Buildings
SOM Reclaims Seat at Moynihan Station
(archrecord.construction.com - 04/28/2006)
By Sam
Lubell
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click image to view larger
Image by SOM/Archimation
Courtesy of the Moynihan Station Development Corporation |
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Image by SOM/Archimation/ Sam Morgan-ESTO
Courtesy of the Moynihan Station Development Corporation
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Image by SOM/Archimation
Courtesy of the Moynihan Station Development Corporation
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For now
it seems that Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (SOM) and David
Childs have claimed the last chair in an on-going game of
musical architects at New York’s planned Moynihan Station.
Yesterday, the architects revealed their third design for
the $800 million-plus project located inside the Farley Post
Office on 8th Avenue, west of Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan.
Last summer, the project’s developers,
The Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust, unveiled a
design featuring a large undulating glass canopy supported
by thin steel columns by James Carpenter Design Associates
and HOK’s New York office. But the developers, and the
Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), which is coordinating
public funding of the project, announced yesterday that they
had switched to a plan by SOM. SOM had released plans for
the station twice before in the early and late 1990s.
The developers could not be reached
for comment on the scrapping of their most recent design,
but Childs speculated that the plan might have been criticized
because its steel columns would limit space on train platforms
and be complicated to construct at that level. He also suspects
that it may have been cost-prohibitive.
SOM’s earlier versions of the station
employed a parabolic, projected, glass-and-steel canopy nicknamed
somewhat derisively, “the potato chip.” The firm’s
latest version alters that form, which Childs says would have
forced changes to the building's facade and hindered the ability
of the developers to qualify for over $100 million in historic
preservation tax credits. The newest scheme has a vaulted
glass canopy resting over the station’s massive train
hall, supported by a very thin steel skeleton, held in place
by steel cables. Over the project’s intermodal space,
between the Farley building and its western annex, that canopy
will have a much steeper curve. The façade where passengers
will enter the intermodal space, which is likely to be used
for passenger check-in, will be replaced with a modern, but
contextual, surface, he adds.
The Beaux Arts-style Farley Building
was built in 1910, and designed by McKim, Mead, and White,
the same architects who built the original Pennsylvania Station
across the street. That much-loved building was torn down
in 1963.
Moynihan Station, which will contain
train platforms for Long Island Railroad and New Jersey Transit,
is being named for the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick
Moynihan, an enthusiastic proponent of the project. The ESDC
plans to buy the Farley building from the United States Postal
Service for $230 million. The new building will be divided
into a 300,000-square-foot station, with 100,000 square feet
of transit-related retail space, a 250,000-square-foot post
office, and a 750,000-square-foot commercial complex. The
commercial area is expected to include a 150-room hotel, a
large retail zone, and restaurants.
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