As the CitizenM Hotel nears completion, it’s actually not looking so bad. Almost all of the tower’s facade is now up, and besides the setback from the street-wall the building is friendly to the pedestrian perspective. Budget hotels don’t have to have stellar designs—by nature, they are budget—but it seems the hotel owners did make some effort to deliver a quality building for the cost. The end result is mediocre but not offensive.
The upper protrusion is beginning to look less tumor-like, and it should be clad shortly. Whether the top portion’s facade ends up acceptably mundane remains to be seen, but renderings show it being transformed into an enormous billboard. Some may find the signage garish, but the largest LED screen in New York will be going up three blocks away. Times Square continues to get brighter and brighter, with increasingly large signage a trend at all price-points.
