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Affichage des résultats pour les étiquettes 'tower'.
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(Courtesy of Gothamist)
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Hey folks ...The Donald will be in Montreal for seminars next week. Monday at the Complexe Desjardins -Hyatt, Tuesday at Chateau Vaudreuil, Wednesday at the new PET Marriott and Thursday at the Sheraton Laval....and Friday at a press conference to annouce a Trump Tower for downtown Montreal!! ...... Just kidding!!....The 4 days of seminars are true... you can check out the ad in today's Gazette..... But let's dream ...if only ...A 60 Storey Trump Tower for Montreal hmmmm Anyways dreaming doen't cost anything.. :begging::begging:
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Russia: Protest in St. Petersburg over skyscraper
un sujet a posté LindbergMTL dans Discussions générales
By IRINA TITOVA (AP) – 1 day ago ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — About 3,000 protesters rallied in Russia's former czarist capital on Saturday to protest a plan to build a hulking skyscraper for state energy giant Gazprom. The protesters urged Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to ban the construction of the 77-story glass tower in the historic city center. Officials see the so-called Okhta Center as an important step in developing St. Petersburg. But critics say the 400-meter (1,300-foot) tower will spoil the city's elegant skyline, known for its canals, ridges and centuries-old palaces. UNESCO has warned that building the tower could endanger St. Petersburg's status as a world heritage site. The protesters on Saturday carried placards saying "No to the Tower!" and "History is More Important Than Money!" They also called on Medvedev to fire city Gov. Valentina Matviyenko for giving a green light to the project earlier this month. "This action will destroy my city, the city where I grew up, and the city that I want to save for my grandchildren," Galina Safronova, a 55-year protester said. The proposed tower would be built across the Neva and upriver from the most heavily visited parts of St. Petersburg, but would still dominate many views and would loom over the Smolny monastery complex, whose turquoise buildings trimmed in frilly white are one of the city's most beloved sites. Russia's Culture Minister Alexander Avdeyev has joined the ranks of the project's foes. In an interview published Saturday in the business daily Kommersant, he said he had sent a letter to prosecutors arguing that the plan would violate the federal law. "If the law is broken, the executive authorities and the prosecutors must react to that," Avdeyev was quoted as saying. A poll of 1,200 St. Petersburg residents conducted earlier this week had 77 percent of respondents saying that the city's skyline must be preserved, while 18 percent welcomed new tall buildings and the rest were undecided. A margin of error for the poll conducted by the respected All-Russia Opinion Research Center wasn't given, but it usually is about 3 percentage points. Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jpjEWSXmE7hMTCCXu4XhEhlGvHNAD9B88IT00 -
First Canadian Place officer tower to receive a facelift 680News staff Toronto | Thursday, September 24th, 2009 7:56 am Toronto - First Canadian Place, Canada's tallest office tower, will be receiving a $100-million makeover. There are currently 45,000 slabs of white marble on the 72-storey home for the Bank of Montreal. But, Brookfield Properties, the building's owner, is going to replace the marble with 7,800 panels of white glass. The National Post reported the property, which opened in 1975, has already seen a refurbishment of some of the marble slabs, but the look has deteriorated. Tom Farley, president and CEO of Brookfield's Canadian commercial operations, told the paper that when the company bought the property in 2005, they knew it was a fixer-upper. If the original builder had used thicker marble, it would have lasted 100 years. Brookfield said it will also renovate the lobby of the tower. The National Post called the renovation another positive signal for the downtown business core, with the recent opening of the Bay-Adelaide Centre and two other office towers opening before the end of the year. ----- Hyrdo-Quebec are you listening??? Please renovate your POS.
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New Skyscraper Filling With Jobs From Other Buildings
un sujet a posté LindbergMTL dans Discussions générales
CINCINNATI -- The latest addition to Cincinnati's skyline seems to defy the recession plaguing the nation. Great American Tower at Queen City Square is a $400 million mega-building that will re-shape downtown. "We work in 43 cities around the country right now. This is the only high-rise we have currently going on in any of those cities," Turner Construction Vice President Ken Jones said. "This is a huge deal." The skyscraper is more than a year from opening and already it is 80 percent pre-leased. But so far, all the people moving to the building are coming from other buildings in downtown Cincinnati. "They need to stop right there in terms of stealing tenants from other buildings," Cincinnati Business Journal publisher Doug Bolton said. Bolton said the move of Great American Financial And Frost Brown Todd from their current offices to the new building in the eastern part of the central business district could cripple the restaurants and stores that have built their livelihood around Fountain Square. "There's a huge concern, and people have described it to me as this giant sucking sound out of the core of downtown," Bolton said. But the president of Downtown Cincinnati Incorporated said he sees the soon-to-be-empty office space as an opportunity to attract new companies and new revenue to the city. "At the end of the day, if there isn't growth, if there isn't more, then, really, we are, in fact, all spinning our wheels," David Ginsburg said. The developer estimates Great American Tower is saving or creating almost 9,000 jobs in Cincinnati. That number includes a prediction that Great American Financial would have moved out of Cincinnati if it wasn’t able to consolidate its offices. Copyright 2009 by WLWT.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Video of the news story and building here: http://www.wlwt.com/money/21795311/detail.html -
Read more: http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=2260755#ixzz0XpBuycRO
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Tallest Building in Asia Revealed for Seoul, South Korea
un sujet a posté LindbergMTL dans Discussions générales
A new super skyscraper has just been announced for South Korea and will tower over all other buildings in Asia when it is complete in 2014. From a global perspective, Lotte Super Tower 123, designed by Kohn Pederson Fox, falls just short of taking the title, and will be not the tallest but the second tallest skyscraper in the world. The structure will serve as the new corporate headquarters for the Lotte Group, whose subsidairy, Lotte Construction, will build it. Zoning has been approved and excavation is nearly complete. With aims towards LEED silver certification, the tower will have a strong environmental component and will offer Seoulians mixed-use areas such as shops, apartments, offices and a hotel. To be built in the southern Jamsil section of the city near the Han River, the Super Lotte Tower will sit next to a key transportation hub, efficiently bringing in commuters as well as tourists eager to see the new attraction. Mixed-use development was a key element in the design, and the vertical city will include public transport connectors, retail and residential space, offices, a hotel, an observation deck, and other public areas. Exact details on the sustainable design elements of the structure have not been released, but the firm is aiming for LEED certification, which will hopefully by that time include building performance monitoring to ensure energy savings. Kohn Pederson Fox, who is also responsible for the new eco-district Songdo IBD, is well known for designing super structures – especially in Asia. US architecture firms like KPF have been looking abroad for design work and have managed to stay afloat with contracts developing regions in Asia as well as the Middle East. + Kohn Pederson Fox Architects http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/10/21/tallest-building-in-asia-revealed-for-seoul-south-korea/ -
New York -Les bureaucrates s'en mèlent aussi!
