COMMENTS: What's Wrong With This Picture?

A VISITOR ASKED what's wrong with Pritzker Prize winner Christian de Portzamparc's mirror glass condo tower that will soon rise on Park Avenue South. He thought it was much "cooler" than the "stodgy" brick buildings around it.

The original post is here. Other comments are here. (And there's more on the building here.)

The first role of an urban building is to make a good public realm, not to be "cool."

This building kills the pedestrian traffic on that block, for the reasons discussed. It is interesting, but not good, for the skyline, also for the reasons discussed.

It relies on the "stodgy" buildings to be cool. A city made of these is Houston, and that's not cool at all. A city of the stodgy buildings is New York, the most expensive real estate in New York. Some people want their building to be "different" in a traditional urban fabric. It doesn't occur to them how much they value the traditional fabric.

No one walks in Houston, because it's so f'ing boring.

I understand the value of contrast and the exception - see my post on THOR. But THOR depends on being the exception that proves the rule (about the public realm), and on the fact that many of the old buildings around it have poor design and cheap construction. Park Avenue is a whole different context. THOR also does not fill the block and gives the pedestrian much more to look at.

Buildings like this should be in "free style" zones where anything goes -- say on the river in Queens. We would soon see that few New Yorkers want their abysmal urbanism, and they would have little value. If enough people liked them, they would be an enclave. If not, they'd eventually be torn down and replaced.