Development du Jour: V33

1.

There is very little RE jargon (OK, "gracious") more pathetic than "townhouses" in an apartment building. Sorry, losers, you live in an APARTMENT, not a house.

2.

The front looks like a stylized recreation of a metal-shuttered storefront, Brooklyn circa 1978. The rear looks better, but what is the obsession with having all glass walls?

3.

Kinda sucks that there is no direct garage access for the ground level "townhouse".

4.

The penthouse is amazing. If only I had a gajillion dollars at my disposal...

5.

Nothing finer than a master bedroom that's elevator-adjacent.

6.

I love to have to walk through the kitchen to get to the living room.

7.

What is this apparently universally known truth that you can hear elevators from inside your apt?

I have never experienced this. Sounds more like a theory than a fact.

BTW, nothing loserish about living in a 4BR triplex apt with back yard and garage. Who cares what it's called? If I had the money I'd move there. Love that street, floorplans and finishes.

8.

as manyu pictures of winka on the website as there are of the building. what's up with that?

9.

"What is this apparently universally known truth that you can hear elevators from inside your apt?"

Clearly you have never had to actually live in such a poor layout as the one above. It's a real issue. There's a reason people avoid it. The movement of the elevator induces vibrations that transfer through the guiderails to the structure that's supporting them. Unless you provide quite a bit of isolation at structural connections (and assuming your contractor can competently install them), you'll hear the sound as it's transferred through to your finish layers. Even so, such a corrective is basically jumping through expensive hoops to make a bad plan work well.

10.

#8 - forget the pics. her quotes in the architect's section just makes me hurl my lunch. I'd rather have schmaltzy RE talk rather than an architect's bullshit trying to justify a design.

11.

Steve: As for the elevator vibrations, they may have some side benefits.

If you buy Unit 7 (floor plan pictured above), any time you are constipated, you can sit in the "Guest Bathroom #2" and have the vibrations shake it out of you!

12.

Steve, I lived in a loft where the elevator opened into the living space. No such issues that you are talking about.

Sounds like a lot of bs to me.

13.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

14.

Steve,

my new devolopment bedroom is on the elevator shaft and ive never heard a thing

15.

Anon...living rooms are different from bedrooms.
drudge...like I said, noise attenuation measures are possible. Consider yourselves(self?) lucky (or a really sound sleeper). I live in a 17-year-old building (i.e. not old) and, when I'm in my entry (separated by a common corridor from the elevator bank), I can hear the elevators every time they pass my floor.

In principle, it is a hallmark of poor plan layouts to place sensitive rooms next to elevators. Whenever possible, you want to isolate noise-sensitive spaces from vertical shafts, trash chutes, etc. with either common spaces or, failing that, bathrooms, or closets, or less sensitive living spaces (with noise attentuation measures taken). Architects know this; not only is it good practice, it is just common sense.

As a buyer, you have to ask yourself: if I am buying into a new building, and I can see that the plans are not as intelligent as they might have been, why take the chance that the acoustical engineer (if there even is one contracted) is on top of his/her game?

16.

So what's the difference between standing next to the elevator door in my living room, being vewy vewy quiet, and pushing the putton to call it vs. lying in bed in a room next to the elevator shaft?

I seriously doubt the developers jumped thru the hoops you talk about to attenuate the sound and vibrations judging by what they did and did not do to our loft conversion.

You're clutching at straws when you generalize and talk about these rare attenuation methods.

17.

My sons hampsters lived in something similar.

18.

Dear Anon.-

Rare? I'm going through this process right now, as the architect for a project where the floor plate is so small, we have had to carefully array the living spaces around a very large elevator core. In laying out the plans, we surrounded the core with either hallways or secondary (not master) bathrooms, and we are working with an acoustical consultant to ensure that, even so, the elevator noise is further mitigated by insulation and isolation measures in the construction of the plumbing walls and partitions that surround the elevators.

I'm afraid you're the disingenuous one, pretending that these sound issues never exist in these buildings, extrapolating from what you describe as your own personal living experience. So I'm supposed to believe that, because you live in a loft where you don't notice the noise from your elevator, that therefore noise attentuation in New York City is rare? Bullshit.

