New York City first got a taste of Tadao Ando when the Japanese architect designed Masaharu Morimoto’s eponymous restaurant nine years ago. The Pritzker Prize laureate is poised to more completely sate local architectural appetite with 152 Elizabeth Street, a condominium rising in Manhattan’s Nolita neighborhood, Ando’s first freestanding building in New York.
Unlike Morimoto, which was praised for its dynamic layout and dramatic combinations of materials, the forthcoming building will exemplify Ando’s rigorous, serene architecture.
When completed, 152 Elizabeth Street, a development of New York-based Sumaida + Khurana, will measure 32,000 square feet over seven stories. The condominium’s most visible north and west faces largely comprise poured-in-place concrete featuring Ando’s signature, rhythmically placed tie holes. Glass-and-steel curtain walls mark the intersection of Elizabeth and Kenmare Streets and are delicately cradled within the concrete frame.
Yet inside, the design does nod to theatricality. In the building’s concrete vestibule, for example, water will cascade down grooved, floor-to-ceiling glass panels. The lobby also includes a fog and light installation, whose effects will be choreographed to time, weather conditions, and season. Gabellini Sheppard Associates will be working with Ando on the interiors. In addition, a 55-foot-tall living wall (a collaboration with M. Paul Friedberg and Partners) will span the full width of 152 Elizabeth Street’s south elevation.
152 Elizabeth Street’s residential units start at approximately $6 million—penthouse pricing has not yet been released but it will likely be over $35 million—and apparently, deep-pocketed New Yorkers are hungry for Ando’s brand of creativity. The New York Times reported that the marketing agent has already received more than 200 purchase inquiries. Condo sales begin this month, and construction is expected to wrap up November 2016.