Garbage Skyscraper Inspired by Garbage Can
For better or worse, inspiration is everywhere.
New York’s 1,396-foot tall 432 Park Avenue luxury skyscraper is the tallest residential building in the western hemisphere, cost $1.3 billion to build, is the most expensive real estate per unit in the city, and its grid-like design is inspired by a garbage can. What a pitch for people hoping to move into one of the building’s multi-million dollar spaces.
At a lecture late last year, the building’s developer, Harry Macklowe, reiterated the comments of Rafael Viñoly, the architect who designed the building, saying the primