People really hate Thomas Heatherwick’s new Escher-esque “Vessel,” a climbable sculpture in New York City’s billionaire playground of Hudson Yards, and they’re not afraid to wax poetic about it. It’s a stairway to nowhere; a giant shawarma; a pine cone; a beehive; a trash basket; the rib cage of a monstrous robot.

Its name is fitting, some argue, as it’s little more than an empty monument to the outrageous excess with which it’s surrounded. According to Heatherwick, “Vessel” was always meant to be a placeholder name until the public experiences it and helps give it a new one. But with questions of its ultimate accessibility, usefulness and symbolic meaning to the public driving much of this criticism, perhaps the British designer won’t be pleased with the results.

Never thought I would say this but it probably would have been preferable to build an 80,000 seat football stadium that would be empty 80% of the year than the horrendous offering to the mall gods that #HudsonYards appears to behttps://t.co/ybAfk8z8W2

— Jon Auerbach (@JAAuerbach) April 1, 2019

I went to the new 25 Billion dollar #HudsonYards complex, on the very far West Side of Manhatran yesterday. Essentially it is a suburban mall without parking. Very crowded, but seemingly few shoppers. Wonder what will happen when the novelty wears off.

— Frank Didik (@FrankDidik) April 1, 2019

The Hudson Yards sculpture looks like a plus-sized bedbug. #HudsonYards pic.twitter.com/TmSFtLOZBG

— Nick Kolakowski (@nkolakowski) March 30, 2019

More than 1,000 people crowded around the vase of the imposing structure on March 15th, 2019, as it was commemorated and opened to the public. Comprised of 154 interconnecting flights of stairs, including nearly 2,500 individual steps and 80 landings, “Vessel” gives visitors a view of a long-anticipated $25 billion mixed-use complex full of condos that cost between $4 million and $32 million (or more) as well as super-tall office towers, a luxury shopping zone and high-end restaurants. Opening day was chaotic, with crowds pushing up and down every segment of stairway with their selfie sticks waving in the air, leaving few places to rest momentarily before pushing on.

Best take on Vessel at #HudsonYards from Filip Tejchman from @UWM SARUP: “A building that has no function and yet is also somehow LEED certified” ???????? #ACSA107 pic.twitter.com/OGRa6FqWE3

— Dr. Dora Epstein Jones (@DoraEJones) March 30, 2019

Nothing can prepare you for the capitalist altar, that is #HudsonYards #NYC pic.twitter.com/fI2TntAPua

— Richard Jacob (@IdahoNua) April 1, 2019

Urban nightmare. Dystopia. Contemporary panopticon. Yes definitely hate it. #hudsonyards #gentrification https://t.co/UQHHl66pHT

— Professor Laxmi Ram, AICP (@ProfLaxmi) March 30, 2019

Hudson Yard’s billionaire developers, led by Stephen Ross, have framed the Vessel as a benefit to New Yorkers and tourists alike, calling it a public amenity. “We think of this as a three-dimensional public space, like a park, but taller,” says Heatherwick lead designer Stuart Wood. Ross himself notes that Hudson Yards can’t be a playground for billionaires, as it’s been deemed in public discourse, because it has an H&M and a Shake Shack.

It’s fun to hate from afar, but what do visitors have to say about it? Here’s a report from Andrew Russeth of Art News:

“How is it as an actual aesthetic experience? Very weird, and quite unpleasant, I am happy to report. Looking up from its cramped ground floor, where a panel glows bright blue (a bit like that strange orb President Trump and company touched in Saudi Arabia), you see row after row of the copper-plated steel that lines the staircases, resembling a high-end corporate headquarters or shopping center. It appears to have been specifically designed to induce intense amounts of dread and alienation… for me, it most resembles one of those sets in sci-fi films where members of an alien tribunal gaze down on humans and condemn them to work in salt mines on some distant planet.”

https://twitter.com/carlruiz/status/1109189075846774784

Contest to rename the monstrosity by fake-artist Thomas Hearherwick “The Vessel” in the center of the environmental nullity & rot that is the Dubai on the Hudson #HudsonYards