un sujet a posté LindbergMTL dans Discussions générales
September 10, 2009 Architecture Off With Its Top! City Cuts Tower to Size By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF Does Manhattan have a future as a great metropolis? If you hope the answer is yes, you will be disheartened by the City Planning Department’s decision on Wednesday to chop off 200 feet from the top of a proposed tower next door to the Museum of Modern Art on 53rd Street in Manhattan. Designed by Jean Nouvel, the building would have been as tall as the Empire State Building minus its antenna, a fact that probably made planners tremble. Amanda Burden, the city planning commissioner, said the tower’s top, which culminates in three uneven peaks, did not meet the aesthetic standards of a building that would compete in height with the city’s most famous towers. And who, after all, wants to be responsible for ruining the most famous skyline in the world? Still, the notion of treating the Midtown skyline as a museum piece is more disturbing. The desire of each new generation of architects and builders to leave its mark on the city, to contribute its own forms, is essential to making New York what it is. The soaring height and slender silhouette of Mr. Nouvel’s tower not only captured the spirit of Midtown — the energy and hubris that transformed this island into a monument to American cosmopolitanism — it also brought that spirit forcefully into the present. Mr. Nouvel’s design was conceived as a giant spire, like the Empire State’s but without the boxy building. Supported by a matrix of interwoven steel beams reminiscent of a spider’s web, it tapers jaggedly as it rises, evoking a shard of glass. The beams are flush with the building’s glass surface, giving it a taut muscular appearance; an underground restaurant and lounge, visible from the sidewalk, root the structure to the site. The design’s beauty stemmed from its elegant proportions, particularly the exaggerated relationship between its small footprint and enormous height. Seen from the street, its receding facades would have induced a delicious sense of vertigo. Ms. Burden’s objections were directed at the top of the building. “Members of the commission had to make a decision based on what was in front of them,” she said. “The development team had to show us that they were creating something as great or even greater than the Empire State Building and the design they showed us was unresolved.” It’s true that aspects of the design had yet to be developed fully. The three peaks were too symmetrical, which gave them a slightly static appearance. And they could have been sharpened to finer points. But Mr. Nouvel, one of the profession’s most creative forces, would have been more than capable of dealing with these issues. With the new height restriction in place, though, his original design concept will surely be diminished. And the loss of as much as 150,000 square feet of floor space could also lead to cuts in the design budget, which could mean cheaper materials and more cramped interiors. Or, just as bad, it could push Hines, the building’s developer, into finding a way to pack more space onto the lower floors, which could further distort the building’s proportions. But the greater sadness here has to do with New York and how the city sees itself. Both the Empire State and Chrysler buildings, built during the Great Depression, were celebrated in their time as emblems of the city’s fortitude. The Freedom Tower, our era’s most notable contribution to the skyline, is a symbol of posturing and political expediency. And now a real alternative to it, one of the most enchanting skyscraper designs of recent memory, may well be lost because some people worry that nothing in our current age can measure up to the past. It is a mentality that, once it takes hold, risks transforming a living city into an urban mausoleum. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/arts/design/10building.html?_r=1 -
J'ai passé 5 jours et demi à New York avec ma copine... vraiment un voyage incroyable! Je vais poster les photos à mesure que je les transfère et que je les met en-ligne. Voici la première série. Revenez voir le fil pour la suite des photos! Le tout devrait être posté d'ici demain. Statue of Liberty Grand Central Terminal (panorama) Du monde, ben du monde! La rue Un drapeau FAO Schwartz Beauté architecturale Dynamic Duo - Lego Batman et my copine Statue of Liberty Verrazano-Narrows Bridge Hearst Tower (HDR) FAO Schwartz 5th avenue (HDR) Grand Central (HDR) Downtown with Beekman Tower under construction Beekman Tower under construction Beekman Tower under construction Je ne m'attendais pas à voir un drapeau du Canada ici Apple Store Gloo gloo gloo de l'eau Moi-même à l'hôtel de ville! Les visiteurs n'ont pas le droit d'y aller en temps normal, mais ma blonde m'a fait toute une surprise quand elle m'a annoncé que sa cousine travaillait là et qu'elle allait nous permettre une visite V.I.P. Sa cousine est reponsable de créer et gerer l'horaire du maire! Carrière en politique? SUITE À VENIR... j'ai 1300 photos a télécharger!
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C'est comme cool! Source USA Today Sears Tower unveils 103rd floor glass balconies CHICAGO — Visitors to the Sears Tower's new glass balconies all seem to agree: The first step is the hardest. "It's like walking on ice," said Margaret Kemp, of Bishop, Calif., who said her heart was still pounding even after stepping away from the balcony. "That first step you take — 'am I going down?"' Kemp was among the visitors who got a sneak preview of the balconies Wednesday. "The Ledge," as the balconies have been nicknamed, open to the public Thursday. RELATED: Ten tips for Chicago tourists The balconies are suspended 1,353 feet in the air and jut out four feet from the building's 103rd floor Skydeck. They're actually more like boxes than balconies, with transparent walls, floor and ceiling. FIND MORE STORIES IN: Sears, Roebuck and Company Visitors are treated to unobstructed views of Chicago from the building's west side and a heart-stopping vista of the street and Chicago River below — for those brave enough to look straight down. John Huston, one of the property owners of the Sears Tower, even admitted to getting "a little queasy" the first time he ventured out. But 30 or 40 trips later, he's got the hang of it. "The Sears Tower has always been about superlatives — tallest, largest, most iconic," he said. "Today is also about superlatives. Today, we present you with 'the Ledge,' the world's most awesome view, the world's most precipitous view, the view with the most wow in the world." The balconies can hold five tons, and the glass is an inch-and-a-half thick, officials said. Sears Tower officials have said the inspiration for the balconies came from the hundreds of forehead prints visitors left behind on Skydeck windows every week. Now, staff will have a new glass surface to clean: floors. "It's very scary, but at the same time it's very cool," said Chanti Lawrence of Atlanta, adding that she's made her first step toward overcoming her fear of heights. Adam Kane, 10, of Alton, Ill., rushed to the ledge with his friends and siblings, and they each eagerly pressed their faces to the glass bottom. "Look at all those tiny things that are usually huge," Adam said. The balconies are just one of the big changes coming to the Sears Tower. The building's name will change to Willis Tower later this summer. Last week, officials announced a 5-year, $350 million green renovation complete with wind turbines, roof gardens and solar panels. With the ledge, visitors like Kemp said the nation's tallest building has succeeded in creating something they've never seen before. "I had to live 70 years for a thrill like this," she said.
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Voici des tours que j'aurais vraiment aimer avoir pour Montréal, en plus elles ne dépassent le Mont-Royal de quelques dizaines de mètres pour la plupart la Torre Reforma, à Mexico city, avec 57 étages, elle fait 244 mètres. La tour Aqua à Chicago, 83 étages et 251 mètres La bishopgate tower (pinnacle), 63 étages, 288 mètres Heron Tower à London, 47 étages, 246 mètres (avec l'antenne, ~203 mètres sans l'antenne) Shangri-la de Toronto, 65 étages, 214 mètres Le Hangzhou international convention center, 85 mètres de haut et 85 mètres de diamètres avec en arrière le zhejiang fortune finance center à Hangzhou aussi (évidemment), 55 étages et 37 étages et respectivement 258 mètres et 188 mètres Manila, the knightsbridges residences, 68 étages, 250 mètres Melbourne, 399 bourke street, 46 étages, 203 mètres Et pour couronner le tout, le Citylife à Milan, un complexe de trois tours de 50 étages (210 mètres), 41 étages (170 mètres), 35 étages (155 mètres)
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Voila quelque photos de mon périple en Australie, cette fois ci la ville de Perth. Le centre ville piéton (vraiment semblable à toute les villes australienne) Gare centrale Perth la nuit depuis le jardin botanique Perth depuis l'autre rive du fleuve Swan The bell Tower Transport en commun très agréable à Perth (bus moderne avec air conditionné, et gratuit sur le centre ville)
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Rotterdam: City Tower, Netherlands Thursday 08 Jan 2009
un sujet a posté LindbergMTL dans Discussions générales
Local architect pledges to stop the ‘joke’ of high-rise Rotterdam World War II saw the destruction of many cities around Europe and not least hit was the city of Rotterdam. While devastating on a human and financial scale this allowed the city to evolve into what is now considered as the ‘high rise city of the Netherlands’. But local architect Jan Willem van Kuilenburg, principal of Monolab Architects has derided this label as ‘a joke’ calling for an extension to the local authorities’ planned high rise zone to the south and proposes Rotterdam's first super-tower, the 450 m high City Tower. “Rotterdam is too hesitant, too defensive and too much like an underdog. After the Erasmus bridge we are in need of a real skyscraper of European scale of which Rotterdam can be proud,” says Kuilenburg, “All currently realised towers in Rotterdam are of mediocre quality and very primitive. As we should save in prosperous periods, it makes the current economic crisis the right time to invest.” Kuilenburg proposes City Tower as the leader in this campaign. The 450 m mixed-use tower with a photovoltaic skin would be built in the water by the Maas Harbour. According to Kuilenburg it would allow the high-rise zone to serve the whole city and help to connect Europe’s largest port to the rest of the city. The tower would be connected to land via a steel pedestrian boulevard to a separate parking lot with the capacity for 1000 cars. Kuilenburg believes this element of the project could aid the local authorities’ plans to liberate the downtown area of traffic by creating a 6th park and ride zone with its close proximity to the Metro. Asked about the likely response from the people of Rotterdam to what would be a very bold visual landmark, Kuilenburg said: “I don’t know. In general Rotterdam people are proud of the skyline, they are energetic and ready to go for new proposals. It has always been a scene for experiment. Rotterdam was bombed in the Second World War and so new buildings emerged, since then people are used to change.” Kuilenburg is currently in talks with developers and calling for international investment for the project. Niki May Young News Editor http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=10909 -
Ho Chi Minh City, Bitexco Financial Tower, Vietnam
un sujet a posté LindbergMTL dans Discussions générales
Bitexco Tower set for Ho Chi Minh City central business district At 269 m Vietnam's Bitexco Financial Tower will be the country's tallest tower. Designed by New York architect Carlos Zapata Studio and carried forward by AREP of Paris, the design consists of 68 floors of office space, 6 basement floors of parking and a 5-floor retail podium. 100,000 square meters of commercial space will be created in the build which is set to take 36 months. Ground works have been under way for the past year. The design is inspired by the lotus petal, the national flower of Vietnam and its sleek form has a narrowed footplate and three-dimensional growth as the tower rises. On entering the building a large atrium will allow you to view the height of the tower from within. A Heliport and observation deck will be constructed on the 56th floor and a sky lounge on the 55th floor with 360 degree views of Ho Chi Minh City. The building will also have a conference room, a business center, banks, a VIP club and fitness center. Niki May Young News Editor http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=11418 -
Office tower market to crash, say real estate giants
un sujet a posté cjb dans Discussions générales
du NationalPost Nobody is selling real estate and few are buying it, so how do you value it? The question dominated a panelist discussion that included the leaders of some of the largest real estate companies in the world. The consensus at the 14th annual North American Real Estate Equities conference, put on by CIBC World Markets, is the Canadian market will see little activity in 2009. Pinned down on what Toronto's Scotia Plaza might fetch in today's market, Andrea Stephen, executive vice-president of Cadillac Fairview Corp., said she couldn't answer. "It is difficult because there is a small pool of buyers," said Ms. Stephen who passed the question on to Tom Farley, chief executive of Brookfield Properties Corp. which is now building the Bay-Adelaide Centre, the first new office tower in Toronto's financial core in 15 years. Mr. Farley noted only three major assets have traded in the past seven years, the last being the TD Canada Trust Tower in Toronto. That was sold at $723/square foot, he said. Ms. Stephen said that figure might be "little rich" in today's market, but said it's hard to establish a real price. When Cadillac, which is owned by the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan Board, bought the Toronto-Dominion Bank's office tower assets the price was about $300 a square foot but that was eight years ago. There is no real pressure on any of the major owners of Canada's office towers to sell, so the type of fire sales that have been seen in the United States are less likely. "You have eight entities that control 90% [of the major towers]. It's ourselves and seven pension funds," said Mr. Farley. "We can weather the storm." Not everyone on the panel was as confident about the Canadian market. David Henry, president of retail landlord Kimco Realty Corp. which is based in the United States but has some holdings in Canada, said rental rates are "falling of the cliff." He did note the company's Canadian portfolio is holding up better than its U.S. holdings. He said there will be merger opportunities as prices continue to fall. Mr. Henry, said capitalization rates have been rising with alarming speed. The cap rate is the expected rate of return on a property, the higher the cap rate the less a property is worth. "We saw cap rates go from 6 to 8.5 in the United States. It may not go as high [in Canada] but it could go to 8," he said, referring to the retail sector. Dori Segal, the chief executive of First Capital Realty Corp., said he still hasn't seen the buying opportunities. "There is not a single grocery anchored shopping centre for sale in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary or even Victoria for that matter," said Mr. Segal. -
