How starchitects are remaking NYC’s skyline

Developers love the cachet a big name brings, but criticisms persist

Bjarke Ingels with the Durst Organization's Via 57 West
Bjarke Ingels with the Durst Organization's Via 57 West

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

From the August issue: In a city ruled by conservative straight-lined skyscrapers, Bjarke Ingels’ 2 World Trade Center — when and if it is finally built — will stand out as a playful, teetering staircase. Designed as a series of seven precariously stacked blocks, the 3 million-square-foot building rising over Lower Manhattan doesn’t so much want to go upward as topple over. In a Wired story last year, Ingels likened the process of designing 2 World Trade Center to “playing Twister with a 1,300-foot high-rise.” [more]