A new skyscraper looms over Central Park in Manhattan, towering above all the others, though at its current height of 1,100 feet, it’s not even finished. Not only is ‘Central Park Tower’ by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture an unmissable landmark for New York City, it’ll officially nab the title of world’s tallest residential building once it reaches its full 1,550 feet (472 meters.) Located on West 57th Street, also known as ‘Billionaire’s Row,’ it’s basically an unapologetic bonanza of luxury amenities for uber-wealthy occupants.

The tower has been under construction for five years, but few details have been provided about exactly what it would offer. Now that its 179 units are officially up for sale – including condominiums that are expected to go for upwards of $60 million each, as well as a $95 million unit on the 53rd floor – new information and renderings have been released.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dave Reed (@1987davereed)

https://www.instagram.com/p/BnrBuk3FpjR/?tagged=centralparktower

https://www.instagram.com/p/BpKzzPhAVqe/?tagged=centralparktower

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by M I C H A E L T. Y O U N G (@mchlanglo793)

The first seven floors of the Central Park Tower will host a massive flagship Nordstrom’s. Three hundred feet above street level, the tower cantilevers slightly to the east to give its residents better views of the park. The building’s 179 residences range from two to eight bedrooms, measuring between 1,435 and 17,500 square feet. Each one enjoys a wide open floor plan with interiors designed by Rottet Studio; the tower’s structural elements are concealed in between the units.

And then there are all the luxuries you’d expect from such an expensive tower. Residents will enjoy over 50,000 square feet of communal spaces spread out across three floors, starting with the lounge and an outdoor terrace featuring a 60-foot swimming pool, bar, screening wall, children’s playground, cabanas and more on the 14th floor. There’s also a health and wellness center incorporating an indoor swimming pool, sauna, basketball court, steam rooms, treatment rooms, a squash court and a fitness center.

“One of the greatest responsibilities of architecture is to continue to elevate experiences yet create structures that are elegant and respectful,” says architect Gordon Gill of Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture. “’Central Park Tower’ was designed to take advantage of the spirit of the great city of New York and create an address worthy of its location on Billionaire’s Row and Central Park.”

The same firm is responsible for Saudi Arabia’s ‘Jeddah Tower,’ currently under construction, which will be the world’s second tallest building once complete.

The United States currently has a shortage of about 7.2 million affordable and available rental homes for households with incomes at or below the poverty level, a statistic that’s clearly linked to the homelessness crisis. Meanwhile, 8 million Americans spend more than half of their monthly income on rent.

To house those most urgently in need as well as the people who make just enough money to fall through the cracks, cities have to start building more affordable housing as quickly as possible. But that doesn’t mean they should slap up some public housing towers and call it good. To be successful, affordable housing has to offer more than just shelter; it has to be thoughtfully designed to provide a good quality of life to its inhabitants.

In the U.S., the few affordable housing developments that exist often feel like fenced-off prisons, reflecting common attitudes about poverty rooted in the just-world hypothesis – the assumption that, essentially, people get what they deserve. Barriers to creating more affordable housing include city and state regulations that prioritize profitability for developers, and severe cuts to federal housing programs proposed by the current administration.

But some cities are forging their own paths. New York City has set out to build and preserve 300,000 units of affordable housing by 2026, and its Public Design Commission (PDC) published design guidelines for that goal that could become a blueprint for the entire nation.

More Than Shelter: Defining Successful Affordable Housing

“Designing New York: Quality Affordable Housing” lays out best practices in planning affordable housing that “contributes to the quality, character, diversity and experience of New York City’s communities” while improving equity, resiliency, sustainability and health for residents and neighborhoods. The developments should foster density and encourage interaction while presenting inviting, warm, safe and dignified living spaces that are durable, easy to maintain, attractive and accessible by transit, car, bike and on foot. Oh, and they have to be budget-friendly to build, too.

That may sound like a tall order, but the guide includes seven case studies of existing developments that tick off all of these boxes and more, and there’s no reason their success can’t be replicated elsewhere while also being tailored specifically to each location and population. Utopian dreams of affordable housing communities have certainly fallen flat before, like the spectacular failure of the modernist Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project in St. Louis, Missouri, but today most of them read like warnings of what not to do. While the future of affordable housing may center upon open-source technological solutions, PDC’s guide is a step in the right direction that can be acted upon right now, adding to the general discourse about what makes affordable housing successful.