Diagrid design completed for Ernst & Young headquarters Foster + Partners has completed a headquarters building for Ernst & Young at the gateway to the Vivaldi-park area of the new Zuidas district, south of Amsterdam. Commissioned by ING, the tower establishes a landmark on the route into the city with its diagrid façade. Ten per cent more efficient than the target Dutch environmental standards, the building also extends the public realm with a water court at its base. The 24-storey building is divided into two twelve metre-wide column free towers with open, flexible floor plates. The blocks are staggered in plan to admit as much natural light as possible and to make the most of the northerly city views. The northern façade is fully glazed, while partial thirty per cent glazing to the east, west and south limits solar gain. Combined with ground water storage to further save on energy for cooling, the overall environmental strategy is highly efficient. Linked by a shared transparent core, the offices are serviced by double-height meeting spaces and light-filled social spaces allowing communication between different floors. The structural steel diagrid is clad in silver aluminium and is offset by opaque black panels, which reduce the definition of the individual floor levels. This lattice scales the entire 87-metre high facade and gives the building its identity. At the base of the building the height of the diagrid creates a triple-storey lobby space, while at the top of each tower north and south-facing terraces are set into the structure. The towers are approached via a water-court with an ecological pond beneath an overhanging canopy. Defining the relationship between public and private, this space houses the social functions, such as staff restaurant, terrace, auditorium and bar, clustered around the water-court. Coupled with a green roof on the restaurant building, the pond has an important environmental contribution. 65 per cent of rainwater is retained on site while the run-off feeds into the Amsterdam canal system to control water levels following peak rainfall. The pond is naturally cleansed by a planted biotope of reeds, water lilies and grasses. David Nelson, Senior Executive and joint Head of Design at Foster + Partners said: “Our first building in Amsterdam not only exceeds Dutch environmental regulations by ten per cent, but provides a striking marker for the Vivaldi park area, a high quality, flexible working environment for tenants Ernst & Young and a lively public water-court with a working ecological pond at its base.” http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=2434
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Shenzhen : Headquarter of China Insurance Group, China
un sujet a posté LindbergMTL dans Discussions générales
Jury for the “Shenzhen 4 Tower in 1” choose Coop Himmelb(l)au design The jury for the “Shenzhen 4 Tower in 1” Competition chaired by Mr. Arata Isozaki, selected Coop Himmelb(l)au's design for Tower C, the new “Headquarter of China Insurance Group” as the winning scheme. Other participants include Morphosis, Steven Holl Architects, Hans Hollein, MVRDV and FCJZ Atelier. The new “Headquarter of China Insurance Group” will be part of a lively business quarter in the heart of the Central District of Shenzhen made up of a carefully composed ensemble of unique, individual towers creating a landmark silhouette. The project is a high-rise structure with a height of approximately 200 m with 49 storeys. The footprint area has the size of 40 by 40 m. The required program is distributed vertically. A clear separation of public and private functions is given. All public functions are organized in the base building while the office program is situated in the tower. Semi public program like meeting rooms, conference center, recreation areas and gardens are concentrated in the middle of the building. This zone is designed to create a pattern of meeting facilities, gardens and recreation areas for all employees and become spaces for an exchange of knowledge and creativity and a synergy of form and function. The “Headquarter of China Insurance Group” is not only recognizable by its significant form but also by its façade. The design of the façade is driven by generation of energy. The second skin of the façade is shaped by climate conditions and inner functions. This skin includes photovoltaic cells to generate electricity and also cells to reduce excessive wind pressure, shade the sun and create multi media displays. Strategies employing the form of the building to assist natural ventilation together with the use of renewable energy sources (wind and solar power) assure an energy efficient design and reduce energy consumption and reliance on fossil fuel energy sources. http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=11098 -
J'ai eu cette idée de ssc.com. Quelle tour qui est présentement en contruction (ou recemment complétée) n'importe ou dans le monde, aimerais tu voir à Montréal? N'oubliez pas les photos! je commence le MoMa à NYC!!! Vraiment incroyable! NYC n'a vraiment pas peur de construire à l'avant garde. Il ne s'inquiètes pas des osties de NIMBY's!!! New York Times November 15, 2007 ARCHITECTURE Next to MoMA, a Tower Will Reach for the Stars By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF A rendering of the Jean Nouvel-designed tower to be built adjacent to the Museum of Modern Art. The interior of Jean Nouvel’s building, which is to include a hotel and luxury apartments. Cass Gilbert’s Woolworth Building, William Van Alen’s Chrysler Building, Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building. If New Yorkers once saw their skyline as the great citadel of capitalism, who could blame them? We had the best toys of all. But for the last few decades or so, that honor has shifted to places like Singapore, Beijing and Dubai, while Manhattan settled for the predictable. Perhaps that’s about to change. A new 75-story tower designed by the architect Jean Nouvel for a site next to the Museum of Modern Art in Midtown promises to be the most exhilarating addition to the skyline in a generation. Its faceted exterior, tapering to a series of crystalline peaks, suggests an atavistic preoccupation with celestial heights. It brings to mind John Ruskin’s praise for the irrationality of Gothic architecture: “It not only dared, but delighted in, the infringement of every servile principle.” Commissioned by Hines, an international real estate developer, the tower will house a hotel, luxury apartments and three floors that will be used by MoMA to expand its exhibition space. The melding of cultural and commercial worlds offers further proof, if any were needed, that Mr. Nouvel is a master at balancing conflicting urban forces. Yet the building raises a question: How did a profit-driven developer become more adventurous architecturally than MoMA, which has tended to make cautious choices in recent years? Like many of Manhattan’s major architectural accomplishments, the tower is the result of a Byzantine real estate deal. Although MoMA completed an $858 million expansion three years ago, it sold the Midtown lot to Hines for $125 million earlier this year as part of an elaborate plan to grow still further. Hines would benefit from the museum’s prestige; MoMA would get roughly 40,000 square feet of additional gallery space in the new tower, which will connect to its second-, fourth- and fifth-floor galleries just to the east. The $125 million would go toward its endowment. To its credit the Modern pressed for a talented architect, insisting on veto power over the selection. Still, the sale seems shortsighted on the museum’s part. A 17,000-square-foot vacant lot next door to a renowned institution and tourist draw in Midtown is a rarity. And who knows what expansion needs MoMA may have in the distant future? By contrast the developer seems remarkably astute. Hines asked Mr. Nouvel to come up with two possible designs for the site. A decade ago anyone who was about to invest hundreds of millions on a building would inevitably have chosen the more conservative