A tweaked north side for Durst/Fetner's 625 West 57th Street. (Durst/Fetner)

Big, pointy apartments. (Durst/Fetner)

When Douglas Durst began deciding, yet again, what to do with the almost block-long property he owns at 57th Street and the Hudson River, City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden urged the developer to think big. A high-tech data center, a school and a hotel had all fallen through, so Mr. Durst had fallen back on that most reliable form of New York City development: housing.

Ms. Burden wanted something iconic, especially for a project on such a prominent street at such a prominent location right on the waterfront. With Hudson River Park right there, it ought to be iconic. Mr. Durst delivered something BIG indeed, hiring the Danish wunderkinds at Bjarke Ingles Group to design his project.

Yesterday, Ms. Burden got to put her official stamp on the project, when she and the rest of the City Planning Commission approved Durst/Fetner’s BIG pyramid. It was the second-to-last step in the arduous months-long public review process, in many ways made all the easier by a dynamic design that has made this arguably the most unusual apartment building in the city.

"Our approval will facilitate development of a significant new building with a distinctive pyramid-like shaped design and thoughtful site plan that integrates the full block site into the evolving residential, institutional, and commercial neighborhood surrounding it," Ms. Burden said before voting in favor of the project.

Contained within the striking design are 753 apartments in a building that tapers from CKCKthree stories along the river up to a pinnacle of CKCK38 stories. It has an unusual sloping aspect (technically a tetrahedron, not a pyramid) with a massive courtyard cut into the middle that is almost the site of a football field. The cutout also affords every apartment with an outdoor terrace, a feature that was especially important to Mr. Ingels.

The commission required a few modifications to the project, dealing primarily with how it is experienced from the street. There is a limit on the amount of signage and obstructions that can go in the windows of the retail lining 57th Street and the West Side Highway, to ensure transparency and a sense of activity that does not obscure what is going on inside. The fear is a blank wall would deaden the street life, as has happened ion places like Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn.

The developer has made similar gestures on 58th Street to ensure vibrancy on what is otherwise a block-long stretch of almost blank building. Retail wraps the corners of the building, but otherwise, there is a lobby and a loading dock and little else.

Part of the reason for this is the building is located in the 100-year-flood plane, so the Con Ed substation cannot go in the basement but instead by located above-grade. The utility needs access to the facilities at all times, so they have to be on the street, and cannot go higher up in the building. The developer also argued that there is barely any retail on 58th Street as is, so forcing it into the northern side of the building would be impractical and difficult to lease.

The solution was to establish a retail space within the lobby located in that section of the building, and to also install glass vitrines along the blank parts of the façade that could feature plants or sculptures on a rotating basis, creating a more engaging streetscape.

"It's an important approval, and we're pleased with her support and input," Mr. Durst said in an interview.

Previously, the developer agreed to additional modifications when the project received approvals two months ago from Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. That included widening the sidewalks and narrowing the driveway between 57th and 58th streets located in the middle of the block at the main entrance to the building. Durst/Fetner will also provide seating and landscaping in the space. The developer also agreed to improve a connection to Hudson River Park at 59th Street, a block north of the development. The connection currently passes under an overpass of West Side Highway, and the developers will work with the city and state departments of transportation to spruce up the space.

"In all, this is an exciting project on a pivotal site that will benefit its occupants, the neighborhood and the city as a whole," Ms. Burden said.

One aspect of the project that has yet to be addressed is how long the affordable units in the building will remain affordable. The development is being built through the city's 80/20 program, which means 20 percent of apartments will be reserved for low- and moderate-income families, while the remaining number will be market rate.

Currently, those units will only be eligible for less well-off families for 35 years. The community board desperately wants permanent affordability, but Durst/Fetner insists it cannot agree to such an arrangement because they do not own the land. The developers themselves are leasing it from a family that has owned the land for more than a century, and is now comprised of some 100 trustees Durst/Fetner must negotiate with about extending the affordability window.

But local Councilwoman Gail Brewer has insisted the developers had better get negotiating, because she is willing to torpedo the project at the City Council—the final step in the public review process, where Ms. Brewer will have almost total say over the project—if her constituents do not get what they want.

Looking sharp, but will it fly with the neighbors? (Durst Fetner)

Ms. Durst, baby bump hidden behind lectern. (Matt Chaban)

"My own feeling, and the feeling of board, is that we'd like this project to succeed," J.D. Nolan, chair of Community Board 4’s land-use committee, told The Observer. "The Dursts are great developers, and they have worked very well with us in the past. Nevertheless, this is a rezoning, and the public should benefit as well as the developer."

