An architecture firm has sparked some buzz with renderings of a building that would be the “world’s longest structure.”
The “Big Bend” from architecture firm Oiio would be 4,000 feet long and sit on Billionaire’s Row just below Central Park, according to the firm’s website.
“New York city’s zoning laws have created a peculiar set of tricks trough which developers try to maximize their property’s height in order to infuse it with the prestige of a high rise structure. But what if we substituted height with length?”
There’s no particular reason to believe this project could get built. Oiio is not working with a developer. Technologically it might be feasible. Might.
“The designer of the project, Ioannis Oiaonomou, was inspired to create the U-shaped structure after learning that a company created an elevator that not only moves vertically, but also horizontally,” according to CNN.
At least it would make for interesting shadows.
Images via Oiio.
It looks like Clippy.
Possible names:
1). The Paper-Clip Building;
2). The U-Turn Building
3). The Up-and-Down Building
You heard it here first !
Make that the “U-Up? Building.”
April Fool’s Day is coming up…please God let this be an early joke.
Wow, didn’t Saint Louis build an arch a long time ago?
First hurricane to hit the city –
this thing is coming down.
But – it will never be build, I hope.
Awesomely wacky! Tired of so much of the muck that has flat-topped the city in recent years.
Please No. Not there, not surrounding the Park, the last bastion of NYC dignity and class. Build the Trash somewhere fitting of it’s nature.
Manhattan’s own Kingda Ka. Only $100k per month for unlimited rides.
I like the design, it’s just too damn tall. Look how the renderings dwarf even One57 and 432 Park.
Long term there’s been a correlation between building the next new tallest skyscraper and then an ensuing market correction. Whether that holds from here? Who knows.
oops, I guess the tall building at the left isn’t on Park Avenue. It’s 220 CPS?
Not sure how anyone living in the apartments near the top are going like living at a steep angle. They’ll have to tack their furniture down, but on the plus side they’ll have very strong calves after living there.
Those will be the “affordable” apartments the developers will be required to include to get major tax breaks.
Great social / architectural commentary. Check out their website and click through the thumbnails at the bottom: “It’s quiet because there is no one there. The square feet are not for living. They are only for investing.”
https://www.oiiostudio.com/#/thebigbend/
So true! Like gold, does real estate need to have actual functional value to be a good place to invest one’s cash?
I actually think this would be really cool. Better than the stick at the very least.
There is poor ability to move between the 2 uprights. Instead, it should be made in a pretzel shape to allow better movements. They should not forget the salt grains on the outside. Although, for those misguided souls who prefer mustard on their pretzels, perhaps one of the building loops can be covered with yellow glop. There needs to be room left for an adjacent building shaped like a beer stein.
Why not? Go for it.
the largest Dyson fan in the world
LOL at the concept and the comments!
Heinous.
This is totally a joke. If you see the renderings of the inside, the firm put stacks of money in the corners. The old white guy is also bending down to retrieve his top hat. It’s pretty amusing, actually
Ghastly idea! What’s next, a theme park?
Guess you haven’t been to Times Square lately.
The website thumbnails feature lots of guys in Mr. Monopoly-style top hats. There’s a rendering of top-hatters walking in front of the structure, one (like Streen said) of a top-hatter indoors with stacks of money, and a drawing of two top-hatters whose tall hats have joined in the same paperclip shape as the building. Ha!
Just stop it. Another huge vanity building full of oligarchs’ empty apartments
looks a bit like an early April Fool …
Quick. Can’t somebody pass a zoning law that will outlaw this kind of thing?
There could be all kinds of buildings connecting overhead. Aargh.
Calvert Vaux (Frederick Law Olmsted’s Co-Designer of Central Park) told Clarance Cook, the art critic, that the structures in Central Park should be subordinate to the landscape. That Central Park should be about: “NATURE FIRST, SECOND, AND THIRD – ARCHITECTURE AFTER AWHILE.”
150 years later, would the City of New York ever dare to contemplate a catastrophic undermining of this vision of an official US National Landmark…and the integrity of Central Park?
Whatever name it would be given by its perpetrators, NYers will probably call it The Visual Blight that Ruined Central Park.
The arrogant intrusion shows utter contempt for the Visitor Experience in Central Park and it’s historical context as America’s first urban democratic space.
It would unravel the calming emotional effects that the Park’s creators: Frederick Law Olmsted & Calvert Vaux intended. O&V wanted New Yorkers to “loose themselves” from the chaos and stresses of the City…and NOT have architecture destroy or attempt to undermine that.