In December, the celebrated Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his Rotterdam-based firm, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), finally won their first significant commission in New York City.
OMA will design a luxury 22-story mid-rise building with a ground-level screening room on East 22nd Street, to be developed by Ira Shapiro and Marc Jacobs, the same team behind the adjacent, 60-story One Madison Park. The building is scheduled to be completed in 2010.
The project has been a long time coming. As the only “starchitect” to write a bestselling book about New York City (1995’s “Delirious New York”), it may seem surprising that it took Koolhaas so long to earn a local commission.
There have been near-misses. A 2001 gig to design a hotel on Astor Place for Ian Schrager fell apart. In 2003, it was rumored Koolhaas had been selected to design the Whitney’s expansion, but lost because of persistent objections from nearby residents and preservationists. A residential project in Jersey City has yet to break ground. So far, Koolhaas’ only executed work here has been the interior of the Prada store in Soho, a noted redesign, in 2002.
Despite eye-catching designs, Koolhaas seemed unable to make a New York City breakthrough.
Architects are sometimes mistakenly viewed not just as bold designers, but also as Ayn Rand-style heroes, daring individualists who shun compromise. The truth, at least for architects hoping to work in New York City, is usually the opposite. In Manhattan, land-use commissions, preservationists and activists all need to be effectively courted. To move their visions beyond AutoCAD, successful architects also need to be energetic salespeople and deft negotiators.
As a result, design firms can see projects evaporate because of a failure to consult the community. Last year, a design by noted British architect Norman Foster for 980 Madison on the Upper East Side also went down in a hail of local complaints.
To ensure that his firm creates winning designs and engages in effective diplomacy, in 2006, Koolhaas dispatched a new local director, Shohei Shigematsu, to lead his New York office.
Shigematsu’s mission has been explicit: Find projects and developers that balance the city’s dense context with OMA’s adventurous design ethic. While he sometimes falls into pillowy design-speak, Shigematsu acknowledged that his mission includes a mix of architecture and community diplomacy.
“There used to be more a feel of New York. Now, global trends are infecting New York, and my goal is to find out what we can do,” said Shigematsu. “We are reducing our focus
onto fundamentals rather than an extravaganza of forms.”
While Koolhaas’ competitors hesitated to salute or needle him on the record, experts agreed that New York’s brand of community power can foil daring designs in a way that other cities can’t.
“There’s a lot of regulation in London,” said Richard Sennett, an architectural critic with homes there and in New York City. “But public participation there is much less theater. You can’t just show up at a hearing and say, ‘Never!'”
Presently, no renderings have been released of the East 22nd Street project. Yet Shigematsu said OMA plans to respect what’s already on the street, and the tower may echo classic Art Deco mid-rise towers of the Flatiron district.
To handle the new work, OMA plans to expand its New York City staff from 25 to 50 by June. While he wouldn’t disclose details of jobs that remain in negotiation, Shigematsu made it clear that Koolhaas wants a deep local presence. The firm hopes to finalize a hotel and office project in Manhattan soon.
Though Koolhaas’ projects have a history of stopping and starting, and though he admitted he doesn’t know the intricacies of local politics, Shigematsu presented himself as sympathetic with preservationist impulses.
“A lot of developers in the Middle East expect an extravagant building,” said Shigemastu. “But there is more inherent complexity here than in Dubai, where the surroundings are a desert.”