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NEW YORK CITY BUILDING
PROJECTS VESSEL Grand central viewing station
As part of creating a bespoke structure in the centre of a major New York development to offer unique public space, Heatherwick Studio utilised a revolutionary technique to create a copper finish in steel that wouldn’t degrade over time, as Roseanne Field reports
– Hudson Yards. Dubbed the “cultural centre” of Manhattan’s New West Side, the project by real estate companies Related and Oxford Properties Group consists of offices, public art and cultural institutions, a hotel, over 100 shops and restaurants, 14 acres of public space, and four residential towers with apartments for both sale and rent.
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What Related felt the development was missing was something at the heart to tie it all together, and so they approached a range of practices to come up with a concept. Heatherwick Studio had the winning submission, and the project moved forward from there in what was a “quite straightforward” process, says project leader at the firm Laurence Dudeney. The practice more or less had free reign. “It was kind of a great blank slate in a way,” Dudeney explains. “They put so much work into this mega development, really historic in terms of its size and quantity and funding, but they knew they needed something to really bind it all together.”
The development had been designed “really smartly,” he says, to provide a piece of open, public space. He adds: “They were engaging with us on how to activate it and give prominence to the whole development.” Originally, the project’s landscape architects, Nelson Byrd Waltz, had come up with designs for the plaza but, says Dudeney, “they realised that they needed something more”.
he neighbourhood of Chelsea on the west side of Manhattan, New York, is home to a huge new development
Design development
Having been given a relatively open brief, Dudeney and the team’s first thought was that whatever they designed needed “a single point of focus” and “to have some ability to hold its own” and therefore draw people to it. “Our main concern was that this development was so big and whatever we put in there would just get lost,” he explains.
Their original line of thinking was looking at sculptures – “it’s not uncommon in New York for a developer to think about putting in a piece of public art,” explains Dudeney – but it was an idea they quickly dispelled on the basis people would simply take pictures and walk away. “We wanted something much more engaging and interactive,” he says. They looked at various ways of doing this – such as with digital and mechanical interventions – but ultimately agreed it needed to be “more open” and a public space that “you should be able to walk into and experience. It was the idea of allowing people to experience public space from a different dimension,” he explains.
They decided to build a tall structure for a couple of key reasons. Firstly, it seemed logical in that it would create more space than what was there already, as opposed to constructing something that would take away that space. It was also for this reason that Vessel takes its unique shape, increasing in width the higher its gets. “Rather than reducing the space left for the city, we wanted to raise it and bring people up,” Dudeney explains.
They also wanted to keep the structure in
The material was put through rigorous tests by the studio and contractor Permasteelisa
ADF OCTOBER 2019
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