And so, the full board voted unanimously against Durst Fenter's new apartment building on the far West Side last night. One of the most dynamic designs of the decade, 625 West 57th Street calls for a swooping white pyramid that rises dramatically up from the Hudson like an origami dove taking flight. Designed by Danish wunderkinds Bjarke Ingels Group (aka BIG), the project has even decided to eschew LEED ratings in its quest for singularity.

Still, this was not enough to sway the board, which generally seems to like the design but still has too many issues with the details surrounding it to approve the project at its monthly meeting. The board's vote is merely provisional, though it will be given considerable consideration from officials down the line as they cast their vote for or against the project throughout the rest of the months-long public review process.

Last night, Helena Durst was in attendance to make her family's case, as she has for the past decade as the project has struggled from one plan to another—data center, car dealership, for-profit school, hotel. She looked appropriately pregnant for the occasion, which was held on the second floor of St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital (the maternity ward is on the seventh) on the corner of 11th Avenue and 59th Street, two blocks from where Ms. Durst hopes the 740-unit apartment building might soon rise.

"This is an asset for the skyline," she said.

But not yet for the community, at least in its view. Their singular issue is affordable housing, of which there will be some 150 units. The sticking point is that those apartments will only be reserved for low-income tenants for 35 years. The board wants permanent affordability, instead. "As a community board, we are supposed to do the best we can to preserve and maintain our communities and keep them going," Mr. Nolan said. "As we see our neighborhood changing, we see so much luxury housing going up, and we feel that is not contributing to the preservation of our neighborhood."

The Dursts argue they cannot make the apartments permanently affordable because they do not own the site but have instead signed a 99-year land lease with a family that has owned the property for centuries. Now, there are some 150 different family members who have to be negotiated with, and any changes to the amount of affordable housing would require a renegotiation of the lease. Since the Dursts will not own the site in perpetuity, it is not clear the land's owners would agree to a permanent affordable housing provision.

Still, Councilwoman Gale Brewer has also expressed concern about the permanence of the affordable apartments, and since she has the final say on the project, it could continue to be a serious issue.

Other concerns included the appearance of the building along 58th Street. Currently, all the retail is along 57th Street, with entrances, loading docks and mechanical systems on the 58th Street frontage. The board hopes those spaces can be rejiggered, with shops, trees, anything really to make the streetscape, which is nearly a block long, more appealing to pedestrians.

Parking is an issue in two ways. One, board members argued there were too many spaces for a project in the middle of Manhattan. Two, there is an issue with the access to that parking, through a two-way driveway that cuts through the middle of the site and connects to the Helena, a rental building also owned by Durst Fetner on the southeast corner of 10th Avenue and 57th Street. The board wants that space cut down to one lane, with a public plaza created out of the excess space this would free up. "Curb-side drop-off?" Mr. Nolan said. "What is this, Dubai?"

A small community facility building drew concerns because the Dursts have yet to find a use for the building, after a failed bid to have the Manhattan Children's Museum move in. Now, they are looking at other childcare spaces, like day care or early education. Mr. Nolan thinks an art space could be good, too.

"This has always been a place for actors, artists, stagehands," he said. "They need housing they can afford, they need places they can perform. Without them, it's not the kind of New York I want to live in."

To try and counter the local opposition to the project, Durst Fetner made a full political push last night, bringing out speakers and testimonials from the Community Preservation Corporation and Citizens Housing, Settlement Housing Fund and Planning Commission (on affordable housing); New York Building Congress, Regional Plan Association and the Partnership for New York City (on design and construction jobs); members of 32BJ (on service and operations jobs); and the Audubon Society (on how normal buildings have troubling bird strikes and this one will not).

Still, this show of support failed to sway the board to vote for the project.

"We hear their concerns and we will continue to work with them on a solution," Jordan Barowitz, the Dursts' director of external affairs, said after the disapproval vote. "That being said, I think is a very compelling project for the community and the city. It provides desperately needed market-rate housing and 150 affordable units for decades. And it's an innovative and inspiring design. Great design makes for great places, which makes for a great community."

Update: The story has been modified to clarify that the full community board disapproved of Durst Fetner's building last night, not the land-use committee, though it also disapproved the plan at a meeting earlier in the summer. The story also misstated the location of the Helena. It is on the corner of 59th Street and 11th Avenue, not 10th Avenue. The Observer regrets the error.

