How much dazzling European-bred starchitecture can one small swath of Tribeca handle? We're about to find out! On tiny Franklin Place, between Broadway and Church Street, Dutch wonderboy Ben van Berkel's black and bendy5 Franklin Place is set to rise 20 stories. Just one block over, at 56 Leonard Street (at Church), Swiss misters Herzog and de Meuron will go even bigger—a fact that 56 Leonard developer Alexico Group has finally acknowledged (though they've hinted at it, and there's nothing really secret about the Street View image seen above). In a press release just sent out, Alexico announced the hiring of the 40 Bond architects to drum up something special for the site, though the designs have been under wraps for months. The renderings will not be revealed until the fall. But Alexico, now having to compete with Berkel's burka for luxury bucks, has an ace up its sleeve. Alexico has also commissioned artist Anish Kapoor (of Sky Mirror fame) to create a sculpture that will have a permanent home on the ground floor of 56 Leonard. What's up now, Benny boy?
· Exclusive: Herzog and de Meuron Go 57 Stories in Tribeca [Curbed]
Starchitecture geeks, get excited. Thirty years after he published Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas is bringing his Office for Metropolitan Architecture—and the adorable hipster army that fills its ranks—to Manhattan to build us yokels some apartments. That's not news, but this is: the teaser website for 23 East 22nd Street has gone live, and the plans will be revealed to the public in mid-to-late June. Wait, 23 East 22nd Street? Isn't that the towering One Madison Park? Why yes, yes it is. If you'll recall, the developers decided to push ahead with an additional 20-story building once the 60-story glass tower's condos sold for 87 gajillion dollars each. The Koolhaas annex will reportedly have "zigzag units with different ceiling heights" and "balconies that stretch across multiple floors." In short, Rem is going to out-crazy fellow Dutch starchitect Ben van Berkel's splashy Manhattan debut. Sorry, brosef!
· 23 East 22nd Street [23e22.com]
· Rem Koolhaas Tackling New One Madison Park Building [Curbed]
Dutch architect Ben van Berkel's first New York City project—the black and bendy Five Franklin Place—has been met with a perfect storm of positivity. The buzz was deafening even before renderings were revealed, and once Berkel's Broadway Burka got out there, the praise was nearly universal. Even Kanye West is a fan! But now it's time to sell the 55 high-priced luxury condos, and the full website has been launched to do just that. The FFP site is full of all the ambient tunes and endless talk of influences one would expect from a highfalutin project, but much to our delight, it's also got new renderings of some of the building's shared spaces, as well as floorplan porn galore, including the two Sky Penthouses. The presentation of the floorplans almost seems pedestrian when compared to all the fancy click+zoom of the renderings and such, but cut the Dutch some slack: they gave the world wooden shoes!
· Five Franklin Place [fivefranklinplace.com]
· Curbed's Five Franklin Place coverage [Curbed]
The bonanza surrounded architect Ben van Berkel's 20-story Tribecaish condo building continues today with a full reveal on design blog Dezeen. After yesterday's tease, we finally get to see full-on frontal shots, of both the Broadway side of the building (which is actually the rear) and the future 5 Franklin Place entrance, as well as interiors of some of the 55 apartments, made up of "loft residences" on the lower floors, "city residences" above those and three "sky penthouses" on top. The fixtures were designed by Berkel and B&B Italia, as well as the sub-grade spa and gym, connected to the lobby via a curved stairwell. Berkel, under the aegis of his UNStudio firm, clad the building in black metal bands that fatten up and slim down as they curve around the façade. The Franklin Place rendering is very interesting, as it portrays the somewhat dank alley as a semi-hidden Garden of Eden—one that leads to lavishly expensive condos, or course (hence the red Bentley). Five Franklin Place will be a discussion piece for at least decade or two, so what's the gut reaction? Stud or dud?
Renderings of Dutch architect Ben van Berkel's eagerly-anticipated5 Franklin Place have popped up on the Web a couple of times over the past week or so, and each time the developer has rushed to demand that they be taken down. Now we know why. The façade of Berkel's first NYC project—made of reflective black metal bands—gets a full-page reveal in this week's issue of New York, complete with a "published here for the first time" boast. Berkel's luxury condo building, at 369-371 Broadway but facing the tiny alley known as Franklin Place, looks just as crazy as we'd been promised. Justin Davidson pens a good description: "The great Dutch architect Ben Van Berkel brings cloth—or the idea of cloth—out of doors, swaddling a twenty-story condo in black metal scarves that thicken and thin as they wind their way around. The façade becomes a burka, a form of resistance to the immodest transparency of glass." A big ol' luxury burka; as if Tribeca didn't have it all already!