If I were more cynical, I'd have to assume that you have a vested interest in defending this building so vigorously, either as the developer, an employee of the architect, or a broker (brokers shilling for their own projects on Curbed? Who'd a'thunk it?). Either that, or you just can't admit that you don't know what you're talking about.

Also, if it even needs stating, the difference between living rooms and bedrooms is that people are more tolerant of noise in their living rooms (where they often have the TV going or some other distraction) than they are in their bedrooms.

19.

i like fire poles, why dont we have those anymore?

20.

But if I stood next to my elevator with the TV off and no one else around making noise (which I did because the negative effects of having the elevator so close did concern me) then I still did not hear or feel anything. The only sound I heard was the beeping that was made once per floor that I would try to hear to see if the evevator was near my floor or not. Even then I could only hear about two beeps at most.

You missed my point about rare attenuation methods.
You implied that the jumping thru hoops required to properly attenuate would not be likely to be done correctly because you would have to find competent people to do this and that there was a risk that this would not be the case ("why take the chance that the acoustical engineer (if there even is one contracted) is on top of his/her game?" and "assuming your contractor can competently install them").

That's why I said rare in a sarcastic manner. If you warn so strongly that finding the right person to design and install is a risk not worth taking then I am saying that a lot of dev firms have managed to find these rare ppl.

BTW, I'm not in any way related to the RE industry. Just your overage NYC RE obsessed curbed reader who can't afford this place but can see why rich ppl would not care about this elevator location just as they would not the car elevator location in the Anabel seldorf place. FDNY not approving it notwithstanding of course.

21.

That looks like a pretty thick wall between the elevator and the bedroom. Anyway, when it comes time, just go to the open house or model apt. and judge for yourself. This is a good discussion illustrating the importance of buying only after a place has been built, so that you can see and experience all the nuances like this that may not occur to you. They sold out 15 CPW before they finished a single apartment -- somebody there is sure to be disappointed with some unanticipated nuance.

22.

The real planning failure in the plan shown here is that there is no closet adjacent to the elevator. What are you supposed to do with your coat after you come in?

23.

#20 here.
Good point Glabs. Even in the new devs lambasted by curbed commenters you at least get a coat closet by the entry door. Now that is poor planning indeed.

24.

Have to agree with Steve on this. For the price of these units, I'd never buy a unit with a MB that's elevator adjacent. I'm a pretty light sleeper, and when you're in bed in the dark, and all is quiet, and you're trying to doze off, that whistling sound/humming and very slight vibration from intermittant elevator usage can be enough to keep one from falling off to sleep - I've experienced this before.

For this amount of money, there's no way I'd buy a unit unless the MB was oriented in such a way that was unneccessary.

Wish I wasn't such a light sleeper and that this sort of stuff didn't matter to me - life would be a lot easier :(

25.

#20:
Just because attentuation is common doesn't mean it's always done well. I'm speaking from experience. It's far better to try to plan the layout well, and avoid the possible perils of mitigation altogether.

All I'm saying is that when you see a plan like this, it ought to raise questions about the details of the construction, and even the priorities of the architect and developer. Might there not have been a better solution? If the design team had to place a bedroom next to the elevator because the elevator must be that close to the front facade, then why not make it the two secondary bedrooms instead of the master and a guest bath? Wouldn't it be better to have the master face the rear yard, anyway?

I suppose it's easy to second-guess the design process without knowing what went into it, and where the designer's greatest interests and efforts were invested. The formal expression of the street facade certainly looks labored.

26.

Dear Curbed,

Please be adviced that all V33 renderings are courtesy of SWIM by The 7th Art (as explained at www.33vestry.com).

27.

I passed by the "Sales Gallery" yesterday and there was a strapping hunk type in a suit-They are definitely selling an image....I'd listen to him promise me the elevator wasn't noisy. Maybe the developer planned it that way.

28.

Hey, come on. 'Archibabble' is what makes foreign architects superior to American ones in the first place. If you don't like to think of buildings as having potentially larger meanings than just bricks and mortar, go buy into a Toll Brothers building.