Within the BIG surprise was hidden a smaller one, revealed in planning documents filed when the project was approved two weeks ago, dubbed Development Site 2. Plans call for a 110-unit apartment building that backs onto the pyramid apartments, though it is unlikely it will be built in that form, if at all. Instead, it is a zoning technicality.

“That building is in the same zoning lot, so it has to get rezoned with everything else,” Jordan Barowitz, a Durst spokesman, explained. “For technical reasons, we have to keep it in there, so we decided to make it a residential building, to study the impacts.”

Currently, the building, at the corner of 11th Avenue and 58th Street, is a self-storage facility—a Manhattan Mini Storage, to be exact—with a few years left on its lease. It is one of those former industrial buildings that has been totally bricked up. When the lease comes due, the Durst Organization may extend it or look for an alternative commercial use, but the firm is unlikely to redevelop the plot for housing, according to Mr, Barowitz, at least in the form currently outlined in the rezoning.

This is in part because the proposed nine-story building, which would be built around the existing six-story structure, would block views from the new building as well as one Durst Fetner built five years ago, the Helena, which is in the southeastern corner of the lot, on 57th Street.

“We don’t know what we’re doing with that building yet,” Mr. Barowitz said.

Instead, the firm is proposing the 110-unit structure simply because the city's environmental review requires some accounting of what could go on the site, because both are on the same zoning lot. For technical reasons, Durst Fetner chose an apartment building even though they may or may not actually build one.

As for the rest of the block, the ULURP application reveals an unusually shaped building—called not a pyramid but a hexahedron. It measures 1.1 million square feet, with with 867 apartments, 151 of which are set aside for affordable for families making roughly $40,000 a year. Of the building’s remaining area, 80,000 square feet will be set aside for commercial uses, likely doctor’s offices and other community-focused space, while there will be 62,000 feet of ground floor retail.

A community facilities building of 28,000 square feet is proposed behind the storage facility and next to the Helena, and between those and the BIG building will run a driveway serving the two residential buildings. The project will have 285 parking spaces, more necessary than in some buildings, no doubt, given the nearest subway station is Columbus Circle, four avenues away.

More will be revealed tonight at the land-use hearing of Community Board 4, the fist public meeting for the project as it heads into the grueling seven-month public review process. Previously, the board had expressed mild support for the project, celebrating its design, but there may be some issues surrounding the affordable housing component.

In a statement, Douglas Durst mentioned the potential for the project to play a role in the continued transformation of the west side. "We are pleased that we have reached this important benchmark," he said, "and we look forward to working with the CB 4, City Planning and the City Council on this exciting project."

Welcome to the future. (Durst Fetner)

What the site currently allows. (Curbed)

Curbed stumbled on Durst Fetner's closely watched site on West 57th Street and the Hudson, and our blogging comrades discovered that excavation is underway at the site. The Observer has been eagerly awaiting a groundbreaking ceremony, set to coincide with the developers filing for a rezoning to transform the site from a bland four-story box into the dramatic pyramid apartments designed by Danish wunderkind Bjarke Ingels. It appears Durst Fetner is going the quiet route for the time being on the project known as West 57.

When The Observer inquired about an official groundbreaking, a Durst rep responded "For the building we aren’t going to build?" Indeed, what is currently taking place is foundation work in preparation for the BIG building, which still needs to go through the lengthy public review process. "I don’t see us doing anything in particular because of the weird nature of the groundbreaking," the Durstee said.

Previously, a land-use application was expected in April or May, so the fact that site work is underway could be a good sign for something coming soon. Something BIG.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Up, up and away. (Durst Fetner)

It may just be the most awaited project of the year, and by next year, it will begin to become a reality. West 57, the high-design ziggurat created by the cheeky Bjarke Ingels Group for Durst Fetner, is set to break ground as early as March. That is what Bjarke Ingels let slip at the ASAP party Monday night.

During a presentation of his playful projects—the plaza of many countries, the trash-to-power plant that blows smoke rings—atop the Standard, when Mr. Ingels got to the slides on West 57, he declared very excitedly, "Starting in March, this very exciting project will begin to take shape just a few miles from here."

A Durst spokesman confirmed the timeline for the project, though he said excavation work might not start until early April. That is also when the Dursts expect to begin the public review process for the pointy property. The hope is, once that is completed, so will be the foundations, which are currently being made for an as-of-right building but will also be able to accommodate the new, cutting edge design.

That way, should the new project be approved, all will be ready to rise sometime next fall. The developers have not yet sought financing, but that has not stopped them before—they purchased 1212 Fifth with cash, as well as the site for their 31st Street hotel. Meanwhile, further up 57th Street, Gary Barnett pulled a similar move, launching his similarly named and equally ambitious One57 before he secured a loan to finish it.