of the two. But times have changed. Architecture is a form of marketing now, and Hines made the bolder choice. Set on a narrow lot where the old City Athletic Club and some brownstones once stood, the soaring tower is rooted in the mythology of New York, in particular the work of Hugh Ferriss, whose dark, haunting renderings of an imaginary Manhattan helped define its dreamlike image as the early-20th-century metropolis. But if Ferriss’s designs were expressionistic, Mr. Nouvel’s contorted forms are driven by their own peculiar logic. By pushing the structural frame to the exterior, for example, he was able to create big open floor plates for the museum’s second-, fourth- and fifth-floor galleries. The tower’s form slopes back on one side to yield views past the residential Museum Tower; its northeast corner is cut away to conform to zoning regulations. The irregular structural pattern is intended to bear the strains of the tower’s contortions. Mr. Nouvel echoes the pattern of crisscrossing beams on the building’s facade, giving the skin a taut, muscular look. A secondary system of mullions housing the ventilation system adds richness to the facade. Mr. Nouvel anchors these soaring forms in Manhattan bedrock. The restaurant and lounge are submerged one level below ground, with the top sheathed entirely in glass so that pedestrians can peer downward into the belly of the building. A bridge on one side of the lobby links the 53rd and 54th Street entrances. Big concrete columns crisscross the spaces, their tilted forms rooting the structure deep into the ground. As you ascend through the building, the floor plates shrink in size, which should give the upper stories an increasingly precarious feel. The top-floor apartment is arranged around such a massive elevator core that its inhabitants will feel pressed up against the glass exterior walls. (Mr. Nouvel compared the apartment to the pied-à-terre at the top of the Eiffel Tower from which Gustave Eiffel used to survey his handiwork below.) The building’s brash forms are a sly commentary on the rationalist geometries of Edward Durell Stone and Philip L. Goodwin’s 1939 building for the Museum of Modern Art and Yoshio Taniguchi’s 2004 addition. Like many contemporary architects Mr. Nouvel sees the modern grid as confining and dogmatic. His tower’s contorted forms are a scream for freedom. And what of the Modern? For some, the appearance of yet another luxury tower stamped with the museum’s imprimatur will induce wincing. But the more immediate issue is how it will affect the organization of the Modern’s vast collections. The museum is only now beginning to come to grips with the strengths and weaknesses of Mr. Taniguchi’s addition. Many feel that the arrangement of the fourth- and fifth-floor galleries housing the permanent collection is confusing, and that the double-height second-floor galleries for contemporary art are too unwieldy. The architecture galleries, by comparison, are small and inflexible. There is no room for the medium-size exhibitions that were a staple of the architecture and design department in its heyday. The additional gallery space is a chance for MoMA to rethink many of these spaces, by reordering the sequence of its permanent collection, for example, or considering how it might resituate the contemporary galleries in the new tower and gain more space for architecture shows in the old. But to embark on such an ambitious undertaking the museum would first have to acknowledge that its Taniguchi-designed complex has posed new challenges. In short, it would have to embrace a fearlessness that it hasn’t shown in decades. MoMA would do well to take a cue from Ruskin, who wrote that great art, whether expressed in “words, colors or stones, does not say the same thing over and over again.”
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Boston : Proposal for Harbor Garage site, Massachusetts
un sujet a posté LindbergMTL dans Discussions générales
Developer floats alternate proposals for a $900 million tower project on Boston’s waterfront It’s not the best economic climate for building office space. But Don Chiofaro, a Boston-based developer seems unfazed. He is moving fast and furious to get approvals for a 1.5 million sq ft mixed -use project for Boston’s waterfront, betting the market will change by the time the project goes into construction. In January he proposed a two-tower scheme for the site, a prime location between the New England Aquarium and the City’s new Greenway. But when that scheme was met with little enthusiasm, Chiofaro unveiled yet another design last week, this three-tower scheme designed by New York architect Kohn Pederson Fox. While this scheme is reportedly the developer's favorite, he has an arsenal of ten different designs that he is prepared to launch on the public until one sticks. The current scheme, which has been likened to a "matched set of furniture" by Boston architecture critic Robert Campbell, features three tall slender glass towers framed with terra cotta walls. Pederson told the Boston Globe that the intent was to create a high rise that made sense in Boston, a city that has an architectural pedigree of brick townhouses and warehouses. “In both types you have long masonry bearing walls at both sides with large openings in the front and rear” said Pederson. The two "bookend" towers will be occupied while the middle tower is intended as sculpture and has no program. One tower will hold a 200-300 room hotel topped by approximately 120 condos. The second one will contain 850,000 sq ft of office space. The lower floors of the entire complex will contain 70,000 sq ft of retail space. Sharon McHugh US Correspondent http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=11108 -
NJ's new monumental build revealed RMJM Hillier have unveiled their design for Vista Center, a new LEED Platinum office tower in Trenton, which will be the city’s largest commercial development in decades. At a time of economic crisis, this major investment will bring new jobs, revenue and an iconic tower to New Jersey’s Capital City. Trenton’s Planning Board unanimously approved the preliminary site plan in late 2008. Vista Center is a 25-storey, 700,000-square-foot Class A office building planned directly adjacent to the Trenton Transit Center, the second busiest train station on New Jersey’s Northeast Corridor, which runs from Boston to Washington. The transit-oriented development will include 12,000 sq ft of ground-level retail, a parking garage for more than 1,140 cars and two public art components – a plaza with a signature sculpture and lobby with a video art installation. The project is targeting a LEED Platinum certification by the U.S. Green Building Council. Sustainable features include roof-mounted solar panels, energy efficient lighting with daylight dimming to lower electric bills, high performance façades with low-e glazing to reduce heating and cooling expenses, storm water collection and low VOC interior finishes ensuring healthier air quality for occupants. The Trenton Transit Center, which is the final phase of a $75 million renovation program, is a major hub along the Northeast Corridor, served by NJ Transit, AMTRAK, SEPTA and the NJ Riverline. The combination of four train lines and a location seconds from U.S. Route 1 provide exceptional connectivity to the region’s workforce. The concept for Vista Center emerged from a larger urban plan that envisions great potential for this area – adjacent to the Trenton Transit Center and within walking distance to Trenton’s historic neighborhoods, offices and cultural facilities. The tower and plazas will effectively fill in the gaps around the train station and provide pedestrian pathways. “The design aims to create a memorable gateway to the city that will attract people and businesses because they want to work in a building that is beautiful, healthy, energy-efficient, and you don’t need a car to get there,” says Sergio Coscia, RMJM architect and the project’s designer. “The City of Trenton and the developer are setting a wonderful example for the rest of the state and the region on the importance of investing in transit-oriented development and sustainable design.” http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=11331
