Photo courtesy Morali Architects

Santiago Calatrava's 1,123-foot tower of cubes at 80 South Street has been dead for almost five years, but Cord Meyer (of Forest Hills fame) has selected a local designer to revive the site: Morali Architects.

Anthony Morali released elevation drawings of his 998-foot, 300,000-square foot design, which will feature apartments rising from a hotel base with garden space integrated into the tower.

In a phone conversation with The Observer Mr. Morali described his design to us. "It has some of the features of segmentation" in common with Calatrava's tower, he said, "but what we're really trying to do is integrate sustainability and gardens."

The tower will feature "vegetative roofs," which won't just be for show—"we're working with Don Pintabona, Robert DeNiro's chef. We're working on a shared kitchen and vertical farming," he explained, and suggested the building could send food to area eateries, including Jean-Georges, the three Michelin star restaurant at 1 Central Park West. "We'd grow things like exotic mushrooms and herbs."

The tower includes cut-outs every ten stories, which will eventually bloom into gardens. "Instead of having a balcony," Mr. Morali said, "residents would have a 3,000-square foot oasis." He hopes the gardens will help residents regain a sense of place, avoiding the feeling that "you live in an airplane or a dirigible." (Though now that he mentions it, living in a dirigible sounds preferable to some Manhattan housing options.) "This way you look out your window and see a vertical garden."

Mr. Morali told The Observer that he sees the diagonal articulations along the building's façade as imitating "the sheen of water when it hits the surface and you get subtle waves and angles."

The design is still in the initial stages of city review and has not yet been approved by the Department of Buildings, but the architects and developers have been in contact with planners about certifying the air rights that were purchased from neighboring landmarked buildings.

"Amanda Burden's always very hands-on. She wasn't there [at the meetings], but she's been looking at it," Mr. Morali said.

And it has already won a few fans. Nikolai Fedak of New York YIMBY wrote that "80 South Street's scale is impressive for the neighborhood, as the eastern side of the FiDi is lacking in height." But if it's built, he continued, it will "help balance out the presence of the new World Trade Center."

Now that's a skyline. (William Weber/Curbed)

How does it compare to today?

Back when we did our big report one what the Bloomberg administration has in store for Midtown East under an in-the-works rezoning, we came up with a little dream/doomsday scenario of what that might look like. Then, when the city officially unveiled the plans, they revealed that some sites could potentially see buildings as big or bigger than the Empire State Building, and they produced their own images of this brave new world.

Now, our pals over at Curbed have come up with their own rendering of a Midtown of the future, which are equally exciting and terrifying, depending on where you stand on cool new skyscrapers and the crowds and shadows that come with them. Which camp are you in? Let us know in the comments.

The museum previewed its plans for the site with the community last night, and both The Journal and Curbed were on hand. The former reveals that the museum is 70 percent of the way to raising the $680 million it needs to complete the
project. The latter had some additional details about the design and, more importantly, some blurring pics and video of a fly-through of the museum.

The biggest news is the striking, as yet unseen western facade, with its huge, Hudson-facing windows. Perhaps Piano meant them as an homage to Marcel Breur's unusual openings at the current Madison Avenue museum. We've been trying to get a copy of the rendering from the museum all day to no avail, so this grainy screen grab from a shaky video shot by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation will have to do.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

That plan was fed to the sharks. As funds ran short two years later, it looked like the aquarium would build a new shark tank and little
more. The renderings that emerged a year later were for a garish amusement, the sort of design a second grader might come up with after a visit to the boardwalk.

SLIDESHOW: Dive Into the New Coney Island Aquarium >>

Now, final plans for the aquarium have been approved, and while they are not nearly as expansive or impressive as those first proposed, the result is a facility satisfying as a day at the beach. It is a fitting addition to the reinvigorated boardwalk, nothing too complicated nor demure. A sweeping walkway sheathed simply in a shimmering aluminum curtain has been added, sort of Gehry-lite. This ramp leads up to the new 50,000-square-foot addition, which houses that 500,000-gallon shark tank, offering ocean and boardwalk views.

These views were especially important to local council member Dominic Recchia, according to The Journal:

Mr. Recchia remembers visiting the aquarium as a child and being struck by the aquarium's lack of ocean views. "It was always frustrating to me," Mr. Recchia said. The new plans for the building "had to bring the aquarium to the ocean."

The paper notes that the aquarium has $49 million in commitments from the city but still needs to raise more money to cover the project's $150 million budget. The expansion, which will also offer access to the aquarium via the boardwalk for the first time, will open in 2015. Though it has been surpassed in size over the year's, the New York Aquarium remains the nation's oldest, having opened in 1896.

SLIDESHOW: Dive Into the New Coney Island Aquarium >>

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo