Image (c) Bjarke Ingels Group.

It’s official. Bjarke Ingels Group‘s much-discussed plans for Hells Kitchen are a go: New York Magazine had the scoop yesterday, revealing a more detailed rendering of the apartment project that will now, if all goes as planned, be built on the West Side Highway.

The New York piece manages to say a lot about the architect without revealing very much about the project. There are two main discussion points: the relationship between the Durst Organization and Ingels (unlikely bedfellows, but brought together through their vision of sustainability not as a moral argument but an economic one), and secondly, the project as indicative of Ingels’ take on American excess and invention.

UPDATE: We’ve got a full set of renderings plus video, after the jump.

The latter point is made through the comparison of the project with surf-and-turf — a relevant metaphor for an apartment tower which occupies two housing typologies at once (the American tower-on-a-podium and the European central courtyard block). But it’s also a nod to Ingels’ methodical re-appropriation of cultural symbols of excess (like surf-and-turf, or his “hedonistic sustainability” mantra) as strategic organizing principles in architecture. It’s BIG’s hook: the low-brow mapped onto the high-brow.

The Durst project still has many hurdles to clear, but knowing Ingels’ rep for taking care of business, we’ll be posting construction pics soon. In the meantime, renderings upon renderings!

Above, day and night. All images courtesy of Bjarke Ingels Group.

The long view, from the Hudson River and looking out over it. Images courtesy of BIG.

Details from the ground floor. Images courtesy of BIG.

More from the interview here. And check out the West 57th project page on Architizer here.

by Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan

posted in gossipmonger

tagged bjarke ingels group, gossipmonger, housing, justin davidson, New Projects, News

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