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Australia: French Quarter To Set Brisbane Height Record
un sujet a posté LindbergMTL dans Discussions générales
Brisbane in Australia is currently having a boom in proposals and approvals for skyscrapers now it seems height limits in the city may be lifted by the powers that be. One of the most recent green-lights will see a two tower project that will house the most expensive apartments in the city. Named the French Quarter Towers the project comes from local developer Devine Limited, it consists of two towers which will be built in two stages, one standing at 54 storeys and the second at 40 storeys. With apartments ranging in price from $2.5 million to a whopping $15 million you might be expecting some spectacular, gimmicky, Dubai inspired skyscraper instead, what Brisbane will be getting is two towers which are rather reserved and elegant. Squared at the bases the towers rise up in a pretty standard boxy way until they get about a third of the way up where they begin to gently curve inwards on one side, the curve deepens before coming back out again creating a subtle sort of S shape at the tops of the towers. The shaping of the tower isn't detracted from by any epic spires or crowns the addition of which could have made the towers look decidedly trashy. The facades are glazed and balconied offering residents fantastic views and somewhere nice to enjoy a glass of wine and the odd sunset or two. Residents at the tower can look forward to unsurpassed luxury as soon as a winner is announced for a international competition to design the interiors of the towers though it can probably be assumed the towers will also be home to a six star luxury hotel that with gymnasiums, spas and restaurants you have to wear a tie in. One thing is for sure though the tower will offer the very latest in "technomenities", a fancy word invented by marketing bods that means the towers will have the latest generation smart home technology, which will include automated systems for lighting and climate, in-home entertainment and electronic concierge services. Despite the French theme, high tech auroma technology spewing out the smell of garlic will not be included, whilst the concierge is likely to be much friendlier to English speakers than a Parisian would be. Construction is hoped to start in 2009 with completion penned in for mid 2012. http://www.skyscrapernews.com/news.php?ref=1487 -
Published on 16-03-2009 by Skyscrapernews.com Facing off against Norman Foster's U2 Tower on the other side of Dublin's Docks is this new design by Zaha Hadid Architects for major Irish developer, Treasury Holdings. Called North Wall, the scheme will stand next door to The O2 and overlooks the key East Link Bridge and replace existing plans for an underwhelming seven-storey glass block. Within there will be some 50,000 square metres of office space adding to the redefinition of this part of Dublin as a growing business district. It follows through some of the themes that are currently recurring at Hadid's practise, most notably a fluid elegance and unstated complexity that avoids straight lines, right angles and corners. The subtly curving glass surfaces form and flowing shapes that create a strong vertical emphasis, in this case they seem to go as far as almost creating an N on one side of the building. Flowing past the lower part of the building is a low-rise wing that cantilevers out into thin air. The design bears more than a slight resemblance to the Zaha Hadid competition entry for the U2 Tower itself which the firm failed to win, raising the question of whether Treasury Holdings fell in love with the design and had it ported over to their site with some changes made to fit their own brief. If the design does go ahead, what it potential means for Dublin is this stretch of the Liffey could become a new architectural gateway for the city with two towers by starchitects facing each other like ying and yang - the curves of Hadid's contrasting strongly with the sharp angle of Fosters.
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Recently completed Cocoon Tower makes education design as easy as A-B-C Standing in Tokyo's distinctive high-rise district of Nishi-Shinjuku, Tange Associates' Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower stands as a symbol of innovation and exception in educational design. It is no wonder this awesome construction was recently awarded as Skyscraper of the Year by Emporis. The 50 level building contains 3 different schools: Tokyo Mode Gakuen (fashion), HAL Tokyo (IT and digital contents) and Shuto Iko (medical treatments and care). Tange Associates advise: "The building’s innovative shape and cutting edge façade embodies our unique “Cocoon” concept. Embraced within this incubating form, students are inspired to create, grow and transform." The vertical campus, which completed in October, can hold 10,000 students and incorporates a 3-storey high atrium to substitute as a 'schoolyard', called the 'Student Lounge' and multi-use corridors where communication can flourish. The tower floor plan is simple. Three rectangular classroom areas rotate 120 degrees around the inner core. From the 1st floor to the 50th floor, these rectangular classroom areas are arranged in a curvilinear form. The inner core consists of an elevator, staircase and shaft. The Student Lounge is located between the classrooms and face three directions, east, southwest and northwest. Greenery planted at lower levels brings nature and softness to the design and its elliptical form swathed in an aluminium curtain wall creates a form pleasing to the eye from every level whilst minimising the building's footprint. Tange Associates hope that the building will help to inspire a transformation in the area: "Some of the buildings in the immediate area surrounding Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower have become old and absolete. However this area is very important to connect Shinjuku Station and the Shinjuku CBD. Our aim is to use the building to revitalize and reenergize this area and to create a gateway between the Station and the CBD." Niki May Young News Editor Tokyo Mode Gakuen Coccoon Tower 東京モード学園コクーンタワー 1-7-2 Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku Tokyo TKY Japan Status: built Construction Dates Began 2006 Finished 2008 Floor Count 50 Basement Floors 4 Floor Area 80,903 m² Building Uses - education - mechanical - retail Structural Types - highrise Materials - steel - concrete, reinforced Heights Value Source / Comments Roof 203.7 m Tokyo Metropolitan Government Description Architect: Tange Associates Structural: Shimizu Corporation
