Concept on West 57th Street looks like two conjoined 432 Park Avenues

Gateway arch on a diet: Architects dream up "longest building in the world"

<em>Renderings of the Big Bend (credit: </em>Oiio<em>)</em>
Renderings of the Big Bend (credit: Oiio)

St. Louis, eat your heart out.

Oiio, an architecture firm based in New York and Athens, has dreamed up the Big Bend, an imaginary skyscraper that would rise above Billionaires’ Row like the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Dezeen reported. According to the firm, such a tower would be the “longest building in the world.”

Concept rendering of 41 West 57th Street

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The concept tower — quite different than the elaborate gargoyle-plated West 57th Street supertall Mark Foster Gage dreamt up a few years ago — resembles a skinnier version of the Gateway Arch, as well as two 432 Park Avenues conjoined at the top. Or half a McDonald’s arch, or a tuning fork.

“New York City’s zoning laws have created a peculiar set of tricks trough, which developers try to maximize their property’s height in order to infuse it with the prestige of a high-rise structure,” the studio said, according to design website Dezeen. “But what if we substituted height with length? What if our buildings were long instead of tall?”

Judging by renderings, this building seems to be both. The Bend would still tower over giants like Vornado Realty Trust’s 220 Central Park South, Extell Development Corp.’s One57 and JDS Development’s 111 West 57th Street.

No word on the kind of shadows Oiio’s building would cast. [Dezeen]Kathryn Brenzel