Sutton Place was much nicer looking.

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Above the podium level, there is not one redeeming quality about this project. How something so sterile could be conceived by a developer who comes up with a gem right across the street is beyond me.
 
I warned this was going to happen pages ago, and it did. This spandrel wall will never be covered up due to its location fronting the park.

The fundamental problem with this structure and many others is the architectural conceit of pretending that it's an all-glass structure when it could have never been as such. Ultimately, the materiality always loses out, and you end up with unhappy instances like this (which I doubt will grace the front website of IBI Group).

Seriously, if a significant portion of the building can't be vision glass, design it to be something else. Spandrel will never fit in no matter how well you colour-match it. Even precast would be more architecturally honest (and probably better looking) than this.
 
Agreed. Accept the limitations and design around them. But adding all this spandrel to make it seem like it's an all glass tower is the biggest fail. What was previously there looked better.

What was the reasoning behind not demolishing the building completely and building from the ground up?
 
TheKingEast said:
Agreed. Accept the limitations and design around them. But adding all this spandrel to make it seem like it's an all glass tower is the biggest fail. What was previously there looked better.

What was the reasoning behind not demolishing the building completely and building from the ground up?
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Saving money is the principal reason. Then there's the "principle" reason that you also minimize your carbon footprint by not tearing everything down: there was a lot of energy embodied in the structure.

Neither of those reasons requires that the building be covered in mud-gray, back-painted glass spandrel panels with mullions all over the place, however.

Material: while it's not my first choice, I'm not against the back-glass spandrel if you can get the colour(s) right, but the waist-height mullions have destroyed the sleek look that architects with tell you they're achieving with the back-painted glass. That cladding material is less expensive than others, (and I have had architects tell me that its sleekness justifies its use), but when you add the waist-height mullions in to cut down on the size and price of the panels, I say that not only is any sleek quality lost, the mess of mullions actually detracts from the look… and I have not heard that acknowledged by any architects yet. (Architects will publicly blame their client for forcing cheaper cladding on them.)

Colour: I've also heard architects defend gray as an appropriate neutral, ostensibly so that the building won't clash with its neighbours. For certain colour choice is hard, but I say that architects and developers are abdicating their responsibility to provide the city with a healthy balance of neutral buildings and ones with some bolder choices: there's little that's new (or old) that a more boldly coloured building would clash badly with, as nearly everything is neutral. We're all losing out because of that sameness.

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Honestly, the south side is offensive. If you told me this was a vertical prison, I would believe you in a heartbeat. I’m surprised architects were involved in the design process at all. Finally, it’s disconcerting to see the stark contrast between the “airiness” of the renders and the final product...
 
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