HUDSON YARDS project, by Steven Holl Architects.

Via Steven Holl Architects

New York City, NY, United States, 2007

PROGRAM: master plan mixed-use project
CLIENT: Extell Development Company
SITE AREA: 11,300,000
STATUS: competition phase

Steven Holl Architects have designed a cohesive master plan for both the Eastern Rail Yards and Western Rail Yards in Manhattan that is both physically and technologically integrated. Extell Development Company proposes to transform the Eastern Rail Yards and Western Rail Yards into a world-class, mixed-use, vibrant neighborhood that features world class architecture and inspiring public spaces designed by Steven Holl Architects, that is in harmony with the surrounding environment, and that both minimizes interference with LIRR operations and returns considerable financial value to the MTA. This last large undeveloped Midtown Manhattan site provides an unprecedented opportunity to create a new urban paradigm for the 21st century. While offering a high mixed-use density of 12 million square feet; the proposed suspension deck design maximizes public space and creates a porosity and openness for the site from all sides and approaches, connecting Midtown, the Chelsea Arts District, and the convention center with a grand public park open to the Hudson River; and its innovative structural system for spanning over the Rail Yards will minimize the impacts of development on the Caemmerer Yards and allow it to offer more for the right to develop.

“For those who place urban-planning issues above dollars and cents, the Extell Development Company’s proposal is the only one worth serious consideration. Designed by Steven Holl Architects of New York, the plan tries to minimize the impact of the development’s immense scale. Most of the commercial space would be concentrated in three interconnecting towers on the northeast corner of the site. The towers’ forms pull apart and join together as they rise – an effort to break down their mass in the skyline. Smaller towers flank the site’s southern edge, their delicate, shardlike forms designed to allow sunlight to spill into the park area. A low, 10-story commercial building to the north is lifted off the ground on columns to allow the park to slip underneath and connect to 33rd Street.
The plan’s most original feature is a bridgelike cable structure that would span the existing tracks and support a 19-acre public park. According to the developer, the cable system would reduce the cost of building over the tracks significantly, allowing the density to be reduced to 11.3 million square feet from 13 million and still make a profit. The result would be both a more generous public space and a less brutal assault on the skyline. It is a sensitive effort to blend the development into the city’s existing fabric.”

-Nicolai Ouroussoff, New York Times