If They Can Build It Here

New York never stands still. Not only is it the city that never sleeps—it's the city that never stops tearing down and building up. As A. J. Liebling, a native son, once put it, "It is one of the oldest places in the United States, but doesn't live in retrospect like the professionally picturesque provinces. Any city may have one period of magnificence, like Boston or New Orleans or San Francisco, but it takes a real one to keep renewing itself until the past is perennially forgotten." Liebling wrote those words in the late 1930s, just after New York had undergone a spectacular burst of architectural ingenuity—a building spree that included the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center—that shaped the iconic picture-postcard skyline of 20th-century Manhattan.

After World War II, however, architecture in New York seemed to lose its edge. Yes, there were a few fantastic projects, such as Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum and the Seagram Building by Mies van der Rohe. But as the 20th century drew to a close, the creative capital of America had become host to the avant-garde in every art form except architecture. While cities like London, Berlin and Tokyo—as well as Seattle, Los Angeles and Dallas—were constructing astonishing projects by world-class architects, New York was stuck in the past. New buildings tended to look faux old-fashioned or cheaply sleek. People used to say the design mantra of the city's real-estate developers was "Form follows finance." The problem, says Mark Wigley, dean of architecture at Columbia University, was that New York had told its "citizens to expect mediocrity."

Now that mind-set of mediocrity is giving way to a new period of magnificence, worthy of Liebling's accolade. Just take a taxi up gritty Eighth Avenue. First you'll cruise by the elegantly soaring New York Times tower by Italy's Renzo Piano, its glassed-in courtyard home to a garden of 15-meter birch trees. In the distance, you'll see the Hearst Building designed by Foster + Partners of London, a stunningly muscular glass-and-steel high-rise. Farther down on the West Side is Frank Gehry's first major New York project, the IAC Building, a m?lange of pleated milky glass walls. Construction is booming downtown as well, with signature condos designed by Herzog & de Meuron of Switzerland and France's Jean Nouvel; another Nouvel design—for a sculptural tower of more than 70 stories—is planned next door to the Museum of Modern Art; it will include apartments, a hotel and expanded MoMA galleries. And the art-world aristocracy is flocking to the New Museum of Contemporary Art on the Bowery, in a luminous new building by the supercool Tokyo firm SANAA.

And it's not just the international rock stars of design who are reinventing the face of the city. "There are probably more architects per cubic foot in Manhattan than anywhere else in the world, but they have been working everywhere but here," says Wigley. Now the best of those firms are returning to their home turf—including a younger generation that is putting cutting-edge ideas about technology and sustainability into the design of chic small hotels or neighborhood fire stations. "The climate has been wonderful," says Gregg Pasquarelli, a New Yorker whose firm, SHoP, has grown from five to 75 employees in just 10 years, with current projects ranging from a 3km-long park on the East River to a 40-story apartment tower. "I love that architects like Nouvel are in town—it's good for all of us."

Design that points to the future is one highly visible way for New York to maintain its competitive edge as a leading global city—a point not lost on the office of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. With a growing influx of international business and tourism, the city is finally becoming a 21st- century design destination as well as a place with an almost mythic history as a cultural and financial capital. A number of top international architects have been waiting in the wings for years to design in New York—some struggling with projects that ultimately were not built. Now they are having their Manhattan moment.

To understand this turnaround in the design climate, you need to look back to 9/11. In the aftermath of the horrific attacks—aimed not just at American interests and values but directly at the most famous buildings in the city—New Yorkers were galvanized. Determined that the rebuilding should exemplify the best, the public rejected the first banal plans for Ground Zero in a mass public meeting in 2002. Officials were forced to organize an international design competition, which attracted the intense scrutiny of the mainstream press. Citizens turned out for public forums and hearings; they wrote letters to the editor; thousands even submitted their own design ideas. "You'd be riding the subway and hear ordinary people kicking around the names Norman Foster and Daniel Libeskind [two of the competition finalists]," recalls Vishaan Chakrabarti, an architect, planner and a senior vice president at Related Companies, the development firm. Despite the public pressure, the current plans for Ground Zero include such highly compromised designs as the Freedom Tower, by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Nonetheless, the passionate outcry of a vocal, sophisticated citizenry has had a lasting impact. Since Bloomberg took office in 2002, his appointed officials have actively sought to raise the level of design in the city.