Winka Dubbeldam set the city's architecture buffs astir with her first project, 497 Greenwich Street in which she cascaded an 11-story undulating green glass facade over the top of an old loft 6-story building. The December 2004 issue of Esquire magazine featured her among its "best and brightest" stars in architecture, highlighting her next venture, known as the "Vestry Street Project," at 31-33 Vestry Street in TriBeCa.

The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission was not entirely enchanted, however, when the 9-story project came up for review earlier this year. Dubbeldam, whose architecture firm is known as Archi-tectonics, went back to the drafting boards and today the commission unanimously approved the project, which still needs a variance from the city's Board of Standards and Appeals.

Several of the commissioners described her "contemporary" design as "exciting." The Dutch-born architect's revisions that swept away their prior reservations were changing the angled facade of the top two, setback floors to perpendicular, moving the setback ground floor closer to the building line and lowering the building's height from 116 to 111 feet.

Her building will have a facade of soft gray colored glass, translucent stone and stone-glass laminate with a "notch" setback at the fourth floor and a strong horizontal motif. The rear facade of the building is very different and is asymmetrically Modern.

The building, which will rise on a site now occupied by a parking lot, will have 7 condominium units.

Charles Dunne, vice president of facilities at ImClone, is the developer with Andreas Kaublisch.

In the Esquire article, Dubbeldam was quoted as stating that "We want to offer two things to the street, to the people outside: large stone volumes by day, suspended and open, the light moving inward; and at night, giant hunks of light from the lofts inside, warm and glowing."