Three Waterline Square, 639 West 59th Street

"This 34-story tower at 639 West 59th Street is known as Three Waterline Square and has been designed by Rafael Vinoly, the architect of the sheer, 1,396-foot-tall, residential condominium tower at 432 Park Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets and Madison and Park Avenues that was the tallest in the Western Hemisphere when it was erected in 2015. It is one of three towers on trapezoidal sites at the five-acre Waterline Square developed by General Investment and Development Companies (GID) and Henley Holding Company, a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Development Authority, with a total of 1,1320 condominium and rental apartments and 20 percent of that total will be "affordable."  This tower will have 167 rental units and 47 condo units with each type having its own entrance,  Interiors by Groves & Co. The other two towers in this complex have been designed, disparately, by Richard Meier & Partners and Kohn Pedersen Fox.  They are rather awkward in comparison with this tower, which is not pristine but at least dramatically interesting with its bold façades. Hill West is the executive architect for the entire complex. Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects have designed the center, a 2.6-acre park that will connect to the Riverside Park South esplanade. The most attractive of the three rather ungainly and completely dissimilar Waterline Square towers, this one, designed by Rafael Vinoly, has a “netted” façade that seems to “burst” with uneven banding containing its bulging form in complete contrast to the rigid grid façade of his much taller and very famous tower at 432 Park Avenue. In a February 14, 2017 “market insight” article on the project at CityRealty.com, Ondel Hylton  noted that “the drunkenly pinstriped building will rise 34 stories and hold 244 units – its bottom flared outward and its top sloping inward to create a glass-enclosed sky room, shattered by a cobweb of structural elements.” Its exterior piers rise with some slight and visually awkward shifts, but they do not cross others as they do dramatically and elegantly at the top of the roof. The building’s lobby is partially angled and its “seams” at the angles have thin illuminated strips. The “social hub” has a spiral staircase and an elevated walkway beneath a very dizzying ceiling of undulating “ribs.” This and the other two Waterline Square towers follow the general massing outline in the master plan for the site by Christian Portzamparc for Extell Development, who designed One57, the first SuperTall on Billionaires’ Row at 157 West 57th Street across from Carnegie Hall for Extell. Extell had bought the south end of Donald Trump’s Trump Place development that extended Riverside Drive southwards and erected several residential towers that were generally compatible with what Trump had already developed along the strip. Extell decided, however, to sell off five tower sites at the bottom of the strip.  

The complex has doormen and concierges and a three-level, underground, 90,000-square-foot, amenities facility designed by David Rockwell including an indoor tennis court, a squash court, a rock-climbing wall, a half-pipe skate park, a golf simulator, an indoor soccer field, a 25-meter, 3-lane lap pool, a children’s pool, a two-lane bowling alley, a gardening studio, recording studio, a cards parlor, a games lounge, a screening room, and pilates, boxing, and yoga studios.  There is also a washing station for pets, a training station for pets  " Read Carter's Full Review