Christian de Portzamparc told a meeting of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects last night under the auspices of NYU's Maison Francaise that construction should begin next year on an apartment building he designed several years ago for A & R. Kalimian at 400 Park Avenue South.
Mr. de Portzamparc is the architect of the highly praised, angular, mid-block, 1995 LVMH tower on 57th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues and has designed a major group of buildings for Extell Development at the south end of Riverside Center north of 59th Street. He is also reported to be the architect for a major mixed-use tower opposite Carnegie Hall on West 57th Street for Extell.
His plans for the 40-story, 436-unit, 400 Park Avenue South, shown at the right, call for a cluster of rakishly angled towers the tallest of which will rise about 475 feet and became a major new element of the Midtown South skyline.
Mr. Portzamparc had designed this tower in 2002.
He designed an even more spectacular project for A. & R. Kalimian on the former American Red Cross site near Lincoln Center that would have had three towers with slanted and slightly cantilevered bases at the site of a stunning new facility for the New York City Opera Company. In renderings the opera house looked somewhat like fragments of a Jean Arps sculpture with a glossy red lipstick interior. That project proved too complicated, however, for the opera company and the site subsequently was developed with a handsome, angled reflective glass apartment tower designed by Gary Handel.
Mr. de Portzamparc recently completed a very beautiful undulating glass Marriott Hotel near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and the Musee Herge in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, and is designing a concert hall facility in Casablanca, the Cidade da Musica in Rio de Janeiro, and the Rue de la Loi center in Brussels. His other major projects include the 2005 headquarters of Le Monde in Paris, a 2006 mixed-use structure in Almere, the Netherlands that has streets running through it, the 1995 headquarters of Credit Lyonnais Bank in Lille, France, a very interesting housing complex known as Massena in Paris, and a 1974 watertower for the city of Marne-La-Vallee in France.
Mr. de Portzamparc is the architect of the highly praised, angular, mid-block, 1995 LVMH tower on 57th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues and has designed a major group of buildings for Extell Development at the south end of Riverside Center north of 59th Street. He is also reported to be the architect for a major mixed-use tower opposite Carnegie Hall on West 57th Street for Extell.
His plans for the 40-story, 436-unit, 400 Park Avenue South, shown at the right, call for a cluster of rakishly angled towers the tallest of which will rise about 475 feet and became a major new element of the Midtown South skyline.
Mr. Portzamparc had designed this tower in 2002.
He designed an even more spectacular project for A. & R. Kalimian on the former American Red Cross site near Lincoln Center that would have had three towers with slanted and slightly cantilevered bases at the site of a stunning new facility for the New York City Opera Company. In renderings the opera house looked somewhat like fragments of a Jean Arps sculpture with a glossy red lipstick interior. That project proved too complicated, however, for the opera company and the site subsequently was developed with a handsome, angled reflective glass apartment tower designed by Gary Handel.
Mr. de Portzamparc recently completed a very beautiful undulating glass Marriott Hotel near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and the Musee Herge in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, and is designing a concert hall facility in Casablanca, the Cidade da Musica in Rio de Janeiro, and the Rue de la Loi center in Brussels. His other major projects include the 2005 headquarters of Le Monde in Paris, a 2006 mixed-use structure in Almere, the Netherlands that has streets running through it, the 1995 headquarters of Credit Lyonnais Bank in Lille, France, a very interesting housing complex known as Massena in Paris, and a 1974 watertower for the city of Marne-La-Vallee in France.
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.
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