Big things going on that part of time.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Durst Fetner Residential brought their idea for the pyramid-like 57th Street apartment complex to Community Board 4 last night to a mixture of adoring fans and skeptical residents.

The project, first immortalized in comic form, then a City Planning-ordered fly through video, would be Mr. Ingels' North American debut after several critically acclaimed projects in his
native Denmark.

"City Planning is brain dead," a man clad in suede pants and a tweet jacket told The Observer in a thick Eastern European accent. "There's a lot of conflict."

If there is, then the kind of conflict peddled by Hell's Kitchen and Clinton residents is of the most cordial kind. The board members seemed almost smitten by the project, or at least more so than a rezoning proposal on nearby 11th Avenue that the board
eviscerated, pushing back The BIG/Durst presentation 40 minutes.

Many in the crowd were most impressed by the ambition of the project.

Mr. Ingels called his plan a way to fuse the density of a New York skyscraper with a Copenhagen garden. The final project will be "a way for Clinton/Hell's Kitchen residents to really connect to the waterfront," he said, while not taking away the river views currently enjoyed by residents of the Helena, another Durst residential property.

Not that there won't be roadblocks in the way. The thought of more rezonings--this project sits just two blocks north of the aforementioned 11th Avenue rezoning and is just a block south of Extell's huge Riverside Center--caused plenty of pained looks and squirming on the part of the board members.

The rest of the community's concerns were summed up by the West Side Neighborhood Alliance, an affordable housing group. "The neighborhood is now becoming sort of a bastion of experimental architecture," one of the group's members said. "What [this project is] offering the community is an iconic piece of architecture. I do think you really need to think about what else might benefit the community."

That, for Durst and Ingels, means affordable housing, which right now is projected, but not locked in, at an 80-20 split--a deal that would also reap the developers building incentives. Many members of the board were relatively silent on issues like public green spaces, which they complain are few and far between in Hell's Kitchen, and parking during the meeting, but they chimed in that affordable housing needs to be included in perpetuity.

Attendees did seem placated by the retail space and cultural programs built into the current design. The retail, which includes one large retail space and several other, smaller ones, got a positive response from the group. City Councilwoman Gale Brewer did point out that the larger space should not include a Costco, a swipe at Extell's plans, or a Walmart, a company the City Council is currently at war with.

Current plans give the cultural program 170,000 square feet on the third floor with an entrance on the southeast corner of the building. One potential tenant is the International Center of Photography, currently housed in another Durst property at Sixth Avenue and 43rd Street.

As for the sustainability features of the project, one speaker asked if the project would be built to LEED standards. Any queston of that was quickly quelled when another attendee replied, "Of course it will be LEED-certified. It's Durst."

mcoyne@observer.com

Not only is this an entirely new building typology—a smallscale-meets-high-rise residential building the likes, and shape, of which the city has never seen—but the fact that it is being pursued after the bursting (at least temporarily) of the city's real estate bubble demonstrates that architecture is not, in fact, dead, as many had feared. Developers, at least the smart ones, realize that investing in quality repays itself. Who knows, maybe this will be the new normal, and what a place to start!

Yesterday, Durst Fetner Residential announced that it is officially moving forward with the 600-unit rental project to be designed by Ingel's eponymous group (BIG), following a profile of the architect in the latest issue of New York magazine. The project will go before the local community board Wednesday night, and Douglas Durst told The Observer in an interview that he expects the project to begin the official public review process a year from now. That means we could see construction as early as 2012.

When asked why he would dare undetake such a dynamic project in this market, cousin and co-conspirator Jody Durst reponded, "A strong back and a weak mind."

"We had nothing better to do at the time," Douglas Durst followed. Then he gave the real explanation. "Basically the answer is, we know, to get the approvals, we had to do something spectacular," the elder Durst said. So this was the will of exacting Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden? "Certainly not!" (Later in the interview, Douglas Durst would allow: "We've been told by the Planning Commission that this is really a gateway to Manhattan and it really has to be stunning.")

