Ian Schrager unveils 215 Chrystie Street
Ian Schrager has unveiled the design of 215 Chrystie, a new hotel and residential building scheduled to open in downtown Manhattan in 2016. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architects and Herzog & de Meuron, the 28-storey building will house a 370-room hotel topped by 11 custom, one-of-a-kind residences with interiors by the acclaimed British designer John Pawson.
Located in the rapidly evolving cultural and artistic district of the Bowery at the crossroads of the city’s most exciting neighbourhoods and across the road from Roosevelt Park, 215 Chrystie reflects the history, context, culture and spirit of its location. The project reunites Schrager and Herzog & de Meuron, whose previous groundbreaking collaborations include the nearby 40 Bond, a radical redesign of a traditional cast-iron building that was the architects’ first residential project in the United States.
“215 Chrystie is the ultimate expression of uptown meets down town. It is both tough and refined at the same time.” comments Schrager: “ I’d like to think of it as ‘refined gritty’ or ‘tough luxe’, this is a truly international collaboration, bringing together leading architects and designers from around the world to create a building and residences for the next generation–a revolutionary new genre of urban living.”
Herzog & de Meuron’s design responds to the existing mid-block site in the Bowery, using every day raw concrete in an entirely new way, both inside and out. The structure of the building is pushed to the exterior, giving a depth to the façade and liberating the interior from freestanding columns. Floor-to-ceiling windows feature mullionless corners and extra-wide panes of glass custom-designed by the architects to provide rare, unobstructed 270 and 360-degree views of New York City and the surrounding area while creating an airy and transparent quality to the interior spaces. The full and half-floor residences, located in a slender tower on the top ten levels possess qualities similar to the building’s framework, with an emphasis on open space and light.
“Our idea was to stack two very distinct typologies on top of each other, and on one hand to express their difference, while on the other to unify them within the same building skeleton,” says Jacques Herzog, co founder of Herzog & de Meuron “It was also our aim to complement them with a diverse mix of uses so that the building becomes like a city within the city.”
Herzog & de Meuron’s design also incorporates an intimate private garden, which is separated from the street by a dense green wall that acts as a physical barrier as well as a visual screen.
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