By Jennifer Glickel
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
HELL'S KITCHEN — Danish architect Bjarke Ingels revealed on Monday a daring, European-inspired design for a new residential building on West 57th Street just beside the Hudson River, according to real estate company Durst Fetner Residential.
The building, to be called West 57th, will be a 600-unit apartment building, located between 11th and 12th Avenues. Designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, or BIG, the building will blend the concept of a low-rise European-style residential block centered around a central courtyard with the traditional Manhattan high-rise apartment tower.
"New York is rapidly becoming an increasingly green and livable city. The transformation of the Hudson River waterfront and the Highline into green parks, the ongoing effort to plant a million trees, the pedestrianization of Broadway and the creation of more miles of bicycle lanes than the entire city of my native Copenhagen are all evidence of urban oases appearing all over the city," architect Bjarke Ingels said in a statement.
"With West 57th we attempt to continue this transformation into the heart of the city fabric – into the center of a city block," the designer added.
The apartment building, which will be BIG's first North American design, is planned to look somewhat like a pyramid hollowed out on one side with a traditional Copenhagen courtyard in the center that can be viewed from the street.
"The building is conceived as a cross-breed between the Copenhagen courtyard and the New York skyscraper," Ingels said in the statement. "The communal intimacy of the central urban oasis meets the efficiency, density and panoramic views of the tall tower in a new hybrid typology."
The building will change depending on the viewer's vantage point. From the West Side Highway, it would looked like a "warped pyramid," while from West 58th Street it would appear as a "slender spire," the statement said.
West 57th will be a sustainable building, and the designers will strive for LEED Gold Certification.
