I can’t wait to tour this building for its architecture and design, as well as, hanging out at the supper club and lounge.
Here’s some of what Sharon McHugh, US Correspondent for World Architecture News.com had to say:
The erection of the eye-popping glass slab structure occurs in the trendy Meatpacking district and rises from stilts 18 stories above the High Line, a disused elevated rail line that is today one of the city’s hippest parks. Designed by Todd Schliemann of the New York-based Polshek Partnership, the hotel opened in January. It houses 317 guest rooms, several restaurants and bars, and a gym.
The building is decidedly modern, if not instantly iconic, with a mix of styles peppering its interior. Its slab on stilts design recalls the pioneering works of le Corbusier and other notable international style buildings, like the locally based Lever House and United Nations. The interiors, designed by Hollywood set designer Shawn Hausmann and New York based Roman and Williams, “get more modern the higher you go up”, said Balazs in an interview with Vanity Fair magazine.
The hotel lobby, which sits under the High Line, is early 20th century design, while the guest rooms in the tower above are designed with mid-century works in mind. On the top floor is a double height glass enclosed space that houses a supper club and lounge. Its design pays homage to Warren Platner, a protégé of Saarinen’s, who designed the Windows of the World restaurant in the World Trade Center.
If your shopping for a hotel in the city, aside from its fetching design and proximity to all the Meatpacking District has to offer, the best reason to bed down at The Standard is the stunning, unobstructed views it offers of the city’s most cherished sites: the Empire State Building, the Hudson River, and in the distance, the Statue of Liberty
In Seoul or San Francisco, they took down their expressways. In New York, they built the High Line on top of an abandoned elevated rail line. In Toronto, they don’t have the guts to tear down the Gardiner expressway, so architect Les Klein has come up with the typical compromise solution: Put a High Line on top of the expressway.
Klein states the obvious to Paige Magarrey in Azure:
“Once you tear it down, it’s gone.”
Well yes, that might be the point. But Klein says if we keep it we might have both a better highway and a park.
Accessed via stairs and ramps at all intersections, the Green Ribbon would also have elevators and concessions at the busier junctions. From melting snow to lighting, the whole project would be self-powered by wind turbines and photovoltaic systems lining the whole seven kilometers.
Klein knows all the green arguments.
The most green thing you can do is not sending something to a landfill,” he says, adding that the amount of energy required to dispose of all the rubble would be staggering.
Meanwhile, the Green Ribbon could decrease the heat island effect in Toronto, while adding green space and giving the people living around it a completely different kind of view. But most importantly, he says, a concept like this stops the city from making a decision that it’s not ready to make yet. “Once we take down the Gardiner, it’s gone for good.”
Klein then takes a huge leap and calls the Gardiner a heritage structure.
“It’s time to think about the Gardiner in a different way,” he says. The Green Ribbon is intended to get Torontonians reflecting on what the Gardiner once was – and what it could be in the future. “Cities are often judged by how they treat their heritage,” he says. “40 years ago, the Gardiner was a symbol of progress, a symbol of success, a symbol of power. You can’t just snap your fingers and say ‘that doesn’t matter.’”
Sometimes you can. Sometimes you just have to look past the solar panels, wind turbines, bicycle paths and even invocations of minimizing waste and point out that it is a highway full of cars that are being dumped into downtown, not a heritage structure. Greenwrapping it doesn’t change that.
Via Treehugger Blog
High Line Park Website
Get here and walk the High Line Park as soon as you can. It’s outragous and fantastic all at once. For everything you want to know about the Park visit the High Line Website
The High Line design team is led by landscape architecture and urban design firm James Corner Field Operations with architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
James Corner Field Operations (Design Lead)
Principal-in-Charge: James Corner
Lead Project Designers: Lisa Tziona Switkin, Nahyun Hwang
Project Team: Sierra Bainbridge, Tom Jost, Danilo Martic, Tatiana von Preussen, Maura Rockcastle, Tom Ryan, Lara Shihab-Eldin, Heeyeun Yoon, Hong Zhou
View Web site
Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Partners: Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, Charles Renfro
Project Designer: Matthew Johnson
Project Team: Robert Condon, Tobias Hegemann, Gaspar Libedinsky, Jeremy Linzee, Miles Nelligan, Dan Sakai
View Web site
For a complete design team list click here
