Norten peeved over Cassa design tweaks

September 07, 2010 10:00AM

The scaffolding has come down at the new Cassa NY condo-hotel at 70 West 45th Street, which opened last month, but starchitect Enrique Norten isn’t thrilled with the way his 48-story project turned out. Instead of the glass curtain wall he had envisioned at the base of the tower, developer Solly Assa decided on the white façade that covers the rest of the tower for what he says were engineering reasons. “That was a huge mistake,” Norten, of Ten Arquitectos, told the Wall Street Journal. “They took away the glass condition of the façade and substituted it for the same solution of the punched windows.” Cassa has 166 hotel rooms and 57 condos, about half of which are under contract, Assa said. Norten said that with the original glass-walled base, he had intended “to create a building that would be part of the concert of Midtown New York but at the same time had its own voice.” Cassa is also the site of this year’s “Showtime House” interior decorator event, which opens to the public this weekend. [WSJ]

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