New York’s architecture goes ‘bling’
25 January 2008
By Adrian Dannatt

New York’s upper class is employing star architects to put its wealth on display, reports Adrian Dannatt View any city from the air, any large city, and the issue of architecture is defeated. Mile after mile, and million after million, of buildings stretch into the distance, that sheer density of innumerable, man-made structures. So here we are looking at New York City, those five boroughs stretching wide from Atlantic seaboard to Jersey shore. What qualifies as “architecture” across this vast terrain?

Luckily, the answer could not be easier within NY. Architecture only takes place in the smallest of boroughs, namely Manhattan, to the exclusion of all others. Because there is no “architecture” in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island or the Bronx, only mere buildings.

Architecture takes place exclusively in Manhattan, and is created single-handedly by those men of singular genius who are already as famous as can be for being architects.

Of all the buildings across the swathe of Greater New York, there are only 10, 40, or perhaps 100 at maximum, which we are allowed to call “architecture”, and we simply need not bother with the rest.

As everyone knows, Manhattan is a slim, small island, easily measured at 13.4 miles long and just 2.3 miles at its widest. Despite the repeatedly celebrated revival of Harlem, the fact remains that most of its middle class would still rather be based below 110th Street, making its truly desirable dimensions all the smaller.

This “space crunch” has become critical due to a major American sociological shift in the past two decades, of which Manhattan may be considered a pioneer: a marked rejection of the suburbs or business parks in favour of the heart of the city itself.

The classic pattern established after the second world war, in which residential and business downtown city centres were abandoned for suburbia has shifted, with a new generation of homeowners and executives determined to enjoy the urban experience in all its ambiguity.

This, of course, dependent on issues of crime "An apartment is pitched as a limited edition, unique objet" and “quality of life”, is the mantra of former mayor Giuliani, whose attention to detail — he was obsessed with outlawing squeegee-cleaners — demonstrated how effective urbanism really can start with the “little” things.

It should be emphasised that this taste for inner city living remains the sophisticated, enlightened choice of a small elite, and that a large percentage of those deciding to live, work or just “own” in Manhattan are the pan-international rich rather than actual Americans.

And this elite, on the whole, comprises the sort of people who at least know that design or architecture exist as professions, and can perhaps be persuaded that these add “value” to property.

Hence in the transformation of Manhattan, which has become really noticeable in the past five years, every single available space — from parking lot to strip gap between stoops — is now under development, and a trend, a fashion, has flourished in which famous “name” architects are assumed to shift such projects faster. That may sound cynical, but cynicism is hardly enough in the face of the marketing, media, design and development public relations sales forces at work trying to create desire.

Many of these new buildings are condominiums specifically targeted at the sort of wealthy who collect art or “design”, and who may pay more for an apartment pitched as a limited edition, unique “objet” by a famous name. The classic case would be the trio of towers along the Hudson River by Richard Meier, where apartment owners got a scale model numbered and signed by the maestro himself — literally a “signature” work.

Other examples of these “name-game fame” apartment buildings abound downtown, especially along the West Side, whether Winka Dubbeldam on Greenwich or Philip Johnson’s Urban Glass House just around the corner. There is Deborah Berke and Herzog & de Meuron on Bond Street, Jean Nouvel at 40 Mercer, Charles Gwathmey at Astor Place, and Bob Stern now at work on Church Street.

These projects are accompanied by impossibly lavish and beautifully designed PR presentation campaigns, mounted by super-knowing “lifestyle” experts. A prime example might be Wiliam Beaver House down in the financial district, which is being put together by hotel supremo André Balazs with marketing by Sunshine Group, branding by Richard Pandiscio, PR by Nadine Johnson, residences by Calvin Tsao — all pitch-perfect to persuade a highly specific, niche demographic.

Here, architecture has become the ultimate marketing sales tool, a self-fulfilling definition by which capital A “Architecture” is whatever is produced by “architects.” And the more famous the architect, the less they have to be personally involved and the more whatever their name is attached to seemingly qualifies as “architecture”.

This perverse fetishisation of individual buildings by individual name architects now extends to corporate office complexes, exemplified by developer Aby Rosen, who is famous for collecting contemporary art and high modernist buildings. Thus, along with Hirst and Koons, he also owns a Mies, the Seagram, and Gordon Bunshaft’s Lever House, a building created as an anonymous corporate work by SOM which has become more valuable after the “rediscovery” and promotion of Bunshaft as a singular talent — just like a collectible artist, indeed.

Corporations have caught on. Thus Hearst now has a Norman Foster tower, and the World Trade Centre can boast forthcoming blocks with names such as Libeskind, Rogers and Fumihiko Maki attached.

Even homegrown Manhattan practices, who used to find it impossible to build in their own city, are now sharing some of this largesse, not least Diller Scofidio & Renfro which is working on both the Lincoln Centre and the Highline.

The Highline project — the pedestrianisation of an industrial elevated railway, like the current reclamation of Governor’s Island, with its extraordinary Calatrava transportation scheme — exemplifies everything positive and perplexing about NY now. A high level of laudable, intelligent urbanism exists, emphasising mixed-use development while opening up the waterside — making clear that the lessons of Jane Jacobs (celebrated by an exhibition at the Municipal Art Society until the end of January) have actually been absorbed, not least by mayor Bloomberg and his Department of City Planning led by Amanda Burden — but this sits alongside an agenda still led by commercial development to an extent that will always reduce “architecture” to questions of style and look, a trademark media image.

So the state of New York architecture could be encapsulated by that corner of West 19th street where Frank Gehry’s IAC building abuts forthcoming apartment schemes by Shigeru Ban and Nouvel, all striking works designed to be described, debated and photographed.

Yet none of these projects has any relation or connection to the other. And none of them attempts to acknowledge the presence of the ever-busy West Side highway, let alone the one dominating local structure, a large women’s prison. Because this serves a shameful civic function, it has not yet been converted into a museum or to luxury loft living, and because nobody knows its designer’s name, it is simply not there, the embodiment of invisible architecture, and of a city’s blind adherence to fashion over function.