Rem Koolhaas is so 2005.

so DEAD!!! in fact a couple of the companies associated with this project are also dead, or winding down completely... gotta love the economic downturn.

there may be something built there one day, but never this design!

my guess is that if, and that's a big IF, they ever get the powerhouse design completed, this space will probably be a multi-tier parking lot.

What's the story with this development? Has it officially been abandoned or are they still planning on developing this building? Does anyone have any news on this project?

I remember detractors would regularly deride 111 First Street as nothing more than a "pile of bricks."

And yet that is all we have had on that lot since it was demolished.

Pretty sure they lost their fundage for that building with the financial downturn.

It's a terrible shame that 111 was torn down to make way for...nothing. I have fond memories of wandering that dizzying labyrinth of hallways, corridors and stairwells.

Would still like to see something built there, though. And that Koolhaas design is pretty fly.

Quote:

My bad, it is Lloyd Goldman who owns 111.

I thought Goldman owned 111.

So nobody knows what's really going on with this project?

i just wish they would build on that empty space.

From today's NewYork Times:

Koolhaas, Delirious in Beijing (Click link below)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/art ... l?_r=1&src=me&ref=general

I never knew what was going on at this lot. It's been empty since I moved to JC. What's the story with this place? Is this Rem Koolhaas building still going up or what?

I don't recall reading about this on the forum, so here goes:

Jersey City announced yesterday [Feb. 26th] that it has commissioned OMA [the Office for Metropolitan Architecture] to design a 1.2 million square foot mixed use tower at 111 First Street in the city?s growing waterfront development. The program will include condos, artist live/work studios & gallery, ?public amenities?, hotel, some retail, and parking.

Now, to answer the question that you must have after looking at this model: yes, the design is basically three separate buildings stacked on top of one another to form a 52 storey tower. The volumes serve to separate the various elements of the building?s program into different ?boxes? - public spaces & hotel, artists studios and galleries, and deeper apartments. In order to ?maximize views? these volumes are stacked perpendicular to one another, and as a by-product create roof terraces on the 17th and 36th floors - for the hotel & spa, and shared terraces for the residential units. As a means to ?activate? these terraces, dynamic programs such as the spa, restaurant, galleries, etc, are placed along them.

Rem Koolhaas Unleashes Adorable Hipster Army

Friday, January 11, 2008, by Joey @ curbed

Got eight minutes to spare on a Friday afternoon? Then you'll most certainly want to check out this film documenting a "day at the office" of starchitect Rem Koolhaas' OMA firm. There aren't any glimpses of his upcoming One Madison Park bit of insanity, but if your heart doesn't melt as the young German apprentice struggles to pronounce "Seattle Library," you are dead inside.

Curbed Koolhaas link

Go right to YouTube

archinect.com Link

archinect forum

One Madison Park Building Link

I agree with Tris McCall (see his recent blog below) but if The Jersey City Museum and The Loews are being asked to hand over their "blood money" so should the artists who walked away with like 8 months of free rent because of the settlement or capitulation, call it whatever you want. -fedupjc

Wednesday, March 7, 2007
William Rodwell sent out a missive yesterday via e-mail. When the President-in-Exile of the 111 Tenants Association writes, I listen. This time around, Bill comes hard with a little art criticism, and a challenge. Some interesting excerpts:

World-renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaus recently made public his design for the 111 site. My initial reaction was that it?s a welcome change from the uninspired corporate detritus now littering the downtown landscape. However, upon reflection it?s 2nd rate Koolhaus. The design does not live up to the inspired architecture Mr. Koolhaus is noted for ? especially his design for the Seattle Library, a masterpiece of contemporary architecture. I urge Mr. Koolhaus to go back to the drawing board and give it another go.

Recently, Mayor Healy presented a check for $330,000 in settlement money to the Jersey City Museum. While both the Museum and the Loew?s Theater are worthy entities deserving of funding, accepting money from a source that evicted and brutalized the artist?s community at 111 is tantamount to accepting Blood Money. It reminds me of an incident in the aftermath of 9/11 when an arab prince gave Mayor Giuliani a check for 10 million dollars. A deluge of criticism erupted for accepting this kind of money from that kind of source. Mayor Giuliani returned the check. Memo to the Museum and the Loew?s: what are you waiting for??