Rename The Vessel:

1. The Shit-Gibbon
2. Thunderdome.
3. 2060 Underwater Amusement Park.

You??? pic.twitter.com/n6TQojUsLO

— Jerry Saltz (@jerrysaltz) March 17, 2019

I have a feeling we're not in New York anymore – the grotesque #HudsonYards #longreads https://t.co/vugGsMSDMc

— Anarchie ?? (@junkycosmonaut) March 31, 2019

The story of Hudson Yards is one that has played out on a smaller scale time and time again in New York City and virtually every other city in the world: a story of a piece of land that was devalued by the pollution of industry, marked for redevelopment via lucrative tax breaks and then transformed into something the vast majority of local residents can’t use.

Developers and city officials have long seen the “Far West Side,” which used to be little more than an open pit full of trains, as a blank canvas, with Hudson Yards only emerging as the victor after the death of a dream to host the Olympics in this spot. The platform upon which it’s built is certainly a feat of engineering, and advocates note that the project will add 4,000 new apartments, a school, parkland and as many as 55,000 jobs to the city. The completed portion is only the eastern half; the rest will be under construction through 2024.

In editorial after editorial and thousands of tweets, New Yorkers have expressed their dismay at the fact that this gargantuan project feels so alienating, so wasteful, so clearly not for them. Just as with every condo that goes up in a formerly vacant lot or on the site of a demolished house or business, the investment capital required to complete the project was only ever going to be worth spending if the result was inaccessible to the average person. Gentrification has already wiped out much of the culture that gave New York City its identity, and to many people, Hudson Yards feels like insult after injury. It effectively privatizes the last sizable undeveloped chunk of Manhattan as the gulf between the uber-rich and the rest of us grows ever wider.

At The Guardian, Hamilton Nolan writes, “As urban planning visions go, it is a familiar one: an ultracapitalist equivalent of the Forbidden City, a Chichen Itza with a better mall and slightly better-concealed human sacrifice. The development has been dubbed a ‘billionaire’s fantasy city’, but it is something more sinister than that. It is a billionaire’s reality city. The other 8.6 million of us are just character actors in this drama starring the most unbearable people you can imagine.”

Even The New York Times, the city’s befuddled patrician uncle who’s perpetually behind on trends and utterly tone-deaf, called Hudson Yards “Manhattan’s biggest, newest, slickest gated community,” noting that the project is shifting economic development from other neighborhoods to Hudson Yards without creating new net growth. “It is, at heart, a supersized suburban-style office park, with a shopping mall and a quasi-gated condo community targeted at the 0.1 percent.A relic of dated 2000s thinking, nearly devoid of urban design, it declines to blend into the city grid. From a distance the project may remind you of glass shards on top of a wall.”

It’s not lost on observers that the stairs of the Vessel lead nowhere. The work of climbing is supposed to be the reward, since there’s nothing at the top but a view of the Hudson Yards complex, or, if you turn inward, a view of all the other climbers still making their way up. The structure is just tall enough to pressure people who can climb stairs to do so; its lone elevator only stops at certain platforms, giving people with disabilities a limited experience of a limited experience. It’s only open in hours of daylight, and you have to book (free) tickets 14 days in advance to climb. In doing so, you must agree to a lengthy terms of service agreement stipulating that it’s your own fault if you die or get injured, and that any photos or videos you take and post to social media can be used to promote the attraction.

Removed from this context and all of the cultural baggage it carries, would the Vessel itself produce as much outrage? Perhaps not. Imagine it looming at the edge of a nature preserve instead, as an observation point for a place that can be enjoyed by the whole of a city’s population (with an elevator that goes all the way to the top.)

Curbed’s Alexandra Lange writes, “Rockefeller Center, Battery Park City, the neighborhood that would have been Atlantic Yards—each of these has been and will forever be more boring than the real city. Knowing this, we need to stop letting capital set the urban terms. Cities need to plan their own megaprojects, invest in the transportation network, make those parks, and then let the developers in to fill them out—on the city’s terms. Some of the most transformative urban developments in New York City over the past decade, like Brooklyn Bridge Park, have started with parks.”