Community-Oriented & Woven Through the Urban Fabric

Integrating affordable housing into the community instead of setting it apart is a great place to start. Not only should they offer easy circulation into transit and segue culturally and aesthetically into existing neighborhoods, they should respond to the priorities of the communities they serve. PDC cites the Frost Street Apartments, a 7-story, 47-unit complex in a gentrified area of Brooklyn by Curtis + Ginsberg Architects as an example.

Not only does it complement the typologies of surrounding architecture and avoid a monolithic appearance with setbacks and a variety of facade colors, it roots affordability into Williamsburg by housing people with incomes at 50%, 60% and 80% of the area median, with eight units set aside for adults with developmental disabilities. On-site support services are available, and residents enjoy bike storage, lots of natural light, bamboo flooring and open kitchens; five percent of the units are pre-adapted to be handicapped accessible.

“How can a building contribute to a sense of community, and help its residents regain stable, independent lives?” asks the Public Design Commission. The Schermerhorn in Brooklyn helps answer that question with 180 studio units for low-income residents and 9 multi-person suites with shared kitchens and bathrooms for formerly homeless single adult residents, all set along day-lit corridors. Preference is given to those working in the performing arts.

The building’s ground floor is home to a dance studio as well as the Mark O’Donnell Theater at The Actors Fund Arts Center, hosting performances by residents, and the entire second floor is devoted to shared spaces, social services and a rear terrace. It’s visually striking, too, cantilevered over a subway tunnel with a facade defined by five vertical channel glass panels.

Sustainability Means Addressing Health, Too

Making a structure sustainable requires more than just going down a checklist of physical attributes. Sustainability should address the health and well-being of inhabitants, too. While the Creston Avenue Residence in the Bronx may include rooftop solar panels, green roofs, low-VOC finishes, formaldehyde-free materials and a rainwater harvesting system, making it one of the few LEED Platinum Certified supportive housing buildings in the United States, it also incorporates community rooms and amenities that open onto a rear courtyard landscaped with native plants, offers lots of views of the neighborhood and encourages the use of stairways.

This building provides housing to people who are chronically homeless or in danger of being homeless, veterans with housing vouchers and households meeting income eligibility requirements, and offers support services to residents. It’s the first building funded by the New York State Medicaid Redesign Team Supporting Housing Initiative, which recognizes housing as a social determinant of health.

Another example cited by PDC is Arbor House in the Bronx by Bernstein Associates, a state of the art affordable housing complex that incorporates a 10,000-square-foot hydroponic rooftop farm that provides fresh produce like lettuce and herbs to tenants. Built in an area where residents have lower life expectancies and higher rates of preventable chronic diseases compared to New Yorkers in wealthier neighborhoods, Arbor House offers an indoor gym, a wide, central day-lit stairway, an outdoor fitness circuit and organic-themed artwork by a local artist to help give the building a sense of identity.

Smart Use of Land and Materials

For Navy Green, a 433-unit building in Brooklyn by FXCollaborative, Curtis + Ginsberg Architects and Architecture in Formation, one key to affordability was the choice to transform a contaminated brownfield into a building that takes up almost an entire city block to accommodate residents with a wide range of incomes and needs. Owned by the city, the land was once a naval prison.

After rehabilitation, it’s a series of four apartment buildings (low-income rental, mixed-income rental, mixed-income condominium and a supportive housing residence) that form a perimeter around a shared green. The buildings are strategically designed to block views of the adjacent Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and a 15-story Navy Yard warehouse. The distinctive facades of each individual building make the complex seem like it was developed over time.

While located in a waterfront neighborhood that’s susceptible to flooding, the Hunter’s Point South Commons and Crossing building by Ismael Leyva Architects and SHoP Architects in Long Island City offers affordable and income-restricted units stunning views while building flood potential into the design. Critical infrastructure is raised to higher elevations and the building is capable of withstanding substantial water loads, with temporary flood barriers integrated into the ground floor.

Of course, these projects don’t just spring up out of nowhere. Many of them receive special state or city funding and are built on land already owned by the city, circumventing a lot of common obstacles to building new affordable housing. But they also address affordability in a holistic way that benefits the city as a whole, avoiding the segregation of low-income residents from the rest of the population and improving their lives in the process.

