The bubbling and bulging sculptural windows of 515 West 18th Street in Chelsea are making their way toward the tops of the new pair of residential buildings. The reinforced concrete structures, which straddle the High Line, are designed by Thomas Heatherwick of Heatherwick Studio and developed by Related Companies. The entire site takes up the eastern half of the parcel of land along Tenth Avenue between West 18th Street and West 19th Street. The taller, 22-story sibling on the western end of the property recently topped out across from the shorter, ten-story component. Both will eventually be enclosed with the same architectural curtain wall of gray-colored bricks and bulbous bay windows. SLCE Architects is the executive architect of the project.
Photos from YIMBY user baronson shows the rising façade and the wide corner windows that are just beginning to be put in place. A protective film is still on the glass but will be removed at a later time.
Looking at the northeastern corner of the site.
Installation of the ornamental windows on the ten-story development could be finished by the end of the summer, but it will likely take more time for the envelope of the other building to be completed. The brick façade that intersperses the windows is making its way up both structures.
The development at 515 West 18th Street is one of two properties that is intersected by the High Line, along with 505 West 19th Street, which is located to the north and across the street from Thomas Heatherwick’s construction site. Bjarke Ingel’s mixed-use condo and hotel at 76 Eleventh Avenue, aka The XI, also has the High Line run through part of the project, albeit only along the edge of both twisting structures.
Work on 515 West 18th Street is expected to be completed in 2020.
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Looks…tackier than I expected
LMFAO! My sentiments exactly!
Roll out the barrel, we’ll have a barrel of fun..
such an ugly design. this is nothing like the rendering; not that the rendering is anything innovative. poor manhattan. how did the developers look at this and say YES THAT IS IT!!!!
I walked by this last week. The ugly multi-color brick is like a slap to the face and wakes you from the utter monotony of those ridiculous bug-eye windows. Seriously, did no one speak up about this horrifically simplistic joke?
It might be a window washer’s nightmare, but it still looks good to me.
Ugly in the renders, colossally ugly in person.
This is a beautiful building. Saw it last week from the highline. Cut let’s wait until they take the protective film off the windows at least.
The grapevine has it that Heatherwick’s original concept was for one-piece, curved windows but that notion turned out to be unsurprisingly cost-prohibitive. So what we have are faceted windows in lieu which even at a glance, look like a compromise and a singularly unattractive one at that, particularly the corner units. To describe them as sculptural is way too generous but they would fit right in at somewhere like Coney Island. One wonders how long this gotta-have-a-Heatherwick client obsession will run its course.
Not sure a single curved piece of glass would make this any better….