If you build it, they will come. (Public Art Fund)

“When you want to do something crazy, you go to your friends,” said Susan Freedman, the long-time president of the Public Art Fund. “You go to someone who won’t think you’re so crazy.”

Ms. Freedman was sitting on one of the granite benches that encircles the plaza of Columbus Circle on a recent morning. Fall was in the air, the chill of the granite seeping through our pant legs. Tatzu Nishi’s Discovering Columbus, Ms. Freedman’s latest commission, had just opened, and the customary lines snaked by behind her.

Some 70-feet up in the air, Gaetano Russo's sculpture of Christopher Columbus was comfortably at home inside a living room built by Mr. Nishi. Or, rather, conceived of by him. Like he has done in cities around the world, the Japanese artist had created an unusual environment for a popular statue to reside in and invited the public to come for a visit. But he did not build, did not construct, the structure in Columbus Circle, his biggest yet. That job fell to one of Ms. Freedman’s friends, Dan Tishman.

Mr. Tishman’s eponymous family firm has been developing and building office towers, hotels and more in the city and across the country for three generations. Mr. Tishman’s father built the first World Trade Center, and it has fallen to Tishman Construction to rebuild those 16 acres, along with erecting such contemporary icons as One Bryant Park and Hudson Yards.

In the meantime, Mr. Tishman has developed a niche as the go-to builder for some of the city’s most ambitious public art projects—a portfolio that continues to grow. “The Public Art Fund and the artists they work with have a vision, in a way it is similar to working with top architects on jobs we build around the world,” Mr. Tishman said in an email. The art projects do present their own unique challenges, though. “Building freestanding scaffolding over a subway line or waterfalls in the harbor give our engineers and builders a unique opportunity to stretch their problem solving muscles,” Mr. Tishman explained

It was Olafur Eliasson's Waterfalls in the East River that first inspired Ms. Freedman to call her old high school friend from the Upper West Side, to see if he knew anyone who might be able to execute such an audacious project. He volunteered himself. Since then, they have worked on Sol Lewitt's retrospective in and around City Hall Park last year, where Tishman fabricated two giant concrete sculptures, and now Discovering Columbus.

The first piece of the project was assembling the scaffolding to reach an appropriate height to create Mr. Nishi's living room. As they talked about the project, Mr. Tishman and Ms. Freedman realized it also presented the perfect opportunity to allow for the conservation of the statue, as well. Wooden platforms were brought in at first to allow for the initial restoration work and will return after the show closes to finish the conservation project. When the wood was removed, it revealed an interesting metal lattice work. "At first, people thought they were just working on the plaza again," Tishman senior vice-president Pamela Friedlander said during a tour of the project. "Only when we started to take out the wood and put up the signage did a lot of people figure it out"

The team built a fairly conventional construction scaffolding system, even recycling bars and joints that had been used during repairs to the George Washington Bridge—reduce, reuse, recycle! Still, in this unusual configuration, it creates a web metal that is not only functional but visually striking.

The site posed some unusual challenges. As Mr. Tishman pointed out, a subway line runs underneath Columbus Circle, the oldest in the city in fact, making for an incredibly shallow foundation. This meant the scaffolding had to rest on the ground, rather than being drilled into it, which would have also necessitated repairs to the recently renovated plaza, a step the builders wanted to avoid. Their solution was four massive multi-ton concrete anchors, one at each corner, set onto neoprene pads to protect the plaza.

The other issue the subways presented was the cars rumbling along underground, along with the winds blowing in off the avenues and Central Park, would cause the pillar and statue to sway slightly. That is why Christopher Columbus appears to rest atop a large circular coffee table in the middle of the living room. But it is more than just a table. The black ring not only serves as a buffer to keep zealous visitors at bay, it also hides the hole built around the statue to accommodate its movement. The coffee table is then affixed to the statue with a neoprene gasket and is fitted out with rolling casters so that it can imperceptibly move each time a train passes or the wind blows.

"Our goal is to create this beautiful room," Ms. Friedlander said. It may be a different set of design constraints, but the goal is the same as on any Tishman project."

Mr. Nishi was astonished by the work. "While I didn't see much difference" from other projects, he said through an interpreter, "I was expecting, just from my experience from other things, that American people are very sloppy." Mr. Nishi himself broke in here and blurted out "Sorry! Sorry!" and began bowing repeatedly, but the interpreter insisted it was a story with a happy ending, as Mr. Nishi began to smile. "But this turned out to be the most precise project I have ever done," the interpreter continued on Mr. Nishi's behalf. "It was amazing."

Ms. Friedlander said Tishman is already fielding more requests, including from the Public Art Fund. She acknowledged that working with artists is not always easy, but that can be part of the fun. "It can be tough going back and forth with the artist, especially when you're working under a compressed time frame," Ms. Friedlander said. "Our guys are like, 'Just pick a crown molding.' But it does matter because this is an aesthetic piece and working that into what we do is very rewarding."

Ms. Freedman said having a firm with Tishman's capabilities in the city will only further push the boundaries on what kind of public art the city can expect. "It's wonderful to know we can pick up the phone and say 'We have an artist dreaming a big dream, can you help us make it a reality?' and the answer will be yes," she said.

Correction:An earlier version of this post called Ms. Freedman the Public Art Fund's director. She is its president. It also said that Tishman had performed the renovation to the George Washington Bridge. It did not, simply boring the scaffolding from a project performed by another firm to use here. The Observer regrets the errors.

