Bound for the heavens. (432park.com)

The condo tower rising at 432 Park Avenue may be the most fascinating development project in the city. Sure, it can boast of being the tallest building rising in the city at the moment, to an eventual height of 1,397 feet (29 feet higher than the roof of 1 World Trade Center). It is also set to be the most expensive. But even more so, it is the secrecy of the building's developers, CIM Group and Harry Macklowe, that make the project all the more intriguing.

Very few details about the project have been released, and none of them publicly. Even renderings are clandestine. Which is why it is amazing that not one or even two but three different skycams have been whirring away at the site for the past year, showing it off in real-time, free for anyone to look—except that no one thought to.

"On September 26th, 2011 Macklowe Properties and CIM Group began excavating the construction site for 432 Park Avenue," a banner at 432parkavenue.com reads. "Simultaneously, we strategically installed three cameras overlooking the site so that our friends and supporters would be able to watch our extraordinary building take shape."

One almost gets the sense this site was intended just for friends and supporters, since the developers never bothered to publicize it.

A Berenholtz special, from September. (432park.com)

Internet data reveals that the cameras went live online sometime this summer at 432parkavenue.com, before which it was just a placeholder page. It features skycams overlooking the development from Park Avenue, 56th Street and 57th Street. There is also a rather stunning set of black and white slideshows by Richard Berenholtz, the architect-turned photographer well know for books like Manhattan Architecture and New York, New York. These sorts of photo-treatments have become de rigeur for developers, from Annie Liebovitz's Building the Times to the Port Authority's WTCprogress.com.

Currently, there are 16 slideshows on the site, mostly showing demolition of the row houses the developers had tried for years to buyout, and the slow setting of the foundation. The most recent gallery is from October, showing the building just above ground level. As the live cam shows, it has since progressed a few stories from there along the 57th Street side.

With One57 almost finished—the crane accident not withstanding—and 225 West 57th not yet ready to rise, all eyes will be one this tower, and these webcams, as the battle for skyline supremacy takes off.

Hello Midtown.

Those are some views.

Last week, The Journal got its hands on a 67-page marketing packet for Harry Macklowe and CIM's soaring tower at 432 Park Avenue, the former Drake Hotel site where the developers are working on the tallest tower in the entire city, apartment or otherwise.

In their write-up, Journal journalist Eliot Brown and Craig Karmin mentioned that inside the packet "are a collection of striking images of what would be the tallest residential tower in the U.S. at 1,395 feet as well as a number of other interesting factoids about the tower, called 432 Park."

Those factoids are below, but what obviously whet The Observer's appetite most was the promise of "striking images" (we have a thing for those) that were sadly absent from The Journal's report. But no more.

The Observer put out a call for some of the renderings and got lucky with two. Our understanding is there are more, basically all showing the building through the day from diffferent angles. What may be as striking as the height and the views is how singular it looks from all sides--quite the contrary from its rival One57, which with its waterfall-like facade looks different from all sides. It almost reminds us of the Trump obelisk near the U.N.

Now, for those factoids, courtesy The Journal:

The tower, designed by Rafael Viñoly and developed by Harry Macklowe, is expected to cost $1.2 billion; when everything is completed, CIM projects it would net $2.5 billion from sales of residential units and and other space, which is mostly retail.

Its 128 units would vary in size from 1,390 square feet to more than 8,000 square feet.

The expected average sales price is $4,500 per square foot, which would be below recent resales at the Time Warner Center and asking prices at One57.

CIM expects to pre-sell 40 of them, and then sell four per month; closings are expected to begin in October 2014, and the building is planned to hit “substantial completion” in April 2015.

There would be 25 studios “to house residential support staff.”

The retail would run along 57th Street with 101 feet of frontage.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's 432 Park Avenue! (WSJ)

In July, renderings of the most watched development site in the city leaked out. They were unofficial, the work of some avid architecture geeks, but it turns out the designs of the condo-tower planned for the Drake Hotel site were not that far off. The Journal gets the first official look at CIM, Harry Macklowe and Rafael Viñoly's new project, and while it will not rise to 1,420 feet, as first expected, the 1,300-foot tower would surpass every apartment building in the city by a few hundred feet.

The plans for the project, named 432 Park Ave., call for 128 condos with more than 12-foot high ceilings; a 5,000 square foot, partially covered, driveway to ensure privacy; and amenities like golf training facilities and private dining and screening rooms. The total price tag: more than $1 billion.

There is no scheduled completion date, and the project still faces challenges amid an uncertain economic and market environment. Crucially, CIM needs a construction loan of as much as $700 million. That isn't an easy type of financing to obtain these days, with European banks cutting back because of their debt problems and only a small handful of U.S. banks willing to lend.

Avi Shemesh, a CIM founding principal, said the firm is confident it will get a loan. "We have longstanding relationships with lenders," Mr. Shemesh said. "We anticipate our construction financing to be in place well in advance of any sort of deadline."

The Journal casts a great deal of doubt on the project, given the continued difficulties for builders to find lending. Competing towers are already in the works, though, like Extell's One57 and Hine's MoMA Tower, both of which surpass 1,000 feet, so anything is possible these days. At the very least, we have this first, official rendering to keep us warm at night.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

At the Bronx Hall of Justice, elevators routinely break down and close on passengers' arms and legs.

When it opened four years ago, the Bronx Hall of Justice was heralded as a bright new beacon for the borough, a return to the grandeur of the Grand Concourse’s history.

Instead, the Rafael Viñoly-designed civic structure turned out to be yet another hulking mass of shabby construction and unreliable service, the kind of bad buildings that have plagued the Bronx for decades. The problems at the Bronx Hall of Justice are myriad, according to the Daily News, and, as usual, no one seems to care very much.

•                Glitches in the computerized lighting system caused several blackouts last month, leading some judges to evacuate their courtrooms.

•                Elevators routinely break down and close on passengers’ arms and legs.

•                The escalators are regularly out of service, leaving elevators packed to capacity.

•                Blaring fire alarms sound at least once a week for no reason.

•                A sixth-floor roof leak has been gushing for months, flooding the hallway and causing mold to grow outside courtrooms.

“It’s still the shabbiest, most poorly built, least maintained courthouse in the city,” one court employee said. “The worst part is, no matter how much we complain about broken escalators or elevators, nothing gets done.”

And these are just the new problems. The signature courtyard and the parking garage beneath it have never opened because of concerns about structural stability—the brand-new building could come crashing down any day. –Matt Chaban

It may look nice...

When it opened four years ago, the Bronx Hall of Justice was heralded as a new day for the borough, a return to the grandeur of the Grand Concourse's history.

Instead, the Rafael Viñoly-designed civic structure turned out to be yet another hulking mass of shabby construction and unreliable service, the kind of bad buildings that have plagued the Bronx for decades. The problems at the Bronx Hall of Justice are myriad, according to the Daily News, and, as usual, no one seems to care very much.

• Glitches in the computerized lighting system caused several blackouts last month, leading some judges to evacuate their courtrooms.

• Elevators routinely break down and close on passengers' arms and legs.

• The escalators are regularly out of service, leaving elevators packed to capacity.

• Blaring fire alarms sound at least once a week for no reason.

• A sixth-floor roof leak has been gushing for months, flooding the hallway and causing mold to grow outside courtrooms.

"It's still the shabbiest, most poorly built, least maintained courthouse in the city," one court employee said. "The worst part is, no matter how much we complain about broken escalators or elevators, nothing gets done."

And these are just the new problems. The signature courtyard and the parking garage beneath it have never opened because of concerns about structural stability—the brand-new building could come crashing down any day.