A few comments from the peanut gallery (me). I cannot speak on the architectural merit ot the Seattle Library; to me, it looks like a big glass catcher?s mitt. However, when you?re standing in its shadow, it may well be awesome ? and the new designs for 111 First Street don?t seem awesome at all. Getting stuck with some Rem Koolhaas B-side would be a very Jersey City fate. If we?re going to drag this guy in here, we should demand that he put at least enough thought into our Downtown as he gave the Pacific Northwest.

Also, I really like ? and want to perpetuate ? the ?Koolhaus? spelling of the celeb-architect?s name. It makes him sound that much more like a cartoon character; a cross between Joe Cool and Milhouse from *The Simpsons*. Moreover, I move that from now on in, everybody should refer to the proposed tower at 111 as the Kool Haus. As in: ?hey, dude, stay in your uncool house if you want to. Me and my cool friends are moving to the Kool Haus.? Now *there?s* some marketing that?ll work on post-fraternity scumbags.

Bill calls the Jersey City Museum a worthy entity. I?m not a visual artist, so I can admit that I?m not sure they?ve earned that kind of respect. They?ve been in town long enough to know the history of the PAD and local development politics, but they often behave like complete newbies. (Or worse.) We can?t even get a clarifying statement out of these people. JC Museum: what is your explanation for taking money from the most notorious developer in town ? the man who took down the Arts Center and treated Jersey City artists like trash in the process? Let me be the first to echo the 111 Tenants Association President?s challenge. I think Bill is absolutely right to demand that the Museum return Lloyd Goldman?s dirty dolo. Organized boycotts are stupid, but I?ll tell you this: I will not be returning to the Museum until they tear up that check.

Jersey City hopes image will rise with proposed Koolhaas tower


By JANET FRANKSTON LORIN
Associated Press Writer

March 4, 2007, 7:12 PM EST

JERSEY CITY, N.J. -- With its prime location across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan, Jersey City has been drawing new residents and businesses for years with its stunning views of the New York skyline and cheaper rents.

But now New Jersey's second largest city is commanding something more than a quick commute to Manhattan: the cachet of an avant-garde 52-story condominium and hotel tower to anchor an arts district, designed by internationally acclaimed architect Rem Koolhaas.

He announced plans last week for a 1.2 million-square-foot building with an unusual design: three rectangular slabs stacked perpendicular to each other. City officials have called it a 600-foot-tall piece of art.

The new building will replace a brick 130-year-old former tobacco factory, now being demolished. Developers with the Athena Group and BLDG Management Co., both of New York, said its 300 condominium units are expected to have a price range of $500,000 to $1 million.

Like many cities around the world, Jersey City is trying to use architecture to upgrade its image, said Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for the New Yorker magazine.

"Architecture is increasingly one of those bootstraps that cities use to bootstrap themselves up a couple of notches," he said. "It shows that Jersey City has reached a new level and it makes sense to do something like this today."

Robert Ivy, editor-in-chief of the Architectural Record, agreed.

"Developers and cities are realizing that architects have the power to draw attention, international attention, to their location. That was true in Milwaukee, and in Bilbao, and it's going to be true in Jersey City," he said, referring to Santiago Calatrava's Milwaukee Art Museum and Frank Gehry's design for the Guggenheim Museum in Spain.

In other words, design can change perception, he said. Imaginative or poetic buildings change the entire perceived personality of a city.

"I have no way of knowing whether Koolhaas' building can do that, but really great buildings can do that," he said.

Koolhaas' $400 million building at 111 First St., to be complete in three or four years, will add to Jersey City's emerging real estate portfolio.

The city already has a sleek and elegant new office tower designed by Cesar Pelli for Goldman Sachs, the tallest building in New Jersey. Goldberger described it a 2004 New Yorker magazine critique as "the anchor of a new city, a kind of Shanghai on the Hudson, that has sprung up over the past decade on what was once industrial land."

In addition, the city has approved plans for a second Goldman Sachs tower, designed by famed architect I.M. Pei, but it won't be built until the first tower is filled, said Jersey City's planning director Robert Cotter.

Another established brand in real estate, Donald Trump, has attached his name to two condo towers, expected to sell $1 million apartments.

The Koolhaas tower will put Jersey City on the world map for other reasons, said Hilary Ballon, a professor of architectural history at Columbia University.

"People will want to see a Koolhaas building," she said. "It's not that he's just a famous architect. It's what his work stands for."

The Dutch architect, a winner of the prestigious Pritzker Architectural Prize, has also designed the Prada store in New York, the Casa da Musica concert hall in Porto, Portugal, and the China Central Television Headquarters, under construction in Beijing.

He said in an interview with The Associated Press that he wants the Jersey City building, with its mix of uses, to inspire social interaction, life and energy. In addition to condos and a hotel, it will include artist lofts and studios, gallery and retail space, as well as several levels of public space.

"We are creating something slightly more memorable and slightly more energetic," he said. "What New Jersey lacks is some visible evidence of a new beginning."

That new beginning began creeping across the Hudson two decades ago with the Newport, a 600-acre project by the New York development family LeFrak, which has more of a suburban feel and includes its own PATH stop as well as office space, housing and a shopping mall.

The more urban Koolhaas building wouldn't have been possible 20 years ago, said Michael Beyard, a senior fellow with the Urban Land Institute, a Washington-based think tank that promotes responsible development.

He said the building will raise the value and importance of Jersey City's location.

"As the value is added, as the area becomes more acceptable as a destination for residential, office and retailing, the value of the property continues to rise," he said.

More is likely to follow, Ivy said. He said Koolhaas' name alone will draw attention.

"Let's say the intellectual investment will attract scrutiny and perhaps attract others to join the party," he said.

Cotter, the planning director, said the Pelli building was a crucial piece of the city's waterfront development, but the Koolhaas project is a step beyond, a breakthrough for Jersey City.

"We will now have a building that people will come just to see," he said.


Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc.

I am really troubled by this project. Reading the article in today's NYTimes - posted previously - I love the program of the building - multi-use, artist space, sculture, blah, blah... However, if nothing else the building commits a terrible social blunder - it detracts from the bride's glory and beauty. The bride being the Powerhouse. In my elitist opinion JC has three great aesthetic attractions: The Powerhouse, the old Medical Center and the views from LSP. The Medical Center seems to have been entrusted to good hands - all indications that are that it is being respectfully restored and will add to JC's continued growth. Community opposition stopped the monstrous sculpture proposed for LSP, and for now views of the harbor,NYC skyline and SoL are safe. But now the Powerhouse is threatened with defilement. I am an architectural consertative - I prefer that the making of monuments be reserved for public buildings - museums, concert halls, courthouses, etc. Not condos and offices. Not in an area with a real architectural focal point in place. That three gigantic cubes have never been stacked in the way proposed does not mean they should be so stacked. Architecture differs from art - it cannot be easily ignored - put in a vault or sold off to a private collector. This building is essentially forever. While I do not believe that this building will be built as shown, I think even moderate change would be insufficient to make it acceptable.

BTW - anyone know which other architects were asked to compete for this commission?

Stompbox
The Tris McCall Report


Is Rem Koolhaas an a$$hole?

Who knows? But AP?s Janet Frankston Lorin sure makes him sound like one. Here?s Koolhaas on why Jersey City, and New Jersey, needs his 52-story contribution:

We are creating something slightly more memorable and slightly more energetic,? he said. ?What New Jersey lacks is some visible evidence of a new beginning.?

Okay, first of all, dude: a new beginning of what, exactly? What?s this new beginning that?s going to happen in 2011, once his tower is complete and units in it are selling for 750K-1M? That sounds like the same old beginning to me. Visible evidence of *that* new beginning is now playing all over the waterfront.

What he?s really saying here is that New Jersey used to be declasse, and now it isn?t, sort of, because *The New York Times* said so, and what we now need is a signature building that those who read *The New York Times* can pretend to appreciate. Rem: New Jersey is going to be fine with or without your stupid tower. We don?t feel the need to be authenticated by your rock-star architectural signature. Perhaps your big-money paymasters across the river ? and their lackeys here at home ? require that authentication before they start pouring in more green, but Newport 7 doesn?t seem to have slowed down their real-estate speculation any.

Rem goes on to say:

I am putting together familiar elements in an unfamiliar way.?

In other words, he?s taking the standard overpriced condo components and stacking them crooked. Call me a philistine, but I fail to see what makes his 52-story tax-abated monstrosity any different than the all the others. Just as I don?t break the bank for designer t-shirts, I do not believe a name-brand condominium complex is anything to celebrate. Real Jersey buys off the racks.

Lorin?s crappy newswire article writes the Tenants Association out of the story of 111 First Street, and perpetuates the myth that the struggle was over an ?arts district? rather than the Arts Center. The dispute, Janet Franklin Lorin, wasn?t between the city and BLDG ? it was between the tenants, and those who appreciated them and wanted to keep them here, and Lloyd Goldman and his small nation of attorneys. The city did bupkis for those tenants and for the Arts Center, so let?s not pretend they were involved in some titanic struggle on behalf of local creativity. Bailing out was their prerogative, and I don?t blame them for it. But, again, it wasn?t a settlement, it was a capitulation.

I dig Bill Matsikoudis; he?s a nice guy. But Lorin?s article makes him sound like a stooge:

It?s a piece of art in and of itself, a 600-foot tall sculpture.?

No, it?s not; it?s not even 3D yet. It?s a design on a piece of paper. The contractors haven?t even finished wasting the Arts Center yet. Let?s wait until something actually gets built before we start praising its artfulness, okay? We?ve been baited and switched too many times to count.

Ooh, I am in a feisty mood today. Once more with feeling: if I?m sticking around here, you folks are going to hear it from this desk. Quoth Jayceon Taylor: i?m sick, you can?t get rid of me/ I?m HIV. I don?t regret what I spit/ ?cuz I know what I say.

This was written by tris mccall. Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007, at 3:13 pm. Filed under Jersey City. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.

The obligatory NYT article here

The Hanging Tower of Jersey City

"This is the most cutting-edge piece of architecture I have seen in my career," said Bob Cotter, the city's planning czar. "I would hope this type of project would lead other developers to come into the city with unique plans."

Wow, does this statement piss me off - Cotter has been running the planning office for years - apparently as a rather passive bureaucrat in the city's development. Why hasn't he and the rest of his staff been more active in improving the architectural quality of what gets built? As the person who, I believe, stated his wish to make JC more like Paris, Koolhaas as a non-contextual starchitect is just weird. Paging Jean Nouvel, paging H and De M........, M. Portzamparc where are you?

Anyone know who chose Koolhaas - the city or the developer?

These 3 city blocks go straight up
Architect Koolhaas is bringing his unorthodox style to Jersey City

Tuesday, February 27, 2007
BY RUSSELL BEN-ALI
Star-Ledger Staff

The planned demolition of an abandoned tobacco warehouse, focus of a bitter dispute involving developers, Jersey City officials and artists who moved in, was likely to anger preservationists bent on saving the city's industrial district.

So city officials called on a big name yesterday, Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, to unveil plans for a 52-story "vertical city" of condos and art studios that will dramatically change the city skyline as it replaces the warehouse.

The $400 million project at 111 First St. calls for a mix of apartments, living and work condominium studios for artists, a hotel, stores, parking and a gallery. It's the first large-scale residential project in the United States for the Dutch-born architect's firm, the Office of Metropolitan Architecture. Koolhaas, internationally known for designs of striking, practical buildings from Beijing to Seattle, said the new building would blend with the historic warehouse district surrounding it.

"Although the shape is different from what is happening in New Jersey, we think the facade will not be so (overpowering) and will merge with the environment," Koolhaas said during a 20-minute slide show at the Jersey City Museum.

The two-acre project, which would replace the P. Lorillard Co. tobacco warehouse, involves a tower of three stacked buildings at First and Washington streets, the Dutch-born architect said. The lower level will include entertainment businesses, retail space, parking and condominium lofts and galleries for artists. A hotel and market-rate condo apartments will be built above those.

The tower takes its unusual shape by facing the middle section at a 90-degree angle from those above and below it. This unique configuration will allow for gardens, open terrace areas for residents, a wading pool and outdoor spaces.

It also will preserve some unobstructed views of Manhattan from elsewhere despite the tower's height, Mayor Jerramiah Healy said.

"This structure is going to be different from anything that we have seen here ... or in the state of New Jersey," Healy said.

Many of Koolhaas' works are controversial, and Healy acknowledged this project will not be an exception.

"There's going to be a divergence of opinion," Healy said. "For better or worse, the city is taken up by a lot of tall buildings. That's the way we're going to have to go."

Calling in Koolhaas, 62, was a strategy that may have helped get potential critics onboard with the project.

"I think it's an exciting, brilliant design," said John Gomez, founder of the Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy, the historic area's main proponent. "Rem Koolhaas is one of the world's great architects. It's different, but I think Jersey City needs something different like this. It's a bold statement."

Gomez also said the Koolhaas building represents a departure from the usual uninspiring office and apartment towers found on the city's Gold Coast. He cited as other examples of good architecture Cesar Pelli's 781-foot Goldman Sachs office firm at 30 Hudson St. -- the tallest building in the state -- and a Michael Graves-designed building on the campus of New Jersey City University.

Still, there are some who don't want to see the tobacco warehouse disappear.

"What we were hoping for is that this one bit of industrial history in Jersey City could have remained intact," said Joshua Parkhurst, the conservancy's current president. "Our feeling is it's an interesting building in the wrong location."

Koolhaas, the 2000 winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, is co-founder of OMA, whose projects include the China Central Television Headquarters in Beijing, the Illinois Institute of Technology's McCormick Tribune Campus Center in Chicago and the Seattle Public Library.

Developers for the 1.2 million-square-foot project in Jersey City are the Athena Group and BLDG Management Co., two Manhattan firms. It's a mixed-use project that could take about four years to complete, with 12 to 14 months to obtain permits and approvals and three years for construction, said John Smallwood of BLDG Management.

Prices for condominium apartments, most built at 800 or 900 square feet, would range from $600 to $800 per square foot at today's prices, BLDG officials said. About 415,000 square feet will be set aside for apartments, 210,000 square feet for the hotel and 160,000 square feet for studios.

William Matsikoudis, corporation counsel for Jersey City, said the building will include about 117 units of housing for lower- and moderate-income families. Most-affordable housing units would be built on site, he said, but some would be constructed off site.

Two years ago, the city evicted artists and others who had moved into the abandoned warehouse. It was unclear yesterday whether any of those artists would be given priority to buy units.

Looks like a game of Jenga gone horribly wrong. I'm kidding, sort of....

As other people said, I think it will be interesting to see this as it develops to see a) if this is actually what we get, and b) if so, how the renderings and models actually look when they go up.

It is my understanding that the lower floor will be more "public space" with retail as well as some publicly accessible space in the first ten stories. The boutique hotel and the condos are then stacked over that.

Again, interesting. Maybe it will work. It could have worked just as well a couple of blocks away, where they didn't have to demolish a landmark.

I've also been told that at the unveiling, the owner of one of the other large warehouses in the district was there, excitedly taking pictures, and telling everyone that he could that he wanted to do something similar (replace the old warehouse with another skyscraper).

We'll see if the city was honest when it said the settlement of 111 was based on "special circumstances" that wouldn't effect the rest of the district.

?NJ.com

NJ.com has photos and this brief on the project.


