2009
Open House New York Weekend
Chairs to sit and sidewalks to walk on
This is my seventh consecutive Open House New York Weekend Event and it always still surprises me with new sites every year. This year’s big five star attraction (for me at least) just had to be the Newtown Creek Wastewater Plant in Queens. Designed by Polshek Partnership, it is a promiment piece of public infrastructure and, while the lobby sure was nice, the real reason to go was to see the digesters.
Newtown Creek features massive, giant silver sludge digester eggs, that are insanely cool looking from a distance and also pretty damn awesome up close. The Open House New York tour took us up the elevator to the catwalk connecting them, a terrific, really special experience and one that is really indicative of just why I love Open House New York Weekend so damn much.
We’ll stay out of Manhattan a bit for a quick stopover at Belltel Lofts, a residential project in Downtown Brooklyn. This is a renovation of a 1930 Ralph Walker building, and while the lobby and massing were most certainly worth a visit, nothing really beats the view from the roof.
We’re sticking with residential buildings for a few more sites, and continuing on to Battery Park City for the Riverhouse, designed by Polshek Partnership (the same firm that designed those massive, giant silver sludge digester eggs above) along with David Rockwell, the building was certainly nice but, just like the Belltel Lofts in Brooklyn, nothing really beats the view from the roof.
The third of three consecutive residential projects, this is Dwell95 designed by Phillipe Starck, or, rather YOO by Starck as they like to say. This building had decent views but not great ones (it is on Wall and Water Streets and surrounded by Lower Manhattan office buildings) but they compensated (or, perhaps overcompensated) with the interior design. There was a lot of it, some of which photographed well but was not especially strong in person.
This is an actual view of Water Street from Dwell95, and before you start to think that drivers in New York regularly drive into tour buses, you should know that this was from the set of a movie being filmed. As for the name of the movie, I am not sure, although I am assuming it ends up with a high speed chase where a car drives right into the side of a tour bus.
And we’re already finished up with Open House New York Weekend this year. Those massive, giant silver sludge digester eggs (which were so totally worth is) took up most of Saturday and there just aren’t as many good sites I haven’t seen open on Sunday. Even this last one, the Broad Street Ballroom by Cross and Cross, was most certainly interesting and nice but, to be honest, nowhere near as special as those massive, giant silver sludge digester eggs.
Keep going back in time. Open House New York 2008 is next.
