Stairway to the skyline

Architecture

By the look of the renderings officially unveiled, New York’s next significant landmark may be the city’s biggest Rorschach test, too.

Big, bold and basket-shaped, the structure, Vessel, stands 15 storeys, weighs 600 tonnes and is filled with 2,500 climbable steps. Long under wraps, it is the creation of Thomas Heatherwick, 46, an acclaimed and controversial British designer, and will rise in the mammoth Far West Side development Hudson Yards, anchoring a five-acre plaza and garden that will not open until 2018. Some may see a jungle gym, others a honeycomb.

But Stephen M Ross, the billionaire founder and chairman of Related Cos., which is developing Hudson Yards with Oxford Properties Group, has his own nickname for Vessel: “the social climber.” And the steep price tag Ross’s privately held company is paying for Heatherwick’s installation? More than $150 million.

The conception

The back story of the stair-filled Vessel involves two men who are in step in more ways than one: a designer known for dreaming big, and a deep-pocketed developer who will spend whatever it takes to make a statement.

Currently under construction in Monfalcone, Italy, the bronzed-steel and concrete pieces that make up Vessel are not to be assembled on site until next year, but Related Cos. rolled out the design with a splashy Hudson Yards spectacle. On a visit to New York this summer, Heatherwick, founder of the Heatherwick Studio in London, was eager to explain his design. “We had to think of what could act as the role of a landmarker,” he said. “Something that could help give character and particularity to the space.”

Heatherwick said Vessel was partly inspired by Indian stepwells, but he also referred to it as a climbing frame — what Americans would call a jungle gym — as well as “a Busby Berkeley musical with a lot of steps.” The design reflects Heatherwick’s belief that city natives are always looking for their next workout. “New Yorkers have a fitness thing,” he said.

Inside the piece, the 154 interconnecting staircases may put visitors in mind of a drawing by M C Escher, especially given that the open-topped structure will have 80 viewing landings.

Heatherwick’s career, as measured by his personal profile, has certainly been climbing. He gained fame for ingenious designs like his torch for the 2012 London Olympics, known as the Caldron.

“It’s a leap of faith in terms of scale,” said Susan K Freedman, president of the Public Art Fund, who has seen the Vessel renderings and likes them.

But Freedman had her reservations. “The bigger problem may be traffic control,” she said, given that the work will be near the already crowded High Line, the tourist attraction whose northern-most segment winds around Hudson Yards.

Thomas Woltz, of the Nelson Byrd Woltz firm, designed Hudson Yards’ Public Square and Gardens, with input from Heatherwick, as a dramatically landscaped attraction.

Despite the name Public Square, Hudson Yards is a private development, and Vessel was commissioned and approved by a committee of one: Ross, who has kept the design models in a locked cabinet in the Related offices — when not allowing brief peeks to lure commercial tenants. “I have the only key,” he said with a smile.

When Ross began the process of finding a piece several years ago, he first turned to five artists who are known for working in public plazas — and whom he declined to name — and asked them for detailed proposals. One of the unbuilt plans cost him $500,000, he said, and another $250,000.

But he was unsatisfied. “Been there, seen that,” Ross said of his reaction.
A Related colleague suggested Heatherwick, who had come in previously for a meeting at the company to discuss a future pavilion on the site. Heatherwick and Ross talked, and six weeks later, the designer sent a proposal.

“I looked at it and said, ‘That’s it,’” Ross said. “It had everything I wanted.” That was in 2013.