The Floating City: Life at Hudson Yards
It’s a brisk morning in Manhattan when I step onto Edge, a viewing deck located on the 100th floor of a Hudson Yards tower. Although I know the 765,000-pound sky deck is solid, bolted together and anchored to the east and south sides of the building, I feel something approaching terror.
I’m regularly hoisted up buildings before walls and windows are installed, but stepping onto a cantilevered deck is different: The floor isn’t connected to anything; there is only air underfoot. “Just imagine the summer sunsets,” says Mr. Jason Horkin, executive director of Hudson Yards Experiences, gesturing west and passing over all of lower Manhattan with the sweep of his arm.
At a height just over 1,100ft, the deck has glass walls installed at an angle so you can lean over the side for an adrenaline rush. In the middle of the platform, a glass bottom is laid like a window into the floor. I can’t bring myself near either, but next time, after a glass of champagne from Peak, the bar and restaurant opening on the 101st floor, I’m sure to be braver.
View from Edge, photo courtesy of Related-Oxford
Edge, which opens to the public on March 11, is the latest attraction to launch at New York’s Hudson Yards, a US$25-billion mixed-use enclave that is built, rather ingeniously, atop a pit full of resting trains.
During construction, columns had to be threaded among the tracks, as trains below continued running in and out of the terminus. A great amount of heat had to be vented, and to make planting trees possible, developers Related Companies and Oxford Group hired engineers from Arup to design a special cooling system for the soil.
Since there was no subterranean space to hide the development’s sewage pipes and water mains, everything was packed into a 7-footdeep podium jacked up 25 feet above the train yard. Essentially, the entirety of Hudson Yards is floating on a platform.
When the project’s first phase opened last spring, new buildings included a telescoping performance hub called The Shed; glass towers by architectural heavyweights Kohn Pedersen Fox, Foster + Partners, and Skidmore Owings & Merrill; a mall with shops and restaurants; and Vessel by Thomas Heatherwick, the Instagram-ready latticework of copper-clad stairs that occupies much of the central plaza.
The Vessel, design by Thomas Heatherwick occupies the central plaza, photo by Timothy Schenck
Today, nearly a year later, companies such as WarnerMedia, L’Oreal USA and Facebook have settled into new their new offices, residents have moved into 15 Hudson Yards, and luxury apartments at 35 Hudson Yards, a handsome glass and limestone tower by Skidmore Owings & Merrill, are nearing completion.
“We’ve had a lot of empty nesters, a lot of buyers looking for a piedà- terre,” says Ms. Sherry Tobak, Senior Vice President at Related Companies. Despite New York’s sagging luxury market, Ms. Tobak reports steady sales. “It’s so convenient. Everything you need is an elevator ride away.”
Site tour
Starting on floor 53, the two- to six-bedroom residences range from 1,500 to 10,000 square feet, many with helicopter views. Prices begin at around US$5 million, while a penthouse on the 91st floor is currently listed at US$59 million.
Model unit at 35 Hudson Yards, photo courtesy of Related-Oxford
The building interiors and sprawling amenity spaces come courtesy of celebrity designer Tony Ingrao, whose love of polished surfaces appears in many forms: marble, quartzite, crystal and glossy wood paneling in the superyacht-like lobby.
A subtler aesthetic is found in the Equinox Hotel, the first in the group’s “fitness as lifestyle” hospitality portfolio, which has opened in the building’s bottom half. Polished stone, painterly rugs, and tones of sky blue, sand and charcoal create a feeling of calm in the rooms and suites, which start at US$700 per night.
Premier King River Room at the Equinox Hotel
Designed by Rockwell Group, they are expertly appointed with customized Coco-Mat beds, muted night-lights, soundproofing and a “dark, quiet, cool” feature on the bedside iPad that, with the push of a button, draws blackout shades and cools the room to an optimal sleep temperature of 19 degrees Celsius.
Elsewhere, Joyce Wang Studio designed the hotel’s sprawling fitness club using a dusky, nightclub-meets-wellness-resort palette of timber, stone and oxidized metal. Ms. Joyce Wang says she was aiming to capture the tension between the site’s industrial heritage and its new position as a sanctuary within the city. “It's suspended above a train terminus, with unparalleled views of the Hudson River, so we wanted to capture the industrial rawness of the railroads beneath us,” she says.
The Equinox Fitness Club reception lounge was designed by Joyce Wang Studio
The fitness club features an indoor and outdoor pool, yoga and barre studios, and a spa, which Ms. Wang has rendered in a soft, neutral palette. In addition to traditional therapies, the spa menu includes a range of techno-therapy treatments: wave beds, infrared saunas and an exhilarating — and in turns terrifying — cryotherapy chamber set to a bone chilling -110 degrees Celsius. (I lasted a proud three minutes). Apparently just a few minutes in the chamber burns up to 1,000 calories, which is perfect for guests big on lifestyle and light on fitness.
The Spa at Equinox Hotel designed by Joyce Wang
Healthy eats are served at Electric Lemon restaurant, while more decadent dining is found across the plaza and inside the mall where David Collins Studio transports guests from glossy arcade to velvety TAK Room, a restaurant by star chef Thomas Keller where continental dishes are paired with glinting Vessel views.
Architectural symbol
Undoubtedly, business travelers and residents alike have every amenity at their fingertips here, and a level of service found only in cities like London, Singapore or New York. But whether Hudson Yards really is New York is another question.
Critics have been quick to point out that the development fails to connect to the grid of Manhattan, that in effect the site is sequestered, a cluster of glass buildings with their backs to the city. “Hudson Yards is more Singapore than New York … it doesn’t quite belong to the city, to New Yorkers,” The New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman writes, arguing that the project is more like a gated community for the one percent than a triumph of 21st-century urbanism.
He has a point, though I wonder to which New York Kimmelman is referring (and to which Singapore). Currently, New York is home to over 100 billionaires — more than any city in the world, according to Wealth-X — and its neighborhoods are routinely transformed from arty and industrial into upscale and commercial. Hudson Yards might be larger in scale than even the tallest of supertall luxury towers built during the latest building boom, but its appeal to wealthy investors is largely the same: soaring views, sleek amenities and seamless service.
The Shops and Restaurants at Hudson Yards seen from The Vessel. Photo courtesy of Francis Dzikowki for Related-Oxford
And while there is no doubt that developers took reference from place-making projects in Asia, it’s not clear they’ve hit their mark. Projects like Pacific Place in Hong Kong or Marina One in Singapore are successful precisely because they create a livework- play lifestyle for residents while also connecting to the city so that daily commuters, the lunch crowd, shoppers and visitors all activate public spaces.
It’s worth imagining what Hudson Yards might look like with a significant allotment of green space, as mandated in a city such as Singapore. If New York’s waters rise, submarine doors will close around elevator machinery and fuel tanks at Hudson Yards.
But more greenery and gardens could help to absorb stormwater, mitigate flooding and reduce surface temperatures in the summer months, all while helping the site feel less like an office park.
The Hudson Yards development seen from New Jersey
The second half of Hudson Yards will add 16 buildings, around 4,000 new apartments, a school and a parkland, but, sited to the west of the current phase, it likely won’t offer new avenues for extension into the midtown fabric.
“It’s a city within a city,” Ms. Sherry Tobak of Related Companies says. And she’s partially right — depending on your definition of a city. Is a city simply defined by scale and density, or does it require heterogeneity and interaction? Like the sparkling new viewing deck, Hudson Yards appears to float above Manhattan on a level very much its own.
This story appears in the March 2020 issue of Portfolio magazine
