American architect Neil Denari has designed HL23, an apartment building for New York.
Renderings are by Hayes Davidson.
See also our earlier story on Denari’s Alan-Voo House.
Here’s a little bit of info from Denari:
–
HL23 is noted theorist Neil Denari’s first freestanding building and quite a special project for New York City in many respects.
The avant garde design will become reality thanks to seven separate one-time exceptions to zoning law by the City of New York’s Department of Planning, and the building is already expected to become a landmark in the heart of the West Chelsea district.
Built to LEED Gold Certification environmental standards, it will be the subject of an entire museum exhibition.
–
Posted by Rose Etherington
February 29th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
speechless… I just don’t know what to say!
February 29th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
crazy! i thought it was built up already. amazing renders.
denari’s works are visually impressive.
February 29th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
nice one. handsome.
not sure there are enough millionaires left in NYC for yet another *truly* luxury tower.
who buys these anyway?
February 29th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
OMFG!!!! He’s makin Lindy ROY look real bad next door.
February 29th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Great project.
Who knew you could get good things built in NYC?
Congrats to ND and his gang.
February 29th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
not sure this is really an “avant garde design” but it’s a lovely building nonetheless. fine fine work!
February 29th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Wonderful! So sleek, clean lines, crisp, wipe clean.
Perfect environment for Ad Executives to have high profile wanks in.
February 29th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
That is nice
February 29th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Not sure about making the shower out of blue-cheese though
February 29th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Are these renders???
February 29th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Yes they are! Wow.
March 1st, 2008 at 12:46 am
Not a fan. The interior spaces are pretty unexceptional, or am I missing something?
March 1st, 2008 at 2:29 am
Is the black coloured building next to it part of the design?
March 1st, 2008 at 2:32 am
Amazing renders…
March 1st, 2008 at 3:35 am
bottom line:
it is hot.
March 1st, 2008 at 4:09 am
stunnnnnnning
March 1st, 2008 at 3:05 pm
i like this new modernism..
but i wonder what has changed in housing since the Mies van der Rohe lake shore drive apts.??
March 1st, 2008 at 3:06 pm
the black building is high line 519
by ROYdesign
March 1st, 2008 at 7:50 pm
don’t think i could live there, but its a stunning building. spetacular rooms!
March 2nd, 2008 at 11:49 am
sleek but not that impressive… as with most of is work the renders always look better than the final thing. I hope these super rich clients can afford tilting curtains…
March 2nd, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Handsome shape,Accentuated structure , Spectacular views from living and bedrooms .also it has good contrast with disgusting facades of neibor buildins.somehow it stands alone.
March 2nd, 2008 at 10:09 pm
It is good to see a proposal for a confident new building in NYC but ……..
I don’t really appreciate the benefit of the overtly expressive structure or an undulating facade in a domestic building. Yes, the panorama and open plan apartments will be stunning and highly desirable, but I’m sure this could have been acieved in a more straightforward and ultimately more urbanisticlly coherent form. Who wants a strangley scaled diagonal strut disturbing the view? And what’s wrong with a bit of enclosure to compensate for the vertiginous expanse of glass?
Anyway I’m sure Hayes Davidson’s clever computer rendering can come up with a few hyper-real alternatives. Keep tapping that mouse and good luck with realising the project.
March 3rd, 2008 at 1:57 am
simply cool, but a little bit remind me of sejima’s house
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:06 am
I want that strange strut
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Loking really good. I can’t tell from the image if the building has been built or it’s just a CGI. Agree with the Sejima’s resemblance. Exactly my first thought!
March 3rd, 2008 at 4:44 pm
wow!!!
March 3rd, 2008 at 7:53 pm
I actaully had the privilege of working next to the design team for this project. My firm was lending some of our office space to Denari as a NY base of operations.
I bring this up because I want to highlight the fact that I have seen him and his team work in person. Denari is one of the elite architects working right now and he deserves high praise. His best quality is the fact that he is a great guy and not a dickhead. You wouldn’t know he was a bigshot if you had just met him.