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WTC in NYC : Recession could change the timeline By Julie Shapiro and Josh Rogers January 16-22, 2009 The Port Authority may try to delay the opening of some World Trade Center offices if the economy takes too long to bounce back, the agency’s leader said this week. The best way to ensure that Towers 2 and 3 are successful may be to phase them in over time, said Chris Ward, the Port’s executive director. “It would be naïve to think real estate can respond in the same way it was expected to respond in 2006,” Ward said in an hour-long interview with Downtown Express Tuesday. “It’s a different, different world.” If Towers 2 and 3 do not rise over the next several years, as was expected, Ward promised that something temporary would go in their place. One possibility is to build a retail-filled podium of several stories, then add the skyscrapers when the economy improves. Another possibility is to build a platform at grade. No matter what, the sites will not remain fenced off behind barriers indefinitely. “This will not be left a construction site,” said Ward, who took over the Port last May. “The last thing that’s good economically and the last thing for the community is to…have it feel like some pit.” The two towers are being developed by Silverstein Properties, which signed a 99-year lease with the Port for the World Trade Center two months before 9/11. Larry Silverstein, the firm’s head, has maintained that tough economic times are the ideal time to build offices. “By building now, even if demand for offices either Downtown or anywhere else in the city softens temporarily, we will be ready when the New York and U.S. economies rebound,” Silverstein wrote in a Downtown Express column two months ago. “And have no doubt — they will. They always do.” Silverstein Properties declined to comment Wednesday on Ward’s remarks. Ward said Tower 4 will be the easiest for Silverstein to build on time (2012) because it is the most economically viable — the city and the Port have already agreed to lease two-thirds of the office space from Silverstein. Ward said he was optimistic the incoming Obama administration, which is emphasizing economic stimulus, will back extending the deadline for the tax-free Liberty Bonds beyond the end of the year. Silverstein plans to use the bonds for three W.T.C. office towers and the Port will use them for the Freedom Tower, which is under construction. The bonds will be difficult to sell if they are put on the market long before the buildings’ openings. Ward also spoke Tuesday about the newly released quarterly milestones for the W.T.C. site. The Port met eight of its nine goals for the fourth quarter of 2008 and set nine more goals for this quarter. The one goal the Port did not meet was to turn over the excavated sites for Towers 2, 3 and 4 to Silverstein so he can build the towers. The Port initially said in October that the sites for Towers 2 and 4 were ready, but Silverstein disputed that, and an arbitration panel ruled last month that the Port had more work to do. The largest problem was a 200-foot wall the Port left standing right where a column for Tower 4 needed to go. Ward told Downtown Express that he knew the wall needed to come down, but he thought Silverstein had enough space to work around it and build other parts of the tower’s foundation first. He acknowledged Tuesday that the Port may have overstated its case. “If we were overly aggressive in that assertion, it was in the sense that we were paying a lot of money in the failure to deliver [the site],” Ward said. The Port is paying Silverstein $300,000 a day until the sites are cleared and ready for construction under an agreement renegotiated in 2006. The Port also missed another deadline at the end of the year for work on the sites for Towers 2 and 3 and has racked up $60 million worth of fines to date for missing the June and December 2008 deadlines. As a result of the arbitration, the Port and Silverstein have agreed on more detailed guidelines to determine when the sites are done. Ward said the No. 1 lesson he learned from the arbitration was that communication is essential. “If we’d been there earlier, better and more often, I don’t think we’d have come to this problem,” Ward said. It’s the same lesson he’s learned with the community and the public as a whole, whether it’s about street closures or the site’s schedule and budget: The more upfront the Port can be, the better. But no matter how candid Ward is, many New Yorkers won’t believe in progress at the site until they see it with their own eyes. “There’s such a cynicism that’s in society right now about building,” Ward said, referring to other major construction projects as well. “That’s just bad for the city, to have the feeling we’re not really building.” Ward expects the perception to change between the middle and end of the year, as steel for the memorial rises above street level and the Freedom Tower continues to grow. This is a critical year for the project, as work shifts from excavating behind construction barriers to pushing steel skyward, Ward said. The quarterly milestones are part of Ward’s effort to gain the public’s trust that he will meet the revised schedule for the site, announced last fall. He hopes to add more detail to the milestones and release the goals further in advance, providing a detailed map the public can trace toward completion. Looking ahead, Ward does not foresee any engineering or planning crises, but he said meeting the deadlines will come down to teamwork and timing — along with good weather. “There’s no leisure to it,” Ward said. “You can’t take a week off. You can’t think about, ‘I’ll make that up later….’ Those days for this project are literally over.” One potential source of delay is 130 Liberty St., the contaminated former Deutsche Bank building that stands right where the Vehicle Security Center will go. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. recently announced another delay of six weeks to three months on the building’s demolition, and that in turn will delay the Vehicle Security Center by the same amount of time. “Unfortunately, there’s not a lot that can be done without having it completely down,” Ward said. As construction of the Trade Center progresses, the many projects crammed onto the 16-acre site will continue coming into conflict over the limited space and resources. Ward described his priorities for the site whenever those conflicts arise, and for him, it all goes back to getting the memorial plaza open by the 10-year anniversary of 9/11. Opening the memorial leads to the priority of finishing the PATH Hub and Vehicle Security Center, which will both open after the 10-year anniversary but will be important to getting people on the site. The 10-year anniversary also made the Port prioritize Greenwich St., the site’s north-south spine, which people will use to access the memorial. After that comes the office towers: the Port’s Freedom Tower and Silverstein’s Towers 2, 3 and 4. Finally, Ward listed the site’s other projects, like Liberty Park and the performing arts center, which are not as integral to the plan. One conflict the Port has already resolved required the redesign of the Santiago Calatrava’s PATH hub. To open the memorial on time, the Port added some columns to Calatrava’s belowground mezzanine, enabling workers to build the roof of the mezzanine first, which gives the memorial a floor. Silverstein, the city and the memorial foundation all lobbied the Port to scale back the $3.2 billion station further, but Ward said that was much more difficult than it seemed because everything is interconnected. “You couldn’t simply say, ‘Make it smaller,’” Ward said, “because then it would have an implication for how much mechanical equipment could you put below-grade, which affected whether or not you could pump the amount of water that you need to pump to make the fountains work…. Probably a fair number of people think we didn’t do enough, but I think we struck the right balance.” Ward is also trying to balance the community’s concerns with his goal of keeping the project on schedule. Nowhere is that clearer than Vesey St., which the Port had said might have to close between Church St. and W. Broadway for utility work. “At some point, for hopefully a limited amount of time, it will have to close, and that’s just a fact of life,” Ward said Tuesday. He expects the closure to last less than a year. More than 15,000 pedestrians use Vesey St. during the morning rush hour, pouring out of the temporary PATH station at Greenwich St., and Ward said he would try to minimize the impact of the closure by keeping the Vesey St. pedestrian bridge open. The community is particularly concerned about Vesey’s closure because the Port is definitely closing Liberty St. on the south side of the site at the end of this year. Liberty St. will be closed for much longer than Vesey St., but the two closures will likely overlap.
