NEW YORK CITY — The city's newest neighborhood hasn't even been built yet, but it's already a museum piece.
A new exhibit showing off the Hudson Yards development will open in May at the Center for Architecture's Breakthrough Space Gallery at 536 LaGuardia Pl., displaying new models and plans of the engineering and architectural marvels needed to build the 26-acre project — even though that project has barely begun.
The two-month exhibition, Design (in) The New Heart of New York, will show off a model of the project, which requires developers at the Related Companies and Oxford Properties to build a giant platform over the West Side Rail Yards before erecting the bulk of the giant skyscrapers planned for the site. Work in the first building started in December.
Elements of the planning, design, engineering and architecture of the massive project will be on display to the public, including work done by the high-profile architects at Diller Scofidio + Renfro, which designed one of the project's soaring towers, and Kohn Pederson Fox Associates, who designed the future home of Coach, L'Oreal USA and German tech company SAP.
Those architects, planners, and civic leaders will participate in a regular speaker series at the exhibition, bringing in some of the people who helped push the project forward before audiences.
The completed project will be massive: with 13 million square feet of commercial space, 750,000 square feet of retails, a new park, 5,000 new apartments, a school, and a luxury hotel. The area will be connected to the city by an expanded 7 Train, set to be completed in 2014.
The exhibition kicks off on May 1, with a special set of guided tours by Hudson Yards architects and Related planner Michael Samuelian for Open House New York members on May 4.
