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February 18, 2005
Upscaling
Februrary figures put the average price for Class-A* office space in Lower Manhattan's Financial District at about $33 per square foot, and Class-A office space in the Midtown/Grand Central District of Manhattan at $57 a square foot. This hot-hot a-go-go real estate market has sparked alot of interesting (& nauseating) Skin and Entrance upscales on existing structures; with owners hoping to lure higher paying leasees while trying to compete with the explosion of new Class-A construction.
So let it be announced, Transfer begins another new era in architectural browbeating, Skins. They'll be some crossover heat with Hatin', but surely there will be equal measure of good and bad.
Architects Moed de Armas & Shannon are big at Reskinning and Retooling existing structures in the Midtown area to get higher paying tenants into older buildings. Big proponents of glass casing and transluscent accenting, with splashy entrances. Moed have made a mint modernizing elder 1940's stone behemoths and mid-1960's brick bores with slick casings and even glossier entrances.
Two current Moed projects presently taking shape in Midtown are the reskinning of the Hippodrome, and the newly completed entrance at 350 Madison Ave, which will include a reskinning as well.
This is the squat Hippodrome, this little tart in the process of its fierce reskinning.
Hippodrome getting reskinned 02/2005
Old and new skin.
New and old skin detail.
Moed de Armas & Shannon next project, of which only the entrance is complete, is an upscaling of 350 Madison, which looks like any other boring brown brick office building, remarkable in its unexceptional presence. Interestingly enough, the old tenant of 350 is Condé Nast, who headquartered there before they got their hot new digs at 4 Times Square. Fox and Fowle's awesome 48-story LEED masterpiece. So, doing what any good building owner would after losing your main money, they applied for an addition, a project by SOM to add 26 stories to the structure. Thakfully it was killed in 2001. SOM, proud whores to corporate philandering, are always utilizing the sorcery of their fallen angel, David Childs, to build Monstrosities all around town (and the planet). Nothing as bad as the hideous Worldwide Plaza on Manhattan's westside, mind you, or surely nothing as bad as Child's Bastardization of Libeskind's freedom tower, but I wouldn't put it past them to outperform themselves.
Corner of 46th and Madison.
From Madison.
The completed entrance modification is quite good. Has that whole smokey-glass translucent-slick-schtick going. Translucent is what mirrors were in the 70's, currently the most popular option (where available) in opening up small spaces.
Here you can see the flooring whose cubes glow your path right up, its a nice use of the small shaftway between the buildings where Graydon Carter probably used to park his vintage MG while Vanity Fair was still a tenant.
So be sure to back with Transfer's Skins category to keep up with all your upscaling gossip. We'll be sure to report ole 350's continuing presence on the reskin scene.
*Class “A” Space – The most prestigious buildings competing for premier office users with rents above average for the area. These buildings have high quality standard finishes, state of art systems, exceptional accessibility and a definite market presence. (Source: CB Richard Ellis)
Posted by jmarston at February 18, 2005 03:05 PM