· Show & Tell: Five Franklin Place [NYM]
· Berkel Diggin' 5 Franklin Place [Curbed]
· In Tribeca, the Berkel Has Landed (Almost) [Curbed]
We've shown both the front and back of the tired old buildings down at 369-371 Broadway which are to be deconstructed by Dutch architectural wizard Ben van Berkel and transformed into Five Franklin Place. We've even shown clouds of dust billowing from the site. So, today, we present one of the cleanest demo sites we've ever seen. The van Berkel crew has scoured every bit of building from the back of both 369 and 371, leaving only the facades. Behind the scenes are some big beams and girders, braced this away and that to keep all the old stuff from falling down. And of course there's a big yellow machine back there, resting quietly now after all the dirty work of digging out that nasty old stuff. Which raises the question: What will rise in the midst of all this absence?
In terms of levels of excitement, the unfurling of signage at Dutch architect Ben van Berkel's first New York City project—the still-hiddenFive Franklin Place in Tribeca—ranks somewhere between eating a really good burrito and your team winning the World Series. For our tipster who just captured these real-time action shots, it's closer to the latter: "I've been camped out across the street from Ben van Berkel's new development for 2 weeks straight waiting to snap a picture of them putting up the promo signage, and this morning it finally paid off. My life is now complete." What can we say? You build a luxury condo building in a Tribeca back-alley, and the kids get excited.
· In Tribeca, the Berkel Has Landed (Almost) [Curbed]
· Awesome Architecture Alert: Broadway Getting Berkel'd [Curbed]
· Five Franklin Place [Official Site[
To say that we're excited to see what Dutch architect Ben van Berkel has planned for his first New York City project—a condo building to be inserted into a Tribeca back-alley—would be like saying that perhaps the Knicks would be better off without Isiah Thomas. Double duh. Luckily, we're getting closer to seeing what BvB has in store for Lower Manhattan. A teaser website has just launched for his Five Franklin Place, and while there are no renderings (drat!), there are some details shared. Keeping the numerical symmetry, the building will have 55 apartments. The sales office will open sometime in April, and interiors are by B&B Italia. And in a very smart move by developer Sleepy Hudson, they've hired real estate power publicist Andrea Schwan, because this one might take some 'splainin.
· Five Franklin Place [Official Site]
· CurbedWire: van Berkel Gets Dusty, Dire Dwyer Appliances? [Curbed]
· Awesome Architecture Alert: Broadway Getting Berkel'd [Curbed]
TRIBECA—We've previously featured the building planned on Franklin Place from Ben van Berkel, but this is a different topic. It's unclear what the dust coming out of those dumpsters is, but it's enough to make you want to hold your breath just watching it. The creator of the video writes, "On my way to work every day I walk past the Franklin Place alleyway where Ben van Berkel is purportedly building that 21-story beast. There's been a lot of demolition lately and this particular morning I had to hold my breath as I walked past these dust-emitting dumpsters...this probably isn't the best way for an architect to ingratiate himself with a
neighborhood." [CurbedWire Inbox]
HARLEM—Was it only last week we had an item about drama related to a lack of move-in dates at the Dwyer on 123rd Street and St. Nicholas Avenue? One almost wants to see photos of appliances and things being carried into the building at this point, but an email indicates possible activity: "It looked like PC Richards was delivering appliances to the Dwyer yesterday. I didn't look in the truck at the load, but it was parked out front on St. Nicks and the door to the building was propped open." [CurbedWire Inbox]
The Dutch built up this crazy little island, and now they're coming back to add a touch of the avant-garde. Ben van Berkel, one of the principal architects behind the UNStudio design firm—whose work upstate was sadly destroyed by fire recently—is designing his first condo building in America, and it's landing at 5 Franklin Place. Franklin whatnow? Franklin Place is a one-block alley that connects Franklin and White Streets, half a block west of Broadway and a few blocks below Canal Street. Yes, the residents' entrance will be in an alley, which immediately makes this the most awesome thing ever. Those twin five-story buildings seen above, at 369-371 Broadway, are what sit on the lot now. The developer of the project is Sleepy Hudson, the same company behind the trippy High Line 519, but 5 Franklin Place will be bigger—21 stories. The cat was let out of the bag back in November 2006, when Sleepy Hudson secured financing for the project. And indeed, there's already a Wired New York thread on the topic. But van Berkel's involvement is the splashy new headline. We assume 369-371 Broadway will be razed to make way for the new building, but so far only interior demolition permits have been filed.
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