And stunning it is. The building is a mash-up of European and New York styles, combining a short, blocky apartments-around-a-courtyard model with a high-rise tower. The result is a sloping structure that maximizes harbor views not only for those inside the building but also the neighbors whose sightlines might also be obstructed. New York's Justin Davidson enthuses thusly:

In a gridded city, reason would seem to dictate an architecture of seamless planes and perpendicular lines, but Ingels has found a more efficient eccentricity. Balconies slash the inclined plane. The apartments slant away from the corridor like fishbones so that windows on 58th Street frame westward views. Ingels is a virtuoso of repetitive protrusions: Instead of facing the building with a slick screen of glass, he breaks it into a Cubist expanse of windowed bays

It is one of the grand victories of West Side redevelopment, from the Village to Chelsea to West Harlem, that not only new housing is being built, but it is being built inside bold architecture. In fact, this is yet another paradigm shift, as so many of those magnificent buildings, like Nouvel's 100 11th and Gehry's Beekman Tower in the Financial District are really just the same old apartment buildings sheathed in facade finery. This building is an entirely new shape, a new way of living and building. Whether we see another like it remains to be seen, but the very existance of this property, and Christian de Portzamparc's Riverside South for Extell just to the north, is a sign of a promising future.

"We see long-term value in doing a project like this," Jody Durst said. It is the same reason his firm embraced sustainable design all those years ago, with the Helena rental building across the street and the Conde Nast and Bank of America towers in midtown. It's a value proposition for one of the city's oldest and smartest real estate families. "It's the only building of its kind," Douglas Durst said.

Yet Davidson of New York suggested the Dursts had low-balled on architects in the past, saying Douglas Durst "has generally opted for experienced, deliberate firms like FXFowle and its spinoff, Cook + Fox. A revolutionary he is not." Well... "I take exception to that," the developer told The Observer. "We've been on the progressive side for a long time."

Still, the Dursts know they are doing something special on this site. After all, they told us they would be pursuing the same high-level of sustainable design at another development site Durst Fetner controls on Sixth Avenue between 30th and 31st streets. "I think it will be an environmentally responsible site with more conventional architecture," Jody Durst said. That is if the Bank of America Building can be called conventional.

With that, he acknowledged no design was yet prepared, though a firm had been selected. Which one, neither Douglas nor Jody would not say. Yet perhaps after the success of Bjarke Ingels' project becomes apparent, Durst Fetner might change its mind and consider something more ambitious once again.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

Now comes the first non-comic-book glimpse of the building from a talk the designer gave last night at Harvard. The picture's of a PowerPoint video, so it's not the best, but still, the pyramidal project is so tantalizing, The Observer will take whatever it can get.

There have been some unfortunate changes already, though, as Curbed got a few more bits about the project:

Meanwhile a tipster writes in to share more details on the design ("three sided with an opening to the west and a courtyard on the interior") and the disappointing news that the Durst Organization has decided to nix the facade planting due to feasibility concerns (that might explain the lack of green in the rendering).

Yet the fact that Bjarke showed off the project with "Empire State of Mind" as the soundtrack is the worst news of all. Maybe he's not as cool as The Observer thought. Doesn't he know that song is so last year?

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

Curbed found this unusual piece of Web ephemera, part of a feature on Bjarke Ingels--of arch-o-lantern fame--and his firm BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) coming to America in a recent issue of Fast Company. Jordan Barowitz, Durst's spokesman, confirmed the partnership, albeit a tentative one with no specific designs. "We are working with BIG to explore the development of 80/20 residential building on West 57th Street." That would be an 80/20 mixed-income building, with 20 percent of the units set aside at below market rates in exchange for tax credits.

Whether the building ultimately looks like the unusual, green-roofed triangle featured in the comic book is hard to say. Now is not exactly the best time for cutting-edge architecture, given its relative expense. That said, the Dursts have long been patrons of good design, hiring the likes of Emery Roth & Sons for 1155 Avenue of the Americas, Fox & Fowle for 4 Times Square and FX Fowle (a successor firm) for the neighboring Helena, which ia also an 80/20 apartment project. And One Bryant Park, designed by Cook + Fox, has about the most unusual profile of any office tower since the Chrysler Building was completed, so these guys are not afraid of unusual geometries.

The real news is for Bjarke Ingels, though. At only 36, this Rem Koolhaas acolyte has been making waves in his native Scandinavia (he is Danish), and while he has done a number of commissions in places like Shanghai and Kazahkstan, a major project in New York would be the thing to truly catapult him into that rarefied territory of the starchitects. Until now, Bjarke Ingels is arguably best known for his whimsical monograph, Yes Is More, which was written in comic book form and served as the inspiration for the Fast Company comic. (For more on Ingels, see the TED talk he gave last year below.)

As if this story weren't reason enough to read the comic, see if you can't spot the cartoon rendition of City Planning Commish Amanda Burden while clicking through its digital pages.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article mistated the designer of 4 Times Square as Renzo Piano and the nationality of Bjarke Ingels as Dutch.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo