September 2, 2010, by Joey
The Frenchman’s 100 Eleventh Avenue is known as the “Vision Machine,” but the building seems to be getting something in the eye of Shigeru Ban’s Metal Shutter Houses, it’s high-profile neighbor across 19th Street.
As part of a series in which the blog visited a different building every day in August, A Daily Dose of Architecture happened upon the uber-fancy Metal Shutter Houses while most of the apartment owners had their titular shades drawn shut. We’ve never seen the building so closed off, but the reason might be those reflections bouncing off Nouvel’s glassy menace across the way. Guess Shigeru knew how to fit in with the West Chelsea Starchitecture District better than Annabelle Selldorf and Frank Gehry, whose buildings didn’t come equipped with the same level of sunblock. And as for those metal shutters…
A Daily Dose of Architecture is not really feeling them! “The effect of the shutters is not as elegant as the renderings,” the blog writes, so let’s go to the videotape. Paging 2007. 2007, are you there? Oh, here we are:
This is still one of my favorite buildings in Manhattan