A walk through the LES with ODA’s Eran Chen

From Luxury Listings NYC: “If you look at Manhattan, the Lower East Side and the East Village are a bump in the shape of the island,” said ODA Architecture founder and executive director Eran Chen, pointing to a map in His Park Avenue South office. “That’s interesting, because otherwise the island is pretty linear… It may sound prosaic, but the fact that these neighborhoods are outside the grid has greatly influenced their development over the years.”

Chen’s interest in Lower East Side — and its latest mutation from storied slum to upscale bacchanal — isn’t casual curiosity. Chen has recently laid his own brick into the history of the ever-transitioning neighborhood in the form of a cantilevered, glass-box condo tower currently under construction at 100 Norfolk Street. [more]