Super-tall, super-skinny, super-expensive: the 'pencil towers' of New York's super-rich

[sl8]

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/05/super-tall-super-skinny-super-expensive-the-pencil-towers-of-new-yorks-super-rich

Super-tall, super-skinny, super-expensive: the 'pencil towers' of New York's super-rich



The proposed 2022 skyline overlooking Central Park. Photograph: Andrew C Nelson/Jose Hernandez/Skyscraper Museum

An extreme concentration of wealth in a city where even the air is for sale has produced a new breed of needle-like tower. By Oliver Wainwright

by Oliver Wainwright
Tue 5 Feb 2019 01.00 EST

It is rare in the history of architecture for a new type of building to emerge. The Romans’ discovery of concrete birthed the great domes and fortifications of its empire. The Victorians’ development of steel led to an era of majestic bridges and vaulted train sheds. The American invention of the elevator created the first skyscrapers in Chicago. Now, we are seeing a new type of structure that perfectly embodies the 21st-century age of technical ingenuity and extreme inequality. A heady confluence of engineering prowess, zoning loopholes and an unparalleled concentration of personal wealth have together spawned a new species of super-tall, super-skinny, super-expensive spire.

Any visitor to New York over the past few years will have witnessed this curious new breed of pencil-thin tower. Poking up above the Manhattan skyline like etiolated beanpoles, they seem to defy the laws of both gravity and commercial sense. They stand like naked elevator shafts awaiting their floors, raw extrusions of capital piled up until it hits the clouds.

These towers are not only the product of advances in construction technology – and a global surfeit of super-rich buyers – but a zoning policy that allows a developer to acquire unused airspace nearby, add it to their own lot, and erect a vast structure without any kind of public review process taking place. The face of New York is changing at a rate not seen for decades, and the deals that are driving it are all happening behind closed doors.

[...]

[Me.]

1. Have Read Recently About Problems With These Buildings

like the elevators not working

[in2herbs]

2. I saw a PBS show a while back showing how these skyscrapers in NY are decreasing the

sunlight in Central Park and thus affecting the biodiversity of Central Park.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. And the purpose of all this is .... ?

Yeah, I know, when you have enough money, you don't need a reason.

I hope these are really plush inside, because they look like soulless, alien ice-cube trays from the outside.

[jrthin]

4. Your description of the outside of these buildings pretty much

reflect the inside of many of the inhabitants.

[dalton99a]

5. Another laundromat for rich foreigners

[milestogo]

6. I guess they never watched "The Towering Inferno"

Or heard about the people stuck on higher floors in the WTC.

[Golden Raisin]

7. Among a broad spectrum of other problems/issues they have

ruined the classic Central Park South skyline --- architectural embodiments of "sore thumbs sticking out".

[Earth-shine]

8. In "The Fifth Element," the view of future Manhattan shows most of the buildings being that tall.

A whole island of supertall buildings.

[Xoan]

9. Idiocracy ...

isn't just for shits and giggles anymore.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

10. We cant afford ogliarches.