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The sales office for a new 10-story residential condominium building at 40 Bond Street opened Friday and by early this morning five contracts had been entered into.

The buyers? interest is not too surprising as the mid-block development promises to be one of the most stunning new projects the city has seen in several years.

The building has been designed by Herzog & de Meuron for Ian Schrager and Aby Rosen, who are also partners in the 50 Gramercy Park North development now under construction.

The Bond Street project will be distinguished by a rich dark-blue-green - "Coke bottle green" - glass fa?ade with extruded rounded columns - recalling the 19th Century, cast-iron facades of many low-rise buildings in SoHo and NoHo, and by a metal first-floor gate that will be an abstract and highly intricate lace-like grill work that would make Antoni Gaudi, the legendary Art Nouveau architect of Barcelona, where the glass columns will be fabricated, smile, very broadly.

Herzog & de Meuron, who have won the Pritzker Prize, the most prestigious award in architecture, are most famous for their redesign of a powerplant in London into the Tate Modern Museum, their plans for the main stadium for the Olympic Games in Beijing, China, a twisting structure for the de Young Museum in San Francisco and the mutli-faceted Prada Aoyama building in Tokyo.

In a mailing, Mr. Schrager notes that 40 Bond Street will be the architects? "first residential project in America," adding that he considers "them to be the most brilliant architects working today." Mr. Schrager also said he is "taking the penthouse."

The building will have five 3-story "townhouse" units, each with about 3,750 square feet, fireplaces, gardens and 22-foot-high living rooms and front yards behind the very elaborate and impressive "gate." One-bedroom, two-bath apartments will have about 1,269 square feet and three-bedroom, three-and-a-half bath apartments will have about 2,617 square feet. Floors four through seven will have four apartments a floor and the 8th, 9th and 10th floors will have two apartments a floor.

The building will have 31 units ranging in size from 1- to 3-bedrooms. All of the apartments other than the townhouse units will have 11-foot-high ceilings.

The lobby will have metal and Austrian oak paneling embossed with amorphous patterns.

The site, a former parking lot that has been cleared, is east of Lafayette Street in NoHo.

In 2003, Mr. Schrager had planned a hotel for this site with Richard Born and Ira Drucker, but changed plans for a 14-story, 65-unit residential building designed by Gary Handel.

Mr. Schrager was a partner with Steve Rubell in Studio 54, the legendary disco, and subsequently developed many well-known hotels such as the Royalton, the Paramount and the Hudson here and the Delano in Miami.

Mr. Rosen is a prominent developer who owns some of the city?s architectural masterpieces such as Lever House and the Seagram Building, both on Park Avenue.
Architecture Critic Carter Horsley Since 1997, Carter B. Horsley has been the editorial director of CityRealty. He began his journalistic career at The New York Times in 1961 where he spent 26 years as a reporter specializing in real estate & architectural news. In 1987, he became the architecture critic and real estate editor of The New York Post.