It looks like there's no justice at the Bronx Hall of Justice.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

The crack team over at Curbed turned up some zany renderings of a 1,420-foot tower for the Drake site. At that height, the new tower would become the second tallest building in the city, surpassing the Empire State Building and even 1 World Trade Center, if you don't count the 400-foot antenna that drives its height to the symbolic reaches of 1,776 feet.

Granted they are not the work of the project's architect, Rafael Viñoly, but instead of intrepid Wired New York listservers."Quick and dirty model based on the mystery renders," notes their author. The Observer dove into some of the 48 pages on the site but could not divine where these numbers and dimensions came from. There was no indication of this in the limited number of DOB documents online, and previously we'd seen a tower at 65 stories, not almost twice that.

Seems mighty ambitious, but these are strange times.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

He uses those glasses to get a view of the stage. (Getty)

Rafael Viñoly is known for his dramatic buildings, which in New York include the boomeranging Brooklyn Children's Museum and the controversial New Domino housing development on the Williamsburg waterfront. The Urguay-born, New York-based Mr. Viñoly also has a thing for real drama, that of the stage, reports Observer opera critic Zachary Woolfe—even if at the same time, in his difficult way, the architect criticizes his multifarious colleagues:

Last week the architect Rafael Viñoly was speaking—not kindly—about colleagues of his who think they can do things besides make buildings. “This is a profession,” he said dryly, “that generates an enormous amount of arrogance.”

[...]

This summer Mr. Viñoly has returned to the Bard festival to design (with Mimi Lien) the sets for New York’s first fully staged production of the sumptuous Strauss rarity Die Liebe der Danae, which opens on Friday, at Bard’s theater in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.; it’s directed by Kevin Newbury and conducted by Leon Botstein.

“Architects feel empowered to give opinions about politics and sociology and philosophy without knowing much about it,” Mr. Viñoly said by phone from Beijing, where his firm is building an engineering school. “Kind of in the same way that they think they can design furniture or fashion or utensils for dining. I think architects tend to believe that they can almost do anything, which is a wonderful characteristic, but in some cases you just fall flat. Theatrical design is just a completely different vocabulary. It’s a very, very difficult thing to do well.”

He’s right: when architects play set designer, the results can be iffy.

Read the entire piece over on our Culture page.

The New Domino weathered years of regulatory reviews and stiff opposition from those who felt that the proposed 11.2-acre complex of condo towers and stores was too dense. Ultimately, the two highest towers were lowered to 34 floors from 40, paving the way for approval of Mr. Viñoly's master plan for the site. It was a good week for Mr. Viñoly in other ways, too. Two days earlier, it was announced he had won the commission to design the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate in Boston, Mass., right next to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.

Mr. Viñoly talked to The Observer about his newest projects and working in New York.

The Observer: What was your reaction to hearing that the New Domino was given a go ahead by the City Council?

Mr. Viñoly: Well, we were very happy. We feel very strongly that it is an important contribution to the future of Brooklyn and New York by extension.

What did you think of all the controversy?

In a project of this nature, there are always people against and always people for it. ... From my perspective, the plan couldn't have been more sensitive to the existing conditions. ... It clearly is a density project, as I have always supported because I think the beauty of New York and the best part of Brooklyn are parts where you have a huge amount of density, which I think is really what creates urban life.

Can you talk about Brooklyn and the nature of building in Brooklyn, especially on the Williamsburg waterfront?

Brooklyn has this amazing (it's always had it historically, also) this home-grown view of Manhattan. It looks more like Brooklyn owns Manhattan than the other way around. This is really a front-row seat, and it kind of makes it an opportunity to really enjoy the view of the city as an object, not just as a city but as an urban object.

At the same time, [the New Domino is] generating a profile you can see from Manhattan as not belonging to Manhattan. It's not a Manhattan architecture, it's essentially much more a Brooklyn architecture, with the use of a brick of a much finer grain and a less monumental type of architecture than the buildings in Manhattan tend to have.

Are you keeping the huge Domino Sugar sign? Can you talk about bridging the past and the future in the architectural design?

The plan sort of hinges around the conservation of the refinery building and that very sort of imposing object on the side. It carries a great deal of memories for people [used to] looking at it from across the river but also from Brooklyn. The plan basically evolves on the notion that this centerpiece is to be framed by buildings that are capable of transition in scale as well as in form. [We'll] move higher elements of the building towards the water, which is where you really have the most spectacular views.

What was it like building Jazz at Lincoln Center in the Time Warner Center?

The most important thing about Jazz at Lincoln Center is the fact that it's the first time that perhaps the most important art form in American culture has a place to really exhibit itself and dedicated to its own particular conditions of performance. ... Nobody had actually done, prior to this, a series of halls dedicated just to the specifics of the music of jazz, which is completely different than classical music or theater or anything like that. This was the absolutely brilliant idea of Wynton Marsalis. We had a wonderful time doing it.

Tell me about designing New York University's Abu Dhabi campus. What challenges do you encounter?

It's an extremely different climatic condition. But, at the same time, it is a kind of project that signals a sort of rebirth, if you will, or sort of a clear intention on the part of Abu Dhabi to engage in the development of culture and education with a great deal of interest or investment, real investment in it.  [This creates] an interesting problem. How do you engage with the typical vernacular conditions of the site? How, historically, has Islamic architecture dealt with this type of climate? At the same time, how do you signal a departure from it? 

How will you interpret N.Y.U. in the Mideast?

[The Abu Dhabi campus] needs to recover some of the virtues of the N.Y.U. campus here in downtown. Here, you have something that resembles much more the life of the Village. So walking distances and rather integrated architecture somehow gives you the chance and the possibility to develop an approach to the place, which without imitating Washington Square, keeps signals and ... qualities and reinterprets them in a place in which the climactic conditions are so different and the cultural conditions are so distinct and different. It's really extraordinary. It's a joint venture, which is a fully balanced operation between the university and the government, and it's really moving forward quite well and quite rapidly. 

What are your ideas for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate?

The senator had a very important idea, the notion of creating an institute for the institution that he was so influential in [the Senate], and so much a part of it. [It also almost touches the presidential library], so the complementarity between the two buildings seems to be like an obligation almost: maintaining the individuality and at the same time trying to stress the notion that these are two buildings that refer to two people that were so close to each other and have that special relationship. That's what has driven the design.

What trends are you seeing in New York architecture?

I think there is a regaining of the value of architecture as a contribution to the city and a contribution to business. You've seen the introduction of many foreign architects. I think that's a very positive move and positive change, I think that there are a number of new projects in the pipeline that continue to signal that. I'm always very happy to be part of it.

What's New York like as a city to build in?

I always thought this is perhaps the most important urban experiment in the history of mankind.

From the intro:

Ahem. Moving along, he is cited as the architect of several major projects including

Oh, and the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, where his work was yesterday acclaimed as

That high praise comes in the settlement documents relating to the Kimmel Center's $23 million lawsuit against the architect.

Not long ago, as you may remember, the Kimmel had a different view of the architect, if not of the building they ended up with. Viñoly, they said in court documents, is

Viñoly wasn't commenting on the settlement yesterday, which is why this from today's Artinfo.com interview is interesting if bewildering:

- Tom McGeveran

Peter Dobrin, who has been writing about the mess for the Philadelphia Inquirer, hands the win to Vinoly, and predicts dire things for the Kimmel Center for blaming its problems on Vinoly:

No one at Vinoly would comment on Thursday as to whether any money exchanged hands in the settlement, and J Bradford Mcilvain, a lawyer representing the Kimmel Center, was not available for comment on Thursday afternoon. But Mr. Vinoly must feel somewhat vindicated with the statement that the Kimmel's lawyers issued.

The Kimmel managers' tune was somewhat different in November, when they accused Mr. Vinoly of habitually failing to meet strict deadlines and being "wholly unable" to successfully convert his ambitious concept into a real building.

- Jason Horowitz