As far as the building form is concerned, it engages the adjacent highline in a great way. The relationship that the high-line visitor has with the project makes brings them to a high state of awreness. The building commands a presence.
There are more projects that will be showing up on the high-line in the next few years that are equally as intriguing.
March 4th, 2008 at 12:52 am
why not show a few floor plans?!
March 4th, 2008 at 7:36 am
mm mmm mmmmm!
NEIL MY BOY!!!
March 4th, 2008 at 11:06 am
This is nowhere near the architecture of sejima. No clear formal og spatial idea, just a bunch of expensive details and rounded corners on top of each other that make the building look “dynamic” and advanced. This is airport-architecture of housing.
Renderings are impressive tho.
March 4th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
now i just need a couple million and i’m set.
March 5th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Why don´t you create a new Categorie call VIRTUAL ARCHITECTURE ?
March 5th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
How do they have time to play with “pie in-the-sky pretend architecture”? Because they don’t have any clients.
March 6th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
I thought these were all photos initially – amazing renders.
Fantastic building as well – really enjoying the dynamic created by the jaunty angles, overhang and the slit down the cladding.
The structure on the side walls is superb – the glass combined with this makes the building seem light and very spacious despite small footprint. Great job.
March 6th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I was more amazed by the renderings…bloody gorgeous! The whole concept looks great, hope it turns out exactly the way it looks now.
March 12th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Quite a beautiful light weight, floating structure. I could imagine the maintenance of the building to be super costly.
March 31st, 2008 at 10:53 am
impressive design. nice use of space and functionality.
questions: as we head into global warming:
*does the open expanse of glass make it into an oven?
*will it be high on energy bills?
*do the windows open out or does one live with air-conditioning for climate control?
May 15th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Certainly a tour de force of the designers art but… like living in ones own private air terminal?
November 13th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
I went to a lecture he gave about this project and a few others. The images look so real in HD. He said that in order to keep it from falling over the highline, they will have to pull the steel frame back and tension it over center everytime they build a new floor. To answer Arjun ’s question, the lower floors have balconies and all the floors have operable windows. The glass has reflective coatings and UV filters and never lets in more than 70% of the light. The white faux “struts’ allow only 10%.
He also said, “If you have to ask how much the penthouse is, you cant afford it.”
April 14th, 2009 at 5:24 am
This is his first?! about time. The house addition doesn’t count.
April 16th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
i think i start falling in LOVE with your buildings Mr.Denari!!!!!!!!
AMAZING!
May 20th, 2009 at 10:20 am
The is project disappointed me a bit. His design philosophy changed ovcer the years, and rightly so, since his early work which made me a fan. When he was at Sci-Arc, we got to see and hear his creative efforts of what he was striving for at the time. Back then, he was an “artist” (paper architect) and most of his built work was instillations.
A friend of mine told me to watch “German Engineering” on Youtube, and that’s when I saw this project. Yes its elegant, but with all that white inside and out it will be very costly especially in NYC which is a dirty city to begin with. Yes this is an extremely commercial project so the fundamental architectural questions are thrown out the window (I would be more impressed if Neil did a public housing project for the rest of us—the working class. I’m sure it won’t look so elegant…) in favor of high profile economics. He isn’t the first to capitalize on that theme.
Also, another thing that bothered me about this project is the ‘look’ of it. I have to agree with some of the commenters. I never liked the idea of architects designing offices for living. The open, exhibitionist spaces will raise the level of narcissism above acceptable limits. It does look like an airport terminal, btw…!
In the end, I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. The pressure of producing a resume of built work, even to the point of borrowing German traditional construction typology,Fachwerk, he has now, after years of paper architecture, found a door to practicing architecture. For the sake of those rich clients who already bought into this project, I hope this building will look this sleek and elegant 50 years from now. Time will tell.