A rendering of 4 World Trade Center (terror crane not pictured)

The accident happened at 4 World Trade Center just before 10 a.m. this morning. The crane was lifting a load of steel off a flatbed truck when the cable snapped, sending the steel right back down to the truck, a source close to the matter told The Commercial Observer.

A man, believed to be one of the workers, was treated for minor injuries at the scene and was released.

One witness told DNAInfo that he thought it was another plane that hit the site:

"All of a sudden I heard a woosh, the cable snapped and the entire load came falling," said Matt Bergen, an engineer working at the site. "I originally thought it was another plane, because it sounded just like a plane. I'm amazed it didn't hit the building or anyone on the ground."

Located at 150 Greenwich Street, the 72-story 4 World Trade Center tower will be the fourth-tallest skyscraper on the World Trade Center site.

Tishman Construction, one of the construction managers on the site, is expected to release a statement about the accident shortly.

UPDATE (12:17 P.M)

A Tishman spokesman released this statement:

“This morning around 10 am, the cable of a crane broke, causing the steel it was lifting to fall approximately 40 stories back onto the flatbed truck that had transported the steel into the World Trade Center site.  The incident occurred within an enclosed section of the site, which is not accessible to the public.  No one was injured as a result of the fall.  We are investigating the matter in full cooperation with the Port Authority, FDNY and NYC Department of Buildings.   The job is partially shut down pending the investigation.”

 

drosen@observer.com

Charlie Murphy.

The Commercial Observer: National construction spending increased by 1.5 percent in December, the most since August. Has that uptick been felt inside Turner Construction?
Mr. Murphy: It has. For instance, one of the trends going on right now is residential again. There’s a market out there, more on the rental side, I think. We’re working with a developer for a site in Greenwich Village, and this developer was able to, without a lot of trouble, get his financing together. For a large project. This is a half-billion dollar project. So I think the money’s out there; they just want to invest in the right projects with the right developers.

Is the money available to all, or only New York City’s most recognizable developers?
It’s probably like anything else: How much do you want to pay for your money? But what else is interesting is, in the Greenwich Village case, it was a consortium of lenders. It wasn’t just one bank participating. You could see that the banks are splitting up their risk. There were a number of banks involved in this particular project, and, of course, they’re making the developers put more of their own money into the project.

Turner has expanded its work with its institutional and government clients over the past several years. What’s the strategy behind that move, and when the economy recovers will Turner recalibrate its focus on commercial clients?
Here in New York we’ve always worked for the [School Construction Authority]—and when I say “always” I mean the past 15 or 20 years—as well as the Economic Development Corporation and the Port Authority. So through good times and bad times, we’ve always made a conscious effort to meet that part of our portfolio so when you have a downturn, and there’s less private money available for things, we’ve established a reputation with those public clients that we continue to work for. They become a repeat customer for us.

Since 2008, has that particular sector been more active?
It had until the past year or two. They seem to have cut back work. With less revenues coming into the municipal government, they had less for capital, so we’ve witnessed that.

Are the commercial clients coming back?
There still isn’t a lot. We’re doing just a few commercial office buildings. We’re doing Boston Properties’ 250 West 55th Street, which is exciting because it was a stalled project that’s now come back to life after they secured an anchor tenant. We’re also building Canon’s Americas headquarters out on Long Island. That was another project that got postponed a year due to the 2008 financial collapse.

So, if the institutional clients are less active, and new construction is still not what it used to be, where’s the work coming from?
We’re seeing more work on the interiors side of that commercial market. We’ve done work for JPMorgan Chase, American Express, Brookfield Properties, Time Warner, and we just landed a very large project for Nomura Bank at World Financial Center. They retained us to do their tenant fit out, and that came at the very end of last year.

Health care and education are growth sectors. Has that translated to new construction?
I’m in my 34th year with Turner. We’ve been doing health care projects since as long as I’ve been here, so it’s really one of our core competencies. But we’re seeing even more now, and very large. NYU Langone Medical Center, which we’re doing the preconstruction for, actually has two large projects on its campus: it’s the Energy Building and Kimmel Hospital. Though there’s a lot of preparation work—buildings are getting demolished on the site and you have to move people out in their move to other buildings in the area—we should start in earnest in the spring of 2013 with the Kimmel Center.
New York Presbyterian is looking at a large program. We’re working up at Sloan-Kettering. And North Shore Hospital has a really robust facility upgrade happening.

Turner Construction is building 2 World Trade Center, but Tishman Construction won bids for the other buildings on the site. Did you guys make a play for those jobs?
Historically, Tishman was Silverstein’s builder, and we got an opportunity … There was just so much going on there, and we had built the Norman Foster-designed Hearst headquarters, and to Silverstein’s credit, he said, ‘Who makes sense to go do another Norman Foster building: Turner Construction.’

Put yourself in the owner’s shoes: Does it become more complicated juggling construction companies for what, in many ways, is one project?
I don’t think it adds to the complexity. I think what it lets him do as an owner is he can draw on a larger talent pool of builders. As much as you like to think that all 800 of our employees are A pluses, there are some who are better than others. So to be able to draw on a larger pool I think is advantageous to a client like Silverstein, especially when you have that much work going on at one site.

Do you work well with your counterparts at Tishman, which I imagine is among Turner’s biggest competitors?
We have a great deal of respect for Tishman. In fact, we’re joint venture partners because we’re doing the transportation center together. So there’s a collaboration really from the top down that we like. We have a common client in Silverstein, and from my vantage point and theirs, we want to do the best for the customer. So even though we’re on the same campus we’re going to work together for the best results for the client.

jsederstrom@observer.com