Construction work has started on 100 11th Avenue - a 23-storey apartment tower in New York designed by French architect Jean Nouvel. Update: this project is included in Dezeen Book of Ideas, which is on sale now for £12.

Top image: facade detail. Above: 100 11th Avenue seen from across the Hudson River.

Above: atrium/loggia

Above: the curtain wall contains "nearly 1700 panes of colorless glass, each torqued in a different direction at a different degree and placed to frame views from within the residences".

Above: lobby

Above: "hanging gardens" in the loggia

Above: private garden and swimming pool

Above: apartment interior

Above: apartment interior

Above: apartment interior

Press release follows:

--

Construction Begins On Architect Jean Nouvel’s “Vision Machine" Along Manhattan’s West Side

NEW YORK, NY In 1987, maverick French architect Jean Nouvel burst onto the international scene with a new headquarters for the Arab World Institute in Paris, one of President François Mitterrand’s Grands Projets.

With mechanized oculi and veils of glass and steel, the building was hailed as an unconventional masterpiece that encouraged people to not only accept modern architecture in a historic setting, but to be thrilled by it.

Over ensuing years Nouvel has woven art, history, cultural references and new building technologies into provocative architectural contrasts between inside and outside, intimacy and the urban network, and has become renowned as one of the most original designers of his generation.

In conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Arab World Institute, construction has begun in New York City on Nouvel’s latest glass and steel landmark, a direct material and conceptual descendant of his Paris tour de force: 100 11th will be a 23-story tower described by its architect as “a vision machine" at the intersection of 19th Street and the West Side Highway, along the Hudson River in Manhattan.

It will feature the most highly-engineered and technologically advanced curtain wall ever constructed in New York City — a gently curving, glittering mosaic of nearly 1,700 different-sized panes of colorless glass, each set at a unique angle and torque, sheathing one of the most meticulously customized, high performance residential addresses in the nation.

The building’s dazzling Mondrian-like window pattern will frame splendid views from within the tower while producing an exterior texture that serves as a poetic analog for the vibrancy, density and changeability of New York.

100 11th Avenue, designed by Ateliers Jean Nouvel with Beyer Blinder Belle, will also feature a radical innovation at its base, where Nouvel has placed an additional seven-story street wall of mullioned glass 15 feet from the building’s façade to reflect fleeting images of life beyond the building while creating a semi-enclosed atrium unprecedented in New York City.

Within the atrium, suspended gardens of ornamental vegetation and trees will appear to float in mid-air; private indoor and outdoor terraces will extend from residences; and an open-air dining patio for the lobby restaurant.

Containing 72 residences, 100 11th will stand on the north corner of its intersection, facing Frank Gehry’s newly completed headquarters for the IAC/InterActive Corporation across the street and the Chelsea Piers Sports and Entertainment Complex across the avenue, in the heart of a neighborhood now considered one of the world’s foremost contemporary arts districts.

The homes within 100 11th will range in size from 890 square feet to 4,675 square feet, and will include one-, two- and three- bedroom apartments, and five unique penthouses. The building’s top floor will comprise a single grand residence with a full-roof private terrace featuring what Nouvel has dubbed “outdoor rooms." Prices for the properties will range from $1.6 million to $22 million.

Renowned design and preservation architecture firm Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners, LLP, of New York City, is serving as executive architect for the building, under the direction of partner John H. Beyer.

The building, which will be LEED certified, has been developed by Cape Advisors Inc., New York. Associate developer is Alf Naman Real Estate Advisors of New York City. General contractor for 100 11th is Gotham Construction Corporation, Inc.

Exclusive sales and marketing agent for the project is Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group.

The Building

Declaring, “Each new situation requires a new architecture," Jean Nouvel has ambushed conventional tower design by forming the building’s mass along a curve that traces the entire breadth of its site.

This gesture maximizes both street frontage and views from within the building, insuring that all of the residences at 100 11th have full access to south and west views and light. From the smallest to the largest, every single residence in the building will enjoy a sweep of uninterrupted floor-to-ceiling window wall — from 35 to 175 linear feet — on the main façade.

Every angle and structural detail at 100 11th has been designed to create visual excitement for the both those living within the tower and passers-by on the street.

The main south curtain wall is comprised of approximately 1,647 completely different colorless windowpanes organized within enormous steel-framed “megapanels" that range from 11 to 16 feet tall and as wide as 37 feet across.

Each windowpane inside these megapanels is tilted at a different angle and in a different direction — up, down, in, out - bearing a slightly different degree of transparency according to a system meticulously developed by Ateliers Jean Nouvel and inspired in part by the renowned stained-glass window cycles of the 13th century Gothic cathedral of Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.

The result of Nouvel’s system is a composition with a structural purpose in the service of the architect’s primary goal: framing views within residences while producing a poetic public statement about the inherent beauty of the fragmented, varied, ever-changing life of New York City and its island relationship to water and sky.

By contrast, the north and east façades of 100 11th will be clad in black brick that references the masonry characteristic of West Chelsea’s industrial architecture. These façades will also contain a complex and beautiful pattern of different-sized punched windows framing dramatic views from inside.

On the north façade, the building will also express motion within: Elevator shafts will contain random LED lighting and full-scale punched windows, so that passengers in glass-walled cabs can see city vistas as they ascend at 450 feet per minute, while twinkling light patterns are visible from elsewhere in the neighborhood.