A 70-story, folded, creased and curved stainless-steel curtain wall on an 867-ft-tall apartment building has been called “Gehry only on the outside,” as if the building is a fake Frank. It’s true that, when it opens next year, New York City’s tallest residential tower won’t be an internationally acclaimed cultural icon, as is the architect’s now-12-year-old Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain. The 76-story high-rise is not as colorful, whimsical and structurally innovative as the nearly decade-old Experience Music Project rock ’n’ roll museum in Seattle. The new tower is not as description-defying inside and out as the six-year-old Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. But that building was torturous to build: There were 10,000-plus requests for information (RFIs), and it was $174 million over budget and the subject of a dispute that ended in a $17.8-million settlement.
Draping Lower Manhattan’s Beekman Tower, Frank Gehry’s creases may only be skin-deep, but the depth of the building team’s accomplishment—producing a budget-driven, speculative apartment tower with the signature of the “king of swoopy” all over it—is not superficial.