Architecture review: Why 6 Platt falls flat

The Lam Group’s latest FiDi hotel consists of multiple elements that don’t come together

A rendering of the Platt Hotel, Developer John Lam and Architect Nobutaka Ashihara
A rendering of the Platt Hotel, Developer John Lam and Architect Nobutaka Ashihara

From the October issue: Whatever else might be said of the new hotel that is planned for 6 Platt Street, there is something uplifting in the spectacle of what had once been a parking lot now on its way to becoming a high-rise.

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In all cities, but especially in New York, parking lots serve as a symbol of urban failure; of dissipated interest, if not of downright decay. As a result, few things attest more eloquently to the turn in our city’s fortunes than the gradual disappearance of these asphaltic pits once omnipresent in Midtown, Chelsea and Lower Manhattan. [more]