NJ.com
Famed architect unveils design for 111 First St.

One of the world's leading architects laid out his ambitious designs for the controversial 111 First St. site, prompting officials to label the proposal a turning point in the city's transformation into a internationally recognizable metropolis.

"The time has come to do a building that is less typical," said famed architect Rem Koolhaas, whose award-winning portfolio includes the Seattle Public Library, the Prada stores in New York and Los Angeles and the China Central Television Headquarters in Beijing.

Koolhaas unveiled the design this morning at the Jersey City Museum.

The radical design calls for three blocks stacked on top of each other, with each block rotating 90 degrees to give the building what one official described as a "Rubik's Cube" look.

"This is the most cutting edge piece of architecture I have seen in my career," said Bob Cotter, the city's planning czar.

In a number of ways, the unusual design can be viewed as a visual indictment of the "cookie-cutter" high-rises that are dominating the city's skyline these days, according to some city officials at the press conference.

A colleague of mine went to the "unveiling" today at the Museum. The building is impressive. What we all would like to see in a skyscraper. It just should have been built a couple of blocks away.

In my colleague's words "Right building, wrong place."

They have been slowly demolishing 111 First for the past two weeks, taking it down section by section. Apparently, they are putting each section of the facade in its own storage container in preparation for rebuilding it as part of the new Koolhaas tower.

The Colonnade was built around 1960 and the projects are classic late forties housing projects. I can't seem to find confirmation, but I would venture a guess that the projects were there first. Also, it seems that the projects are close to teh Colonnade from 280, but because the Colonnade is bult on the edge of Branchbrook Park, you can't see them. Actually, the views must be pretty good in the Colonnade--the park on one side and the NYC sklyline (albeit distant) on the other side.

I hated koolhaas's snide comments about JC and our streetscape. What an aloof jerk. From his quote he seems like one of those archtypes in a movie or TV show. You can almost see the white silk scarf draped on the shoulders of his sport coat.

The posters to this board seem to agree that a building by Rem Koolhaus will have a significant effect on Downtown JC.

Did any of you know that Mies Van der Rohe designed the Colonnade Apartments in Newark? The Colonnade was built around 1960 (I think). The building was cutting-edge at the time. It did not, to my knowledge, have any effect on Newark whatsoever. Maybe an occassional architecture buff says "look! Mies Van der Rohe designed that apartment building" while driving down 280.

Whoa - I thought it was pretty obvious that NONE of the facade of 111 was going to be preserved. I thought it wasn't a "rehabilitation" at all, since the historic designation was stripped. Am I wrong? I could be, but it's A LITTLE hard to imagine squeezing all that gallery space and all those condos into that little building.

Sloppy reporting on the Ledger's part, in any case, since the guy was clearly looking at the wrong building (the one next door is yellow. 111 is clearly red).

I think the brick facade is red - anyway....
===============

Arts notes
Star Ledger - Thursday, September 21, 2006

Koolhaas in Jersey CityDutch architect Rem Koolhaas, winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize and one of the world's leading contemporary architects, will design the rehabilitation of a loft building in Jersey City that has been a home for artists' studios for the past 15 years.

The building at 111 First Ave., a rambling neo-classical structure that long served as a tobacco warehouse for P. Lorillard, had been a landmark on the Jersey City artists' studio tours for years, at one time housing as many as 125 studios and an undetermined number of artists who lived there illegally and were evicted last year after a long battle with the owners.

Koolhaas, the author of "Delirious New York," "S, M, L, XL" and many other books, said it will take perhaps six months to finish plans for the building, situated in an increasingly upscale neighborhood. He said the design promised cafes, shops, galleries and other amenities, as well as 710 condominiums, 16,000 square feet of galleries and some below-market-price "work-live" units for artists. It isn't clear how much of the current building, with its yellow brick facades and goofily meandering hallways, would be preserved.

Quote:

[sarcasm]Yeah, but at least we won't have to put up with those selfish, grimey artists.

Let them eat cake!

Have you seen my Prada? . . . [/sarcasm]