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Downturn Ends Building Boom in New York Charles Blaichman, at an unfinished tower at West 14th Street, is struggling to finance three proposed hotels by the High Line. NYtimes By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY Published: January 07, 2009 Nearly $5 billion in development projects in New York City have been delayed or canceled because of the economic crisis, an extraordinary body blow to an industry that last year provided 130,000 unionized jobs, according to numbers tracked by a local trade group. The setbacks for development — perhaps the single greatest economic force in the city over the last two decades — are likely to mean, in the words of one researcher, that the landscape of New York will be virtually unchanged for two years. “There’s no way to finance a project,” said the researcher, Stephen R. Blank of the Urban Land Institute, a nonprofit group. Charles Blaichman is not about to argue with that assessment. Looking south from the eighth floor of a half-finished office tower on 14th Street on a recent day, Mr. Blaichman pointed to buildings he had developed in the meatpacking district. But when he turned north to the blocks along the High Line, once among the most sought-after areas for development, he surveyed a landscape of frustration: the planned sites of three luxury hotels, all stalled by recession. Several indicators show that developers nationwide have also been affected by the tighter lending markets. The growth rate for construction and land development loans shrunk drastically this year — to 0.08 percent through September, compared with 11.3 percent for all of 2007 and 25.7 percent in 2006, according to data tracked by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. And developers who have loans are missing payments. The percentage of loans in default nationwide jumped to 7.3 percent through September 2008, compared with 1 percent in 2007, according to data tracked by Reis Inc., a New York-based real estate research company. New York’s development world is rife with such stories as developers who have been busy for years are killing projects or scrambling to avoid default because of the credit crunch. Mr. Blaichman, who has built two dozen projects in the past 20 years, is struggling to borrow money: $370 million for the three hotels, which include a venture with Jay-Z, the hip-hop mogul. A year ago, it would have seemed a reasonable amount for Mr. Blaichman. Not now. “Even the banks who want to give us money can’t,” he said. The long-term impact is potentially immense, experts said. Construction generated more than $30 billion in economic activity in New York last year, said Louis J. Coletti, the chief executive of the Building Trades Employers’ Association. The $5 billion in canceled or delayed projects tracked by Mr. Coletti’s association include all types of construction: luxury high-rise buildings, office renovations for major banks and new hospital wings. Mr. Coletti’s association, which represents 27 contractor groups, is talking to the trade unions about accepting wage cuts or freezes. So far there is no deal. Not surprisingly, unemployment in the construction industry is soaring: in October, it was up by more than 50 percent from the same period last year, labor statistics show. Experience does not seem to matter. Over the past 15 years, Josh Guberman, 48, developed 28 condo buildings in Brooklyn and Manhattan, many of them purchased by well-paid bankers. He is cutting back to one project in 2009. Donald Capoccia, 53, who has built roughly 4,500 condos and moderate-income housing units in all five boroughs, took the day after Thanksgiving off, for the first time in 20 years, because business was so slow. He is shifting his attention to projects like housing for the elderly on Staten Island, which the government seems willing to finance. Some of their better known and even wealthier counterparts are facing the same problems. In August, Deutsche Bank started foreclosure proceedings against William S. Macklowe over his planned project at the former Drake Hotel on Park Avenue. Kent M. Swig, Mr. Macklowe’s brother-in-law, recently shut down the sales office for a condo tower planned for 25 Broad Street after his lender, Lehman Brothers, declared bankruptcy in September. Several commercial and residential brokers said they were spending nearly half their days advising developers who are trying to find new uses for sites they fear will not be profitable. “That rug has been pulled out from under their feet,” said David Johnson, a real estate broker with Eastern Consolidated who was involved with selling the site for the proposed hotel to Mr. Blaichman, Jay-Z and their business partners for $66 million, which included the property and adjoining air rights. Mr. Johnson said that because many banks are not lending, the only option for many developers is to take on debt from less traditional lenders like foreign investors or private equity firms that charge interest rates as high as 20 percent. That doesn’t mean that all construction in New York will grind to a halt immediately. Mr. Guberman is moving forward with one condo tower at 87th Street and Broadway that awaits approval for a loan; he expects it will attract buyers even in a slowing economy. Mr. Capoccia is trying to finish selling units at a Downtown Brooklyn condominium project, and is slowly moving ahead on applying for permits for an East Village project. Mr. Blaichman, 54, is keeping busy with four buildings financed before the slowdown. He has found fashion and advertising firms to rent space in his tower at 450 West 14th Street and buyers for two downtown condo buildings. He recently rented a Lower East Side building to the School of Visual Arts as a dorm. Mr. Blaichman had success in Greenwich Village and the meatpacking district, where he developed the private club SoHo House, the restaurant Spice Market and the Theory store. He had similar hopes for the area along the High Line, where he bought properties last year when they were fetching record prices. An art collector, he considered the area destined for growth because of its many galleries and its proximity to the park being built on elevated railroad tracks that have given the area its name. The park, which extends 1.45 miles from Gansevoort Street to 34th Street, is expected to be completed in the spring. Other developers have shown that buyers will pay high prices to be in the area. Condo projects designed by well-known architects like Jean Nouvel and Annabelle Selldorf have been eagerly anticipated. In recent months, buyers have paid $2 million for a two-bedroom unit and $3 million for a three-bedroom at Ms. Selldorf’s project, according to Streeteasy.com, a real estate Web site. “It’s one of the greatest stretches of undeveloped areas,” Mr. Blaichman said. “I still think it’s going to take off.” In August 2007, Mr. Blaichman bought the site and air rights of a former Time Warner Cable warehouse. He thought the neighborhood needed its first full-service five-star hotel, in contrast to the many boutique hotels sprouting up downtown. So with his partners, Jay-Z and Abram and Scott Shnay, he envisioned a hotel with a pool, gym, spa and multiple restaurants under a brand called J Hotels. But since his mortgage brokers started shopping in late summer for roughly $200 million in financing, they have only one serious prospect for a lender. For now, he is seeking an extension on the mortgage — monthly payments are to begin in the coming months — and trying to rent the warehouse. (He currently has no income from the property.) It is perhaps small comfort that his fellow developers are having as many problems getting loans. Shaya Boymelgreen had banks “pull back” recently on financing for a 107-unit rental tower the developer is building at 500 West 23rd Street, according to Sara Mirski, managing director of development for Boymelgreen Developers. The half-finished project looked abandoned on two recent visits, but Ms. Mirski said that construction will continue. Banks have “invited” the developer to reapply for a loan next year and have offered interim bridge loans for up to $30 million. Mr. Blaichman cuts a more mellow figure than many other developers do. He avoids the real estate social scene, tries to turn his cellphone off after 6 p.m. and plays folk guitar in his spare time. For now, Mr. Blaichman seems stoic about his plight. At a diner, he polished off a Swiss-cheese omelet and calmly noted that he had no near-term way to pay off his debts. He exercises several times a week and tells his three children to curb their shopping even as he regularly presses his mortgage bankers for answers. “I sleep pretty well,” Mr. Blaichman said. “There’s nothing you can do in the middle of the night that will help your projects.” But even when the lending market improves — in months, or years — restarting large-scale projects will not be a quick process. A freeze in development, in fact, could continue well after the recession ends. Mr. Blank of the Urban Land Institute said he has taken to giving the following advice to real estate executives: “We told them to take up golf.” Correction: An article on Saturday about the end of the building boom in New York City referred incorrectly to the family relationship between the developers William S. Macklowe, whose planned project at the former Drake Hotel is in foreclosure, and Kent M. Swig, who shut down the sales office for a condominium tower on Broad Street after his lender, Lehman Brothers, declared bankruptcy. Mr. Swig is Mr. Macklowe’s brother-in-law, not his son-in-law.
