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MOVERS+SHAKERS

Tower Power

By Fred A. Bernstein

Published: February 22, 2008
NEW YORK—In his 30-year career, Paris architect Jean Nouvel has produced some superb buildings, including L’Institut du Monde Arabe and Fondation Cartier, both in the French capital. Now Nouvel, whose very name promises innovation, has been given a chance to alter the Manhattan skyline.

The Museum of Modern Art, criticized for the timidity of its 2004 makeover by Yoshio Taniguchi, is adding exhibition space in the bottom three floors of a new 75-story hotel/condominium designed by Nouvel and located nearby at 53 West 53rd Street. The jagged, crystalline tower will be about as high as the Chrysler Building, despite its much narrower, midblock site.

The developer is the Texas company Hines, which bought the lot from MoMA for $125 million last year and allowed the museum to approve its choice of architect.

In renderings, Nouvel’s building is dark and angular, with an irregular, exposed diagrid structure that “will bring the right kind of rhythm to the street,” says MoMA director Glenn Lowry. The New York Times described the design as a “sly commentary” on the predictability of Taniguchi’s MoMA addition, but the real inspiration seems to be another West 53rd Street institution: the American Folk Art Museum, with its dark, folded façade by New York architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. Nouvel’s challenge will be to turn the startling forms in his renderings into a welcoming addition to the city.

"Tower Power" originally appeared in the February 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's February 2008 Table of Contents.

 

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