"Starchitecture" Comes Home
Calatrava, Libeskind, Meier, Nouvel--real estate developers have caught on to the sales power that big-name architects can bring to apartment buildings
By Richard Lacayo
Fall 2005 Style & Design
There were a lot of reasons that it was a surprise this summer when
Christopher Carley, a Chicago developer, announced his plans to build
the nation's tallest building—a 115-story tower that, with its roughly
500-ft. spire, would top off at about 2,000 ft. For one thing, the World
Trade Center attack was supposed to have put a damper on the urge to
build very high in the U.S. For another, unlike every other "tallest"
American building since the age of the skyscraper began, Carley's won't
be an office tower. Instead he's planning a hotel and condominium.
There's one other thing about his project that would have been a
surprise a few years ago but is not anymore. As his architect, Carley
chose one of the biggest names in the field, Santiago Calatrava,
designer of the Olympic Sports Complex in Athens and the forthcoming
transport hub at the World Trade Center site. Ten years ago, the
highest-profile architects were rarely involved in apartment-tower
design in the U.S. "We're trying to raise the bar" for residential
architecture, says Carley. "I even offered to call the building the
Calatrava."
Actually, if it's built, it will be called the Fordham Spire, but
everyone will probably think of it as the Calatrava anyway. Until
recently apartment buildings in the U.S. were rarely the work of anyone
whose name you would recognize, unless it was Donald Trump. For the most
part that's still true, but it's changing. As a handful of architects
have become international celebrities, a small but growing number of
residential developers have begun looking for ways to harness that star
power in the pursuit of higher prices.
So in addition to the Chicago tower, Calatrava has a much publicized
condo project coming up in New York City. So do Britain's Sir Norman
Foster and Jean Nouvel of France. And a new 21-story condo on the edge
of New York's Greenwich Village, designed by Charles Gwathmey, bills
itself prominently as his creation, "sculpture to live in." This is also
not merely a New York phenomenon. Construction is under way in Fort
Lauderdale, Fla., on a hotel-condo that Michael Graves has designed for
Trump, a man who's not famous for sharing the spotlight with anybody but
who will do what it takes to get his properties noticed. Daniel
Libeskind, who provided the (now much adulterated) master plan for the
World Trade Center site, has condo projects proposed or under way in
Denver, St. Louis, Sacramento, Calif., and Covington, Ky.
What developers are hoping is that—even in Covington—there are upscale
condo buyers who are excited enough about new architecture to pay extra
to live in a notable example. Failing that, there still might be people
who would buy an apartment the way they buy a handbag—for the label.
It's a trend with costs and risks for developers. Big names mean bigger
design fees, which ordinarily run between 2% and 10% of construction
cost. And the very qualities that define the work of some of the
best-known architects, qualities that might be summed up as an
aggressive modernity, are the same things that might make some buyers
shy away. In a nation where "traditional" is the blanket term to
describe the most popular styles for individual homes, how big is the
market for "up to the minute"? Can domesticity be cutting edge?
The answer could be yes. In Denver, where the Denver Art Museum has
nearly completed a very radical new addition by Libeskind, a $35 million
Libeskind-designed condo building is going up just across the park from
the museum. Though its silhouette is less challenging than his jagged
pendant to the museum, it's still an angular departure from the standard
residential box. Yet in April the Wall Street Journal reported that
two-thirds of the 55 units there had sold for more than $500 per sq.
ft., a record for Denver. That figure is also $140 per sq. ft. more than
what apartments were going for in a comparable new Denver building, the
Beauvallon, that is located in a better established neighborhood. Not
long ago, the developers of the Beauvallon commissioned Libeskind to
design a 39-story luxury condo in Sacramento, Calif.
The rise of more sophisticated residential architecture is good news,
says Libeskind, a further sign of vitality in American cities. "Very
often people think of cities as the sum of their institutions, like
museums. But we judge the quality of cities by how people live in them.
Even the people who are not living in a new building, because they see
it, they pass by it, it becomes part of their city."
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