The influence of Richard Meier's West Village glass towers continues to be felt in a number of smarter new residential projects around town. Here we look at Macklowe Properties' new Three Ten condo now rising at 310 East 53rd Street (right). Comprising 88 apartments on 28 stories, this glass tower will sit on a minimalist limestone-clad base. Tower apartments will have two or three bedrooms, while the base will have a small number of loft spaces with double-height ceilings. Most units will have private outdoor space, and the building will be capped by a 3,600 sq ft penthouse. Click below for a closer look at these new glassy modernist homes now for sale on Manhattan's east side.
(All images above and below by SWIM by the 7th art)
We've long been fans of glass, and we like the fact that the setback allows the tower to be free-standing. On a large scale (or at any significant height) the fine detail of brickwork is wasted and often results in blank, bulky looking towers with odd coloration. One awful example that springs to mind is Michael Graves' horrid yellow and green 425 Fifth Avenue. What were they thinking? Luckily, the trend has moved in a lighter, more luminous, more transparent direction since then. The crystal city can finally be realized due to major advances in glass and curtain wall systems. If we have one complaint here, it is the bulky three-story base. The place where a building meets the street is often where an architect blows the whole ball game. Here we pray that actual limestone will be used rather than cheap cast panels. (While the web site promises limestone, we do note that this is Macklowe after all.) The views of midtown from these homes should be dramatic, at least until they build on that boarded up site across Second Avenue....
At the condo's web site you can see more images, plus visualizations of the city and river views, as well as floor plan PDF's. The Sunshine Group is the exclusive sales agent.
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