The good news is that a few nuanced regulatory tweaks could unstopper a wave of rehabs. The ideal version of ARO’s design would require some changes to the zoning and building codes, which can be more challenging to alter than a concrete bunker. They concluded (and convinced me) that a quick-and-dirty rehab would generate more problems than it would solve, but that a more thoughtful design approach would address issues undreamt of in the governor’s proposal. Working on short notice and for the eminently reasonable fee of zero dollars, the architects engaged in a whirlwind bout of research and creative thinking. To see how cubicles and conference rooms might be magicked into kitchens and bedrooms, I turned to a small but feisty New York firm, Architecture Research Office, founded in 1993 by Stephen Cassell, Kim Yao, and Adam Yarinsky. On second thought, it seems like a near-impossibility, since a fat building’s deep interior, close to the mail room and far from the windows, would be too dark and airless for anyone to live in-either pleasantly or legally. At first blush, this looks like an easy and obvious move: rip out some elevators, partition off cubicles, add some plumbing, and voilà. Governor Andrew Cuomo has floated the idea of turning Manhattan’s stock of forlorn office buildings into a housing pipeline, mostly by allowing the state to pre-empt the city’s zoning code. A COVID-induced dip in real-estate prices has made New York a smidge cheaper around the edges, but the rent is still too damn high, leaving affordable housing in perpetual demand. These days, much of the available workplace real estate has less intrinsic charm and could be commandeered for a less grandiose population - like, say, middle-class New Yorkers. That approach worked in the Financial District a couple of decades ago, bankers and their families started moving into elegant masonry towers that their employers had abandoned. The law of supply and demand presents an obvious solution: convert them to apartments, which are chronically scarce. When companies do trickle back to midtown, they may gravitate to younger, sleeker towers, leaving these buildings, long since demoted to Class B and C status, to struggle in a discombobulated market. Their air is stale, their elevators slow, their future murky. Unglamorous and unloved, with low ceilings and leaky joints, many have let themselves go. Photo: Left: Google Maps, Right: Architecture Research OfficeĮven as a new herd of giraffe-like towers cranes over the midtown skyline and airy work dens keep popping up at the edges, a vast stash of 50- to 70-year-old modernist office buildings sits in Manhattan’s wide midsection, begging for new purpose. ARO reimagined 260 Madison Avenue for us.
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