New York’s city council has approved a proposal for a new tower next to the Museum of Modern Art that will rival the nearby Chrysler Building in height.
The controversial 82-storey tower had been opposed by local residents’ groups in midtown Manhattan, who say it is too tall.
Designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, it will combine exhibition space for MOMA with 100 hotel rooms and 150 apartments.
MOMA, one of the world’s most prominent modern art museums, sold the land to the Hines Real Estate Co. which is behind the project.
It will lease about 40,000 square feet of gallery space in the new building, increasing its exhibition space by 30 per cent.
Nouvel, a Pritzker Prize winner, has designed a 305-metre tower with a structural steel exterior that tapers upwards to a series of crystalline peaks. The art deco Chrysler Building, completed in 1930, is 319 metres. via…
The good news is that New York gets no natural sunlight anyway, so if ever there was a place for a giant tower, its in the Moma area of midtown. Why complain that it’s rtoo tall, you only see the doorway from street level, so why should it matter? If only the exhibition space were like the Mori- on the 50-somethingth floor of this new tower, complete with an observation deck.