Designing and constructing affordable housing also requires taking a hard look at what the word ‘affordable’ actually means in relation to the real and growing issue of income inequality in the United States. But the PDC’s “Designing New York: Quality Affordable Housing” gives us a strong foundation for a future of affordable housing that could also include lots of modular, 3D-printed and otherwise technologically advanced structures.

New York City’s most loathed and celebrated vermin are preserved for posterity in a series of new pothole mosaics by artist Jim Bachor. Inspired by the legendary grit of the city and the bottom-feeding inhabitants that plague its streets, the Vermin of New York series consists of classically styled mosaics depicting dead rats and pigeons, a cockroach and a President. Oh, and Bachor threw in a bouquet of flowers for a little color.

Vermin of New York is just the latest of twelve pothole mosaic series, many of which were installed in Chicago. Interestingly, though most of his pieces have been left as-is (he’s doing a public service, after all, filling the potholes for free), the New York City transportation department removed the portrait of Donald Trump (along with the bouquet and the cockroach.) The others seem to still be in place.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by bachor (@jimbachor)

Bachor uses the same methods, tools and materials as the archaic craftspeople responsible for mosaics that have persevered through thousands of years of rapidly changing human civilizations. The artist says he enjoys the process of connecting this ancient art to modern-day subjects.

“Trying to leave your mark in this world fascinates me. Ancient history fascinates me. Volunteering to work on an archaeological dig in Pompeii helped merge these two interests into my art. In the ancient world, mosaics were used to capture images of everyday life.”

“These colorful pieces of stone or glass set in mortar were the photographs of empires long past. Marble and glass do not fade. Mortar is mortar. An ancient mosaic looks exactly as intended by the artist who produced it over two millennia ago. What else can claim that kind of staying power? I find this idea simply amazing.”

David Bowie lives on in many ways and in many places, but at the moment, his presence feels particularly acute while passing through the Broadway-Lafayette Station of New York City’s subway system. The music legend has completely taken over, from lenticular portraits looming over the heads of commuters to posters replacing the typical advertisements and even keepsake Bowie-themed MetroCards. He might have been from London, but Manhattan was Bowie’s home, and Spotify is celebrating that fact with an immersive exhibition acting as an extension of the ‘David Bowie is’ show over at the Brooklyn Museum.

Much of the work seen in the station is Bowie-inspired art, including fan art and reproductions of the pieces on display at the museum. Each piece is paired with a statement of Bowie’s that reflects his love for New York City and how it affected his work.

https://twitter.com/randimason/status/992542286700535810

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Martina Benitez Vibart (@martinabvibart)

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bil5ng4DrQ0/?tagged=davidbowieishere

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Tina L. Guzman (@amiguita72)

“The intricate details that make up the subway takeover speak to key moments in Bowie’s New York City history, many of which were in the neighborhood surrounding Broadway-Lafayette, where he spent over two decades,” says Spotify of the project. “From legendary concerts at Carnegie Hall to recording sessions at studios like Electric Lady and the Magic Shop, the takeover beautifully explores how the City impacted the artist, and speaks to visitors about the truly unforgettable mark of New Yorker David Bowie.”

The David Bowie Subway Takeover went up in April and will be in place through this weekend, so if you’re in the area and haven’t seen it yet, be sure to check it out. If you can’t see it in person, experience it vicariously through the social media hashtag #davidbowieishere.

The art world tends to be exclusive by design, but a gallery founder and a curator in NYC decided to team up and do the most inclusive thing they could think of by offering to display any work sent their way in the ultimate “open call” for artists.

The exhibition, dubbed Et Tu, Art Brute? specified only one criteria: artworks had to be 12 by 20 inches or smaller in order, to avoid complicated shipping problems and ensure enough space would be available to put up all the pieces.

Curator Jamie Sterns and gallery founder Andrew Edlin weren’t sure what to expect, but the packages started to roll in — some dropped off locally, others mailed from around the world — photographs, films, drawings, paintings, sculptures and more.

Over 700 works by famous artists and first-timers arrived, all of which would end up being rotated through and displayed side by side with equal priority at  AEG Underground in The Bowery. Every work was priced at $200, the gallery operators and artists splitting proceeds 50/50.

The whole project questioned conventional ideas of insider and outsider art, and what it means to curate when an exhibit is in essence anti-curation by design. In a way, it wound up being like a work of installation meta-art, a critique and commentary on the art world itself. (via Arsty)