OMA Strike Again

There will be a new luxury residential building in New York City. Slazer Enterprises (the developer of One Madison Park), the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA, Rem Koolhaas's creation) and Los Angeles based Creative Artists Agency (CAA) presented to the public last week their design for this high-rise that will be on 23 East 22nd Street which is located off Madison Square Park. This will be OMA's first project in New York City. As a fan of Rem Koolhaas I am always pleased to announce projects by his firm, especially ones that are super interesting.

The building has 18 residences on each of the 24 residential floors, as well as a screening room, main lobby, pool and gym which are all designed by OMA. These facilities will be shared with One Madison Park which is also a residential tower which is adjacent to this building.

The building will be quite modest next to One Madison Park as OMA's partner Shohei Shigematsu wanted to exploit the potential of the building's scale. This mid-rise condition allowed them to design an unusual variety of spatial and programmatic conditions within the building. The tower streches up to 107m and starts to shift to the east cantilevering 30 feet over it's neighbour. It gains additional area as well as views of Maddison Square Park.

What I like about this concept is that it creates alot of interesting and unexpecting moments which appear at each step. One detail I favoured was the floor windows where the building starts to shift. This creates a new perspective that is different from an living space I have seen. Imagine having a glass floor in your living room that adds an extra view to the already spectacualr view you would be getting.

This project is due to be completed in 2010 and from what I understand Rem Koolhaas is personally involved in it aswell. I'm a huge fan of SANAA and this building reminded me alot of the New Museum by them as they employed the same technique. I believe it's quickly becoming the new visual language of choice in NYC and project developers are becoming a huge fan of it because even H & deM have used this concept in their Leonard St. high rise.

I think it's very nice. Reminds me of my Lego days.