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About Blue, 105 Norfolk Street
"Blue," the very angular, 16-story residential condominium building at 105 Norfolk Street on the Lower East Side is notable for its unusual geometry and its "pixelated" façades of blue glass.
Along with The Hotel on Rivington (THOR) nearby, it is one of the few distinctive, high-rise landmarks on the Lower East Side.
The building has been designed by Bernard Tschumi, whose projects include Parc Villette in Paris, the Vacheron Constantin headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, a concert hall in Rouen, France, and the Lerner Hall Student Center at Columbia University where he was dean of architecture from 1988 to 2003.
Norfolk Hudson LLP, a venture of Angelo Cosentini and John Carson, was the developer. Its other projects included The Atalanta at 25 North Moore Street, 637 Hudson Street and 58 Thomas Street.
In the fall of 2006 prices ranged from about $775,000 to $3,475,000 and a two-bedroom, two-bath unit with about 1,975 square feet was then priced at about $2,600,000.
The building is on the site of the former parking lot belonging to Ratner's, the famous kosher restaurant, and its sales office at 100 Norfolk Street occupied Ratner's former restaurant kitchen that was briefly occupied by Lansky's Lounge, a night club named after Meyer Lansky.
The building has a full-time doorman, reportedly the first residential building on the Lower East Side to have such a feature, as well as apartments with bamboo floors, floor-to-ceiling windows, individual storage units and residential communal outdoor space on the second and fifth floors.
Its entrance is a plaza with large rocks and bamboo trees in front of a building-wide, angled marquee. Kitchens have glass-fronted cabinets and bathrooms have pebbled floors and large raised sinks.
In an article in the September 4, 2007 edition of The New York Times, architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote that the building "avoids the ostentatious self-importance that infects the design of so many of the new luxury towers," adding that "its contoured form has a hypnotic appeal that is firmly rooted in the gritty disorder of its surroundings." Mr. Ouroussoff wrote that the building "is not a major work of art," but "captures an aspect of the city that is slowly fading from view: its role as a sanctuary for misfits and outcasts, a place full of dark corners and unexpected encounters."
The Norfolk Street project is separated by a one-story building that houses a nightclub from another striking new condominium project, the "Switch" building at 109 Norfolk Street, a 7-story building designed by Narchitects where the floors zig-zag back and forth with gentle angles creating a lively façade and a new twist on bay windows.
The "Switch" building is just to the south of the very pleasant, red-brick Asian Americans for Equality Community Center at 111 Norfolk Street designed by Victor M. Morales. Another new project planned for the street is at 115-9 Norfolk Street and it has been designed by Grzywinksi Pons Architects, the firm that designed THOR (The Hotel on Rivington Street) nearby at 107 Rivington Street.
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