Five One Five, 515 West 29th Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 515 West 29th Street by Carter Horsley

This building at 515 West 29th Street next to a sharp turn in High Line park in Chelsea was developed in 2018 by Forum Absolute Capital Partners and designed by Soo K. Chan, the founding principal of SCDA. 

The 11-story building has 15 co-operative apartments. 

“As the only site at the 90-degree inflection of the High Line, we sought to create a certain fluidity and movement at Five One Five,” explained Mr. Chan, adding that "the building is broken down into three stacked, shifting volumes, transitioning between the urban scale of a city skyscraper, to the pedestrian scale of the sidewalk.” 

The building, which has two façades that face the High Line, is close to the Hudson Yards, a little more than a third of a mile from the 7 subway line and almost half a mile from Penn Station and the A, C and E subway lines at 34th Street. 

The building involves the partial conversion of a 6-story loft building on the site.  Another new building, immediately adjacent at 517 West 29th Street, is replacing a 6-story loft building in a project developed by Six Sigma NYC and designed by S & S Architecture Design. 

The two buildings have distinctive designs. 

517 has angled, multi-paned windows that are enclosed in projecting surrounds with inset balconies.  

This building has large, single-pane windows on its long sides and rippling glass fins on the upper sides of the top of the building.  One of its base façades facing the high line will have a large area that can host artwork. 

Mr. Chan employed a similar rippling glass façade in 2002 at the Mint Museum of Toys on Seah Street in Singapore next to the Raffles Hotel. 

Mr. Chan, has also designed another High Line project, the Soori High Line at 522 West 29th Street, a 31-unit building which has a very elegant, modern and more formal design and 12 units sporting their own salt-water swimming pools. 

Mr, Soori has designed two high-rise proposals in Manhattan, one at 119 East 59th Street and another on Central Park South.  

He won the RIBA Award for International Excellence in 2016 for Skyterrace@Dawson in Singapore, a development of four mid-rise towers connected by multiple skybridges.  He is also well-known for dramatic and elegant, completed, multi-towered, high-rise developments include Echelon and The BLVD in Singapore, GCNM Towers in Jakarta, and  OCT Tian E Hu in Shenzhen in China.

Bottom Line

A mid-rise with two façades facing the High Line in Chelsea and two tower façades with rippling glass façades across the street from a very handsome  mid-rise also designed by Soo K. Chan. who is well known for elegant and dramatic multi-tower complexes in Asia.

Description

The building’s distinctive design and construction features, including an intricate top exterior made of curvy glass fins that give the façade a rippling appearance, reflect Soo K. Chan’s signature fluid style that seamlessly coalesces with its surroundings. Furthermore, Five One Five sits at a place where the High Line takes a sharp turn, which will give every apartment a view of the High Line.

Amenities

The building has a 24-hour attended lobby, a full-time doorman, a roof deck with a kitchen, direct elevator access, a gym. central air-conditioning, and storage.

Apartments

The building has a mix of two and three-bedroom apartments including a five-unit penthouse collection with expansive panoramic views of the High Line. 

All units feature 10-foot-high ceilings, Bulthaup kitchens with Gaggenau appliance packages, built-in multipurpose islands, light oak floors, Molteni millwork, mobile-controlled Lutron Homeworks QS System for electronics, temperature control, shades and lighting. 

Apartment 6N is a two-bedroom unit with an entry foyer across from an 11-foot-wide study next to a 14-foot-wide kitchen with a breakfast bar that leads to a 23-foot-wide dining room that is open to a 23-foot-wide living room. 

Apartment 6S is a two-bedroom unit with an entry foyer that leads to a 17-foot-wide dining room that leads to a 22-foot-long living room and a 17-foot-wide kitchen with an island and a 11-foot-square study.