For nearly a decade, New Yorkers have watched (at times with feigned enthusiasm) as glass and steel seemed to be in a slow-motion race toward the sky in Manhattan's midtown west. The end result has come to be known as Hudson Yards, the largest mixed-use private real-estate project in American history: a meganeighborhood that includes four skyscrapers designed by some of the world's most high-profile architects; a seven-story, 720,000-square-foot shopping mall; an eye-catching (if not head-scratching) cultural center dubbed the Shed; and a curious-looking structure anchoring the entire project. And today, after four years of fabrication and construction, the centerpiece of the oft-discussed Hudson Yards opens to the public via free, timed-entry tickets.
The Vessel, as the structure is temporarily being called, is an interactive sculpture comprising a network of stairs and landings that visitors can climb (or take an elevator) to the top. The completion of the Vessel has a Hollywood-like story. After the commission was awarded to the British-based designer Thomas Heatherwick (who beat out, among others, Anish Kapoor to earn the project), the developer went to extreme lengths in keeping the design a secret. So much so that a 20-foot fence was constructed around the steelworks in northwest Italy where the bones of the Vessel was being constructed so that no one could see what the design was going to be. Bit by bit, parts of it were brought to the U.S. and floated to the construction site via tugboat along New York's Hudson River.
The bones of the Vessel were built in Italy and hidden from the public so that no one could see what the design was going to be.
Then—as word spread on its design and purpose—came the outrage by many New Yorkers (and New York publications) that the cost—which exceeded $150 million—did more than raise a few eyebrows. Some have called it a beehive, a rib cage, and (this writer's favorite) a doner kebab. Others, however, believe it could be New York's version of the Eiffel Tower. Starting today, those debates can actually begin to flush themselves out as the masses collectively come to define what this structure is and whether we truly need it.
Hudson Yards is located between 30th and 33rd Streets, and between Tenth Avenue and the West Side Highway. In total, the space will include a whopping 18 million square feet, spread throughout 16 buildings on 28 acres of land. The total cost (much to the chagrin of many local New Yorkers) has roughly netted out to $25 billion. Each building in the space is designed to move in response to an opposing building. "Ultimately, each building was designed to gesture toward the open space," says William Pedersen, one of the principals at Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, a firm tasked with designing several skyscrapers in Hudson Yards. And there's no larger space than the one the Vessel will occupy. As such, it's the point to which the eye is most naturally drawn. This makes its task a steep one: creating harmony and balance within a grid of vertical metal and glass. Which is precisely why the structure is shaped the way it is. "It expands upward, the inversion of all the buildings around it," says Stuart Wood, group leader at Heatherwick Studio. The team at Heatherwick Studio used a noncorrosive steel to coat each level of the structure. This was meant to mirror the action and movement above and below every layer of the 150 foot-tall Vessel, making the experience more interactive.
