Project 2004-2005Realization 2006-2007
The site, which occupies five typical narrow New York lots is located on Bond Street, a relatively wide street with cobblestones in the heart of NoHo. It is embedded in brownstones, warehouses and lofts, which vary significantly in scale and proportion.
The Bond Street area was one of NY’s most exclusive residential neighborhoods at the beginning of the 18th century. Prominent families lived in elegant brick and marble-faced row houses and mansions. The area lost its glamour in the 1840s when Fifth Avenue became more desirable and commercial buildings began to replace row houses. The diversity of buildings in NoHo, the mix of residential and industrial buildings, reflects the economic, social and technological transformation of New York in the 19th century.
When we became involved with the project, the framework for the site had already been established. The building’s use, mass and volume had been negotiated with the City over several years. The task was to develop a design for 28 condominiums within strictly defined criteria.
Our idea was to stack two distinct typologies for living – the townhouse and the apartment block.
The five townhouses reintroduce the scale of the original lots. Each townhouse has a recessed entrance porch across its street frontage and a garden to the rear. The porch is separated from the street by a cast aluminium gate, which acts as a physical barrier as well as a visual screen. The gate is a collage of graffiti tags, which have been translated into the third dimension with the help of a computer. The thickness of the strokes is defined according to material and thickness requirements of the casting process. The computer program optimises the density and distribution of the tags according to the structural requirements of the gate. The entrance lobby for the condominiums, a narrow, double-height cut, sits between townhouses Three and Four and connects the street with a small communal garden at the back.
The apartment block is stacked above the townhouses and forms a bracket across the entire width of the site. Its design is a reinvention of the cast-iron building found through NoHo and SoHo. The structure of the building is pushed to the exterior and follows the grid of the large floor-to-ceiling window bays. This introduces a depth to the facade on the exterior and liberates the interior from freestanding columns. Slab and column are clad with gently curved glass covers, which wrap over the structure and can be read as a continuation of the windowpanes. On the one hand the skeleton and bones of the building are expressed, on the other they melt into the glass surface of the window bays and dissolve in a play of translucency, light and reflection. The colour of the building is the colour of glass, with its many shades of green, which depend on light, viewing angle, thickness and layering of the glass.
In the interior, many of the master bathrooms have large windows to the exterior and are organised in narrow and tall bays, reminiscent of the New York lot. Sinks, shower and bathtub are partly embedded in the walls to create intimate, embracing niches. The separation of dry and wet areas and the selection of wood and corian as the finish for each emphasise and enhance the specific use.
Herzog & de Meuron, 2006
Translation by Catherine Schelbert
The Bond Street area was, with its elegant brick and marble-faced row houses, one of New York’s most exclusive neighborhoods in the early 18th century. The area lost its glamour in the 1840s when Fifth Avenue became more desirable and commercial buildings began to replace the mansions in this area of NoHo, creating a mixed and complex fabric that reflects the economic, social and technological transformations of New York in the 19th century.
This apartment building takes up five of the old elongated plots on the street. The use, volume and height allowed was predetermined, and the task was to develop a design for 28 condominiums within strictly defined criteria. The project takes these premises and enhances them by stacking two distinct residential types in the same structure: the townhouse and the apartment block.
The five townhouses of the ground floor reintroduce the scale of the original lots. Each residence has a recessed entrance porch across its street frontage and a garden to the rear. The porch is separated from the street by a cast aluminum gate, which acts as a physical barrier as well as a visual screen. The gate is a collage of graffiti tags, which have been translated into the third dimension with the help of a computer. The thickness of the strokes is defined according to material and thickness requirements of the casting process. In this sense, the software used optimizes the density and distribution of the tags according to the structural requirements of the gate.
The apartment block is stacked above the townhouses, and is accessed via a long and narrow corridor located in the center of the ground floor, connecting the street with a small communal rear court. Its design is a reinvention of the cast-iron building found through NoHo and SoHo. The structure of the building is pushed to the exterior, thus introducing depth and liberating the interior from freestanding columns. Both slab and column are made of reinforced concrete, and clad with gently curved glass covers, which wrap over the structure and can be read as a continuation of the windowpanes. On one hand the skeleton and bones of the building are expressed, on the other they also melt into the glass surface of the window bays and dissolve in a play of translucency, light and reflection. The color of the building is the color of glass, with its many shades of green, which depend on light viewing angle, thickness and layering of the glass.
