks.
This instantly reminded me of Hamburg's mentality towards modern high-rise architecture.
Somewhere in the 1960's, after the first huge corporate office buildings had been
built in the inner city (the Unilever building at Gänsemarkt had been a kind
of guinea pig), the city administration came to the conclusion that no building
in Hamburg should compete with the main churches that define the city's skyline.
This has become a rule that exists until today. With its decision to restrict
the height for Nouvel's tower, New York has arrived where Hamburg had been in
the 1960's. For New York nowadays, the Empire State and the Chrysler resemble
Hamburg's churches — fixed points on the skyline that may never be matched or
exceeded by modern architecture. In this, New York, the classical city of skyscrapers
and the city that embodies the constantly changing and growing urban environment,
seems to finally put an end to its strive for architectural greatness in order
to freeze its skyline in time, turning its buildings into artworks in an urban
museum that shows how the city looked in its golden years, yet closes itself to
new architectural influences.
What's unusual in the Planning Departmernt's decision is that they obviously didn't
even ask Nouvel to rework his proposal to better fit its location. They criticized
the top of the building, but gave Nouvel no chance to fulfill their demands by
reworking the spire. Instead presented Nouvel with a fait accompli. This might
lead us to the conclusion that there might be forced trying to stop the building
from being erected. It's not clear whether the action was sparked by a kind of
NIMBY initiative or other people. What seems clear though is that the design for
the building will see some massive changes that might affect its overall stature.
Since this is not your regular building, but one of the most promising current
projects in Manhattan, the sad conclusion is that New York in the present time
cringes from redefining itself, like it has done so often before.
Further reading: Off With Its Top! City Cuts Tower to Size — The New York Times, September 9, 2009
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