It was just announced that the full floor 8,255 square foot penthouse in the Rafael Viñoly-designed 432 Park Avenue (New York) has closed at a sale price of USD$87.7 million. That works out to be just over $10,600 per square foot.
It was purchased by Fawaz Al Hokair and is currently the most expensive sale in the building. However, the most expensive sale, ever, in New York remains the penthouse of One57, according to Curbed. It was purchased for $100.5 million.
Architecturally though, I much prefer 432 Park Avenue. I love its simplicity.
Each floor plate is 812 square meters. But because of the building’s height (424 meters / 1,395 feet) it appears a lot smaller. The ratio of building width to building height is about 1:15.
Because of this “slenderness ratio” the building is split up into 7 distinct volumes with a void between each. These voids – which are completely empty save for the building’s core – reduce wind loading and help with the building’s overall structural stability. (I’m sure it’s fine.)
The structural system is the exposed concrete grid. This leaves the interior of the floors completely column-free. Every window within this grid is exactly 10 square meters.
Here’s a good interior example of that:
On a none architectural note, the building also features a private restaurant. I am curious how a private restaurant can operate sustainably in a building with 100 and some apartments owned by many people who probably don’t spend all (or much?) of their time in New York. Perhaps it’s partially carried by the ~$2.10 per square foot monthly maintenance fee.
Occupancy is available immediately if you happen to be in the market.
Images: 432 Park Avenue
Resiliency is an important topic in urbanist circles these days.
New York is working on a 10 mile “Dryline” to protect itself from future storms similar to Hurricane Sandy. And Miami Beach – one of the most vulnerable cities in the U.S. to sea level rise – is frantically building pump stations and raising its seawalls, streets, and sidewalks.
Here’s what the city’s public works director had to say via a Curbed article published about a week ago:
Miami Beach is planning to spend upwards of $500 million over the next five years on the pump stations and street-raising projects. “We are quite certain we are going to buy ourselves another 30 years, and we are hoping we are going to buy ourselves another 50 years,” Carpenter said.
According to Wired, sea levels off the coast of South Beach have risen by 3.7 inches since 1996. But over the last 5 years the high tide levels have had an average increase of about 1.27 inches per year!
As I approach one year of ATC and as people like Lockhart Steele (founder of Curbed and Eater) return to personal blogging, I wanted to share something that’s been on my mind for almost this entire last year. And that is, should ATC just be a personal blog or should there be some greater end goal?
Right now it’s a bit of a hybrid. It’s hosted at brandondonnelly.com, but along the way I created a somewhat independent Architect This City brand. The most obvious option is to continue to grow ATC and turn it into something like Curbed, This Big City, or Sustainable Cities Collective. In fact, a good friend of mine emailed me a few weeks ago and asked me why I’m not doing that.
But to do that would require a lot more time and many more posts a day. It would also mean more restrictions on what I can, or should, write about. Personal blogs are, well, personal. Branded blogs typically require a focus. Today I live comfortably in between both of those worlds. I write almost exclusively about city building, but I introduce many personal touches. Architect This City has become my personal brand.
In many ways, I feel like this tension is a natural one. With the rise of social media and the belief that “everybody is their own media company”, more and more people are finding themselves debating whether or not they should position themselves personally online or create an independent brand.
At the same time, blogging is evolutionary. It’s a laboratory. And most of the benefits are entirely indirect. Writing helps you get your ideas on “paper” and sort through them publicly. And sometimes that leads to unexpected outcomes. I mean, in the case of Lockhart, he started blogging about his Lower East Side neighborhood and that gave birth to Curbed, which he then sold to Vox Media.
So as much as I try and plan out where I think blogging everyday could take me, it’s also good to sit back, enjoy the ride, and just see where it takes me.
It was just announced that the full floor 8,255 square foot penthouse in the Rafael Viñoly-designed 432 Park Avenue (New York) has closed at a sale price of USD$87.7 million. That works out to be just over $10,600 per square foot.
It was purchased by Fawaz Al Hokair and is currently the most expensive sale in the building. However, the most expensive sale, ever, in New York remains the penthouse of One57, according to Curbed. It was purchased for $100.5 million.
Architecturally though, I much prefer 432 Park Avenue. I love its simplicity.
Each floor plate is 812 square meters. But because of the building’s height (424 meters / 1,395 feet) it appears a lot smaller. The ratio of building width to building height is about 1:15.
