75 STORIES : NO. 1

FROM THE ARCHIVES: NOV 10 2001

CODA, from the book: NUDNY NOVINY
detailing trip to Prague, CZ to photograph
"Matka a Mimenko" (Mother and Child) for exhibition in Troy, NY, 2002.

PDF (below) gives Steve Fisher, of Prague, CZ
recollection of that photographic excursion...

Click here to download:
Coda1 from nudny-the-text.pdf (23 KB)
(download)

Full documentation here...


Jan Galligan
75Grand/Sur
Santa Olaya, PR

http://75Grand.posterous.com [foto blog]
http://JANGuarte.posterous.com [art blog]
http://cinefestsanjuan.posterous.com [cine blog]
http://about.me/JanGalligan [about me]

75 STORIES, OR BUST...

75stories
photo caption: assisted readymade by Jan Galligan 04-29-12 Santa Olaya, PR

INTRODUCTION

Architecture Archives:
Off With Its Top! City Cut Tower to Size

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
Published: September 9, 2009

Does Manhattan have a future as a great metropolis?
If you hope the answer is yes, you will be disheartened...


In 2007, international real estate developer, Hines announced the selection of Paris-based architect Jean Nouvel as the designer for Hines’ new mixed-use building in midtown Manhattan, adjacent to The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The building was planned to rise 75 stories from the 17,000-square-foot site between 53rd and 54th streets between Fifth Avenue and the Avenue of the Americas.  A mix of uses is contemplated for the building including:  a 60,000-square foot expansion of MoMA’s galleries (levels two to five) and 473,000 square feet of office space. The proposed building’s unique silhouette tapers as it rises to a distinctive spire.  Its steel and glass façade reveals the structural diagrid. If all goes according to plan Hines will start construction in mid 2009 and finish by the end of 2012.

All did not go according to plan and in 2009 the NYC Department of City Planning in league with militant residents and mid-town neighborhood associations required Nouvel to shorten the tower to 72 stories. The French Pritzker Prize-winning architect responded sarcastically by painting New York city planners as blinkered conservatives for not allowing his design to be realized at its full 75 story height. “What is surprising," Nouvel told New York magazine, "is that Manhattan should be afraid of verticality.”

On April 31, 2012, 75Grand/sur, unafraid of verticality, or horizontality for that matter, responded by restoring Nouvel's MoMA Tower to it's full 75 story, surprisingly tall, and stunningly slender stance, nearly as high as the 1,047-foot-tall Chrysler Building, but shorter than the Empire State Building and the Bank of America Tower.