By Kim Velsey 8/02/12 4:01pm

Starchitecture

14 Photos

The view from the penthouse

How the 0.1 Percent Lives: Touring the Gehry Penthouses

Inside the penthouses of 8 Spruce Street, the fact that the building was designed by Frank Gehry seems incidental. At 850-feet-high, the weirdly angled windows and sleek finishes blend into the exquisite (and exquisitely dull) good taste of thousands of other high-end apartments around the city. It is the view that dominates.

A set of rooms, in the end, can only have so many permutations, but the view from a tower that rises 76 stories above lower Manhattan—its developers say that it is the tallest residential tower in the Western Hemisphere—is unique, the trump card that New York by Gehry is counting on to collect $60,000 a month for the largest penthouse and $45,000 a month for the two smaller ones.

“For this type of renter, it’s kind of understood that it has to have a good layout. But layouts are subjective,” said Clifford Finn, the president of New Development Marketing at Citi Habitats, the agent for the building. “There’s no question that anyone would walk in here and not like these views.” Read More

By Matt Chaban 7/26/12 5:28pm

Dizzying Designs

24 Photos

CityPoint Mall

Mayor Celebrates the 10 Best Public Works of the Past Year at Design Excellence Awards

New York is not always known for its architecture—it has some great buildings, but just as many unremarkable and out-right terrible ones. One sector where this has not been the case, at least for some time, is public architecture.

Starting first with the Awards for Design Excellence, in recognition of the best public works, and then the Design Excellence Program, which hires a stable of young, creative architects to undertake city projects, the city has built an impressive track record in commissioning smart, egalitarian designs for its buildings. Read More

By Matt Chaban 4/12/12 6:27pm

Starchitects

8 Photos

Occupy Frank Gehry

Occupy Frank Gehry: 8 Spruce Street Open Space Opening Within Weeks

If Zucotti Park is getting boring, and the folks at Occupy Wall Street are looking for something a little more flashy, they might want to check out New York by Frank Gehry. The super-rich rental tower (tallest in the Western Hemisphere!) rising at 8 Spruce Street has been open for more than a year yet it was not quite done.

The public plaza out front has been under construction until very recently, waiting in part for construction scaffolding to come down so that planting might commence. Now, the privately owned public space—a POPS just like Zucotti—is set to open in a matter of weeks, according to the folks at Forest City Ratner. Read More

By Elise Knutsen 11/28/11 11:39am

Starchitecture

New York by Frank Gehry at 8 Spruce Street (Photo from NYC Loves NYC)

Starchitecture Is Actually Worth the Money

Once, living in a building with celebrity residents or prewar pedigree was the goal of every nouveau riche New Yorker. Trump International, anyone? Yes, please, 740 Park.

Now upwardly mobile denizens of our great city have slightly different aspirations: starchitect developments; that is, buildings designed by jet-setting, Pritzker-prize winning  architectural wizards, typically of the old guard variety. While some have suggested that the starchitect craze is the result of pure unadulterated vanity, it turns out that buildings have made a pretty penny since they began to sprout up a decade ago, Crain’s reports. Read More