Because of this “slenderness ratio” the building is split up into 7 distinct volumes with a void between each. These voids – which are completely empty save for the building’s core – reduce wind loading and help with the building’s overall structural stability. (I’m sure it’s fine.)
The structural system is the exposed concrete grid. This leaves the interior of the floors completely column-free. Every window within this grid is exactly 10 square meters.
Here’s a good interior example of that:
On a none architectural note, the building also features a private restaurant. I am curious how a private restaurant can operate sustainably in a building with 100 and some apartments owned by many people who probably don’t spend all (or much?) of their time in New York. Perhaps it’s partially carried by the ~$2.10 per square foot monthly maintenance fee.
Occupancy is available immediately if you happen to be in the market.
Images: 432 Park Avenue
Resiliency is an important topic in urbanist circles these days.
New York is working on a 10 mile “Dryline” to protect itself from future storms similar to Hurricane Sandy. And Miami Beach – one of the most vulnerable cities in the U.S. to sea level rise – is frantically building pump stations and raising its seawalls, streets, and sidewalks.
Here’s what the city’s public works director had to say via a Curbed article published about a week ago:
Miami Beach is planning to spend upwards of $500 million over the next five years on the pump stations and street-raising projects. “We are quite certain we are going to buy ourselves another 30 years, and we are hoping we are going to buy ourselves another 50 years,” Carpenter said.
According to Wired, sea levels off the coast of South Beach have risen by 3.7 inches since 1996. But over the last 5 years the high tide levels have had an average increase of about 1.27 inches per year!
As I approach one year of ATC and as people like Lockhart Steele (founder of Curbed and Eater) return to personal blogging, I wanted to share something that’s been on my mind for almost this entire last year. And that is, should ATC just be a personal blog or should there be some greater end goal?
Right now it’s a bit of a hybrid. It’s hosted at brandondonnelly.com, but along the way I created a somewhat independent Architect This City brand. The most obvious option is to continue to grow ATC and turn it into something like Curbed, This Big City, or Sustainable Cities Collective. In fact, a good friend of mine emailed me a few weeks ago and asked me why I’m not doing that.
But to do that would require a lot more time and many more posts a day. It would also mean more restrictions on what I can, or should, write about. Personal blogs are, well, personal. Branded blogs typically require a focus. Today I live comfortably in between both of those worlds. I write almost exclusively about city building, but I introduce many personal touches. Architect This City has become my personal brand.
In many ways, I feel like this tension is a natural one. With the rise of social media and the belief that “everybody is their own media company”, more and more people are finding themselves debating whether or not they should position themselves personally online or create an independent brand.
At the same time, blogging is evolutionary. It’s a laboratory. And most of the benefits are entirely indirect. Writing helps you get your ideas on “paper” and sort through them publicly. And sometimes that leads to unexpected outcomes. I mean, in the case of Lockhart, he started blogging about his Lower East Side neighborhood and that gave birth to Curbed, which he then sold to Vox Media.
So as much as I try and plan out where I think blogging everyday could take me, it’s also good to sit back, enjoy the ride, and just see where it takes me.
This matters a great deal because of what South Beach would look like if sea levels increased by 2 feet (via the Miami Herald):
It’s for this reason that Miami Beach has been working to alter its street elevations and install pumps – as many as 80 of them over the next 5 years – that quickly drain stormwater into Biscayne Bay. (The drains are equipped with backflow preventers so that the water leaves but doesn’t come back into the island.)
Here’s an example of a raised street and sidewalk (via the Miami Herald):
And here’s an example of a pump station (via Curbed):
All of this strikes me as necessary work for Miami Beach. But I also think it’s important to keep in mind that all of this is patch work – regardless of how necessary it is right now.
The bigger question is: what are we doing to stop sea level rise? That’s the only way we’re going to get to true, urban, resiliency.
This matters a great deal because of what South Beach would look like if sea levels increased by 2 feet (via the Miami Herald):
It’s for this reason that Miami Beach has been working to alter its street elevations and install pumps – as many as 80 of them over the next 5 years – that quickly drain stormwater into Biscayne Bay. (The drains are equipped with backflow preventers so that the water leaves but doesn’t come back into the island.)
Here’s an example of a raised street and sidewalk (via the Miami Herald):
And here’s an example of a pump station (via Curbed):
All of this strikes me as necessary work for Miami Beach. But I also think it’s important to keep in mind that all of this is patch work – regardless of how necessary it is right now.
The bigger question is: what are we doing to stop sea level rise? That’s the only way we’re going to get to true, urban, resiliency.
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