When you’re judging thousands of architectural projects from all around the world, even the process of narrowing down the shortlist to 535 has got to be hard. This year, the World Architectural Festival (WAF) had its biggest year yet with submissions from 81 countries, and in November, the shortlisted teams presented their designs to a jury of more than 100 international judges in Amsterdam. More than 35 winners took home prizes in categories like Small Project of the Year, Use of Color Prize, Use of Certified Timber Prize and Leisure-Led Development. Here are 10 standouts from those winners, including the World Building of the Year – see the rest at the WAF website.

World Building of the Year 2018, supported by GROHE: WOHA Architects – Kampung Admiralty, Singapore, Singapore

WOHA landed the top prize with Kampung Admiralty, a cascading complex of greenery bringing public facilities and services together in Singapore. Designed to maximize land use and meet the needs of the island nation’s aging population, the project layers a community plaza, medical center, community park and other healthcare, social and commercial functions along with apartments for seniors. Its lush, elevated green village enhances the quality of life of its residents and enables plenty of cross ventilation and daylight, all on a tight plot of less than a hectare (about 2.5 acres) with a hight limit of 45 meters (147 feet.)

Glass Future Prize, supported by Guardian Glass, WINNER: Studio Gang, Tour Montparnasse / Paris, France

Winner of the Glass Future Prize, Studio Gang’s vision for Tour Montparnasse Tower aims to redesign the French capital’s infamously “ugly” building to transform it into a new 21st century landmark. Not only are the twisting facets of the skyscraper visually dynamic, lending it a shimmering effect, they help shade the interiors and make the structure more resistant to wind. The transparent base of the tower helps blur the boundaries between indoors and outdoors, and it’s full of cascading gardens, open-air markets, shops and spaces for large events.

Landscape of the Year WINNER 2018: Batlle i Roig Arquitectura – Pedestrian Path along the Gypsum Mines, Barcelona, Spain

A dynamic new path cuts through the hillside in Barcelona, leading from a lookout point that gazes out at the city of Igualada to an old complex of gypsum mines below. Designed by Battlle i Roig Arquitectura, the Lookout Path is part of the larger scheme of the Igualada Green Ring, which aims to create a green belt for pedestrians and bicycles around Barcalona’s perimeter. The zig-zagging track includes luminescent concrete paving for a blue-green glow after dark.

Culture – Completed Buildings Winner: Conrad Gargett – The Piano Mill, Stanthorpe, Australia

Australian practice Conrad Gargett won the Culture category with The Piano Mill, a new structure in Queensland that addresses the intersection of architecture’s role in the environment of cultural buildings. “This authentically Australian project celebrates the culture of early colonial settlement in our country, demonstrates an entwined collaboration of art, music and architecture, as well as pioneering music composition,” says architect Bruce Wolf, Conrad Gargett’s Company Chair. The building functions as an art installation, an oversized musical instrument and a “performance machine,” containing sixteen pianos tuned radar blades and sonic periscopes set on elevated balconies around a three-story void.

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Best Of The Year 10 Projects Honored At World Architecture Festival 2018

Compact and round for board games and intimate conversations, this flexible table gracefully stretches to become a long dining or boardroom surface without adding pieces or moving parts. Paper set in resin creates a kind of lattice structure that enables Friction to adapt to different needs, stable in either extreme form or anywhere in between. Stretched to its limit, it is 12 feet long and can seat up to 8 people.

Designed by Heatherwick Studio, it aims to accommodate groups of different sizes using simpler means than conventional slot-panel shape-shifters. Over 50 slats were slotted into the framed, calibrated and aligned to allow the surface to expand and legs to move seamlessly as it does. Like a wooden picnic table, gaps form in between slats, but these are narrow enough not to be a bother for most applications.

The form may be new but the design draws on vintage techniques and technologies. “Its grain and texture are derived from the fibres of the paper and the alternating orientation of the layers,” explains Heatherwick. “The resulting surface has a rich tactile quality and a naturally mottled colour which ages gracefully over time.”

This approach reveals something about the construction to users as well. “At any point in between, the surface is opened to reveal the internal lattice feature and offer a larger table top. Whilst the table construction represents the utmost precision and engineering, the finishing process of the table is much like traditional, hand-crafted furniture.”

Not all architecture incorporating lots of living greenery is doomed to remain an unrealistic rendering, depicting buildings that can’t structurally support the weight of all the soil and water needed to keep full-sized trees alive. Architect Thomas Heatherwick built ultra-strong concrete pillars into his 1000 Trees design, for example. Other buildings take a subtler approach, choosing ivy, potted plants or existing trees rooted in the ground. All of these projects attempt to meld urban architecture with lush gardens in the hopes of cleansing the air, storing CO2 to mitigate climate change and providing enhanced access to green spaces in cities.

Valley: Green-Terraced Towers by MVRDV in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Construction began in August 2017 on MVRDV’s ambitious ‘Valley,’ a mixed-use complex of green-terraced towers in Amsterdam’s central business district. ‘Valley’ is notable not only for its unusual offset stacking of volumes , creating an irregular shape, but also for all the greenery it supports. The towers include 196 apartments, 7 stories of offices, shops, restaurants, cultural facilities and a three-story parking lot.

House for Trees by VTN Architects in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

VTN Architects approached ‘House for Trees’ as a way to alleviate the lack of access to green spaces as well as poor air quality found in big cities like Ho Chi Minh. This residential project incorporates trees into its design, envisioned by the firm as a “small park in a dense neighborhood.” The trees are set into deep planter boxes disguised among the concrete volumes of the house, with cut-outs allowing their crowns to rise as high as they like.

Nautilus Eco Resort by Vincent Callebaut in the Philippines

The Nautilus Eco Resort by Vincent Callebaut is designed as a ‘zero emissions, zero waste, zero poverty’ development for the Philippines in response to environmental and social problems in the country, like overfishing, pollution and mass tourism. The project would be built from reused or recycled materials, self-sufficient in producing its own energy and food, and engage volunteer ecotourists in cleaning up plastic waste that washes up onto the area’s beaches. It consists of a series of shell-shaped hotels and apartment towers spiraling around a central island housing a nautical center and scientific research laboratories. The plant walls cool the buildings as they grow food.

Amata + Triptyque Timber Building in São Paulo, Brazil

Constructed entirely from Brazilian timber, this building is a collaboration between architecture studio Triptyque and forest management company Amata. The building aims to be a giant carbon sink, contributing towards the fight against climate change. Each square meter of wood is capable of absorbing a metric ton of carbon dioxide from the environment. The 13-story building contains co-working, co-living and dining spaces, the edges of its terraces dripping with living plants.

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106 vertical concrete tubes making up a massive disused grain silo in Cape Town, South Africa are sliced and carved from the inside out to produce cathedral-like spaces in this incredible transformation. Architect Thomas Heatherwick and his firm contrasted the cold, aging industrial appearance of the complex with faceted glass and organic shapes for a futuristic looking result, a fittingly monumental setting for the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA), the world’s largest museum dedicated to African contemporary art.

The silo once stood as a symbol of economic progress in 20th century Cape Town, but as the world around it changed, it was abandoned. Sitting empty since the 1990s, the silo had become a bit of an eyesore, especially as the waterfront around it modernized, but remained historically important. Heatherwick’s project creates 6,000 square meters ((64,583 square feet) of exhibition space in a total of 80 individual galleries along with a rooftop garden, book store, restaurant, bar and conservation laboratories.

“We were excited by this opportunity to unlock this formerly dead structure and transform it into somewhere for people to see and enjoy the most incredible artworks from the continent of Africa,” says Heatherwick. “The technical challenge was to find a way to carve out spaces and galleries from the ten-story high tubular honeycomb without completely destroying the authenticity of the original building.”

‘Tubular honeycomb’ is a good way to describe it. The interior photos reveal voids carefully carved out of the bases of the concrete tubes, revealing their geometries in whole new ways. Some of these tubes act as skylights, while others hold glass elevators or spiraling staircases. The museum stands as an awe-inspiring example of how adaptive reuse can reveal qualities you might never have expected in existing structures.