If They Can Build It Here

About the same time, one private project signaled the radical shift in attitude toward high-profile architecture. The award-winning veteran New York architect Richard Meier, who hadn't built anything in Manhattan since the 1960s, designed a stunning pair of glass apartment towers on the edge of Greenwich Village overlooking the Hudson River. The Perry Street Towers attracted a huge number of stories in the press, and the apartments sold quickly to celebrities such as Calvin Klein and Nicole Kidman.

It became clear that an architect-branded building, like a beautiful designer suit, could sell at a premium—and designer condos began to sprout around Manhattan as rapidly as Starbucks. Herzog & de Meuron's 11-story luxury building on Bond Street is defined by its gorgeous grid of bottle-green glass mullions supporting a glass fa?ade, while whimsically lacy gates of cast aluminum guard the street front. Blue—a 17-story condo by the Swiss-born, New York-based Bernard Tschumi—looms over its Lower East Side neighborhood and has become an instant landmark; with its blue-tinted glass and offbeat shape, it's visible from far across the city. What these projects have in common is a refreshing sense of freedom. Their stripped-down interiors are open and flooded with light (and sometimes visible to the neighbors) and stand in sharp contrast to the stodgy fortresses of stone or brick that dominated residential design in the city for a century. And on the outside, each of these projects has its own iconic presence.

Behind many of these cool condos is a new breed of young developer, attuned to an up-to-the-minute culture of design and technology. But the bigger, more-established realestate companies are turning to heavy-hitting architects as well—whether it's Gehry, who's designing the controversial Atlantic Yards arena complex in Brooklyn; or Foster, who, with SOM's Childs, is involved in the transformation of Madison Square Garden and Pennsylvania Station; or Meier, who's designing a vast residential complex— four 70-story towers—on the East River, just south of the United Nations. At a recent symposium at Columbia University on "Enlightened Developers," Louis Dubin, who was born into a family of property developers, spoke about the ethics of good design, which he said involve "emotional capital" as well as "financial capital." This doesn't imply taking one's eye off the bottom line. "It's not like you bring on these hotshot architects and lose money," Dubin said. "If you do it right, it is very profitable."

Developers have learned, too, that the city under Bloomberg looks favorably on good architecture. "I work very closely with architects and developers," says Amanda Burden, the chair of the City Planning Commission. "Things get through the public process quite quickly if they have design excellence. They can take quite a long time if the design is mediocre." Burden adds that she's not just talking about "signature office buildings but about low-cost housing as well. We are encouraging attention so those projects will contribute to the neighborhood and people will want to live there."

The city itself is an architectural client, whether refurbishing a small museum or building a new branch library. At the Department of Design and Construction, a Bloomberg program for design excellence has lured such first-rank firms as the Polshek Partnership, Deborah Berke and Grimshaw Architects to public projects, while some of the city's best small design firms have also been given new opportunities. Meanwhile, all over the city, the design of new plazas and parks—especially along the waterfronts that were long inaccessible to the public—has set the stage for more spectacular new architecture. One key site is the High Line, a rusty, unused elevated train line in lower Manhattan that was slated for demolition. Backed by the Bloomberg administration, a private citizens' group won a fight to preserve the High Line and transform it into an elevated esplanade; the first section will open in 2008.

The High Line plan—besides sending adjacent real-estate values soaring—has sparked an architectural orgy in Chelsea, which was already home to Manhattan's most stylish art galleries. A new branch of the Whitney Museum, designed by Piano, will front the esplanade, while Los Angeles architect Neil Denari's far-out design for luxury condos won a special zoning break so it can partially extend out over the High Line. A block away stands Gehry's luscious white IAC Building, built by Barry Diller as his corporate headquarters. "Architects are very competitive," says Burden. "You get a few people who want to come to a party, then you get everyone who wants to come." She's not exaggerating: Gehry's building has proved to be a catalyst, with new construction all around, including luxury residential buildings designed by the likes of Nouvel, Shigeru Ban of Japan, Robert A.M. Stern, Annabelle Seldorf and Audrey Matlock.