Observant passersby at the corner of Greenwich and Laight streets in Tribeca will likely be doing double takes if a proposed project comes to fruition.
Last month, architect Morris Adjmi and a Spanish investment group, including Grupo Arranz Acinas, received unanimous approval from the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission for a plan to tear down a graffiti-scarred parking garage at 412 Greenwich Street.
The planned replacement is a new, mixed-use building that replicates the dimensions and façade of
a refurbished warehouse next door.
Adjmi plans to create a “photographic negative” of the warehouse, where the old building’s brick façade will appear to duplicate or create a sort of carbon copy. The light parts of the original building will be dark on the proposed one, and dark parts will be light.
His plan calls for burnished, marine-grade aluminum in the new building to represent the negative image of the present building, down to the scratches in the brick.
The proposed complex will include 32 two- and three-bedroom apartments, ranging in size from 1,800 to 2,400 square feet, and is slated for completion within two years, if the approval process goes well, said Adjmi. Prices for the building have not yet been released.
The application still has to clear City Planning and the Board of Standards and Appeals before it gets the green light, Adjmi said.
A spokesperson for the landmarks commission, Elisabeth de Bourbon, said the body determined that the existing garage was “not representative of the … historic district’s special character.” She said the proposed building, which has cast-iron detail, preserves the character of the surrounding district.
While landmark rules require new buildings in a preservation area to conform to the neighborhood’s context, constructing exact duplicates of existing structures is rare, said Adjmi.
That is not to say that “twin” buildings are not common. For that, one can turn to the two towers at the Time Warner Center, or the two identical buildings that Larry Silverstein is erecting at Silver Tower on 42nd Street. However, duplicating an existing building falls into a different category.
So why don’t architects copy buildings regularly? To replicate a building outright “would require an unusual sublimation of an architect’s ego,” Adjmi said.
He said he got the idea while walking around the
area surrounding the warehouse to seek inspiration. The
eureka moment came when he realized that the lot next to the warehouse was the exact same size.
A member of the local community board characterized the “mind-boggling” proposal as teetering “between genius and madness.”