"Atrocity or masterpiece?" This was the question posed by the Guardian's news pages yesterday morning, when Ed Pilkington reported from New York on the row over a design by Foster and Partners for a 30-storey apartment block rising over the site of 980 Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side. Celebrated fellow architects, fashion editors, artists, property developers, business tycoons and the city's two leading architectural critics, Paul Goldberger of the New Yorker and Nicolai Ouroussoff of the New York Times, have rushed to defend Norman Foster and his London-based firm. Angry posses of Manhattan conservationists and conservative residents are riding roughshod over the scheme. The key issue, according to Brandon Haw, leading the Madison Avenue project, is "do you allow change to happen while ensuring that quality is retained, as in our scheme, or do you cast the neighbourhood in aspic, in which case it will wither and die?"
A little sadly for the Foster team, our New York story was accompanied by an illustration of the proposed tower that does it scant justice. This particular image suggests that the tower would jut out aggressively across the sidewalks of Madison Avenue, when, in fact, it would be set back eight metres from the street. It also suggests that the building is to be finished in the lacklustre style of a run-of-the-mill office block. According to Lord Foster, however, the reality promises to be rather different if his firm woos enough Manhattan hearts, and wins the day.
"In actual fact," he says, "the tower will be a marriage of transparent and translucent glass, and much warmer than many have taken it to be. It's also important to point out that this is far from a straight up-and-down residential block. Its facade, which is also its structure, is constructed in part from a series of solar conductors that will warm and cool the building naturally. Its carbon emissions will be the lowest yet for a building in New York, but it will also be sleek and stylish.
"As to its appearance on the street, it's partly a question of what you expect of Madison Avenue and the Upper East Side. You can look from one perspective and see any number of old brownstone houses; from another you can see buildings as diverse in appearance as the Carlyle Hotel, the Guggenheim and the Smithsonian. We've been concerned with trying to add to the eclectic nature of the local streetscape. The way the tower's set back from the street means that you would rarely see it full on from the side; instead, you'd glimpse it as you do so many tall buildings in New York. At its best, the Manhattan skyline performs a kind of dance, with even the Empire State Building appearing or disappearing when you'd least expect it."
The Madison Avenue tower is certainly different. It rises "a bit like a lollipop" according to Brandon Haw, from a narrow core rising up through an existing late-1940s building at 980 Madison. This was originally a warehouse for Sotheby's auction house. It will be retained, restored and converted into, among other uses, an art gallery and restaurant. Where the Foster tower blooms above the Sotheby's parapet, it will shade a part of a new public sculpture garden, before soaring up into the Manhattan skyscape.
Foster is confident that his client, Aby Rosen, a New York developer, truly wants the best from his architects and the building. "Aby is the man behind the renovation of both the Lever and Seagram Buildings [two of Mahattan's most radical and most influential buildings, the latter designed by Mies van der Rohe]; so, he's spent a lot of money on preserving some of the city's finest historic buildings. I can guarantee that keeping the bronze facades of the Seagram Building gleaming in New York's climate doesn't come cheap. I think he really does care for imaginative and well-crafted architecture. And, he cares about doing something to keep the Upper East Side creative. This was once a heart of artistic endeavour in the city; it can be again."
Foster, though, is aware that he can only do so much to win over conservative opposition in the Upper East Side. If he fails, then he says he will transfer the design lessons of the proposed 980 Madison Avenue tower elsewhere. "Whatever happens, and, of course, as an architect I believe 100% in the project and want to see it built, I've been fascinated by the way in which architectural proposals are discussed in New York. It's so much more participatory than in London. If I tell you about the public meeting held at City Hall over the proposal, and of three hours of impassioned debate, you'd be blown away. On a personal level, I do think that the Manhattan skyline should continue to reflect positive change in the city, but I'm happy to fight our patch out there on the streets of New York, and to listen and learn as well as to argue. We'll see."
So, what do you think?
