THEHe sees the logo and colors of the social media giant atop the building and on the tall windows of a lobby facing 7th Avenue, facing Madison Square Garden.
It is not certain that this project will be realized. Facebook also has an eye on another Manhattan site. It is possible that his future building will be built elsewhere and does not look like what we see in the artist’s illustrations.
But just knowing that such a model is possible stimulates the imagination and shakes the perception that a skyscraper is just a tower of glass, metal, concrete or brick.
A skyscraper can also be a garden. This tiered one. Like the mythical Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world of which there is no sure representation, but which has never ceased to inspire artists and architects over the centuries.
The New York project is not the first skyscraper to offer elevated gardens and terraces.
Examples are multiplying all over the world, often improbable, spectacular and breathtaking, but this one pushes the limits. Perhaps because of the prospective tenant, but also, its size and its location, in the harsh and dry neighborhood of Midtown Manhattan, where greenery is only a distant memory.
Besides the hanging gardens, there is talk of ceilings of 20 to 25 feet, which would be quite unusual and would leave only 48 usable floors.
Maybe you saw me coming. When we talk about skyscrapers with distinctive and daring architecture, it is this kind of project that we would like to see. Not a banal, clumsy glass curtain that obstructs the landscape without raising it.
Any resemblance here with an existing project is not accidental.
It is not certain that the Facebook project will be built, I told you. There are other possible sites, but also a heritage issue.
The target land is that of the Hotel Pennsylvania, 100 years old this year, which has only 2 stars, but belongs to the history of this city and remains one of the affordable destinations (for the New York market).
The hotel has New York’s oldest continuously used phone number, although numbers have had to be added over the years.
The Pennsylvania would have to be demolished to make way for the skyscraper. This is debated.
The idea of demolition has been in the air since 1997. The owner was thinking of building a more modern hotel there.
It was again a question of demolishing in 2007, this time to build an office skyscraper, the “Penn 15”, a project abandoned in 2013, the owner then announcing that he wanted to renovate the old hotel.
New orientation in 2018. The (same) owner applies for a permit for a skyscraper.
Story to follow. On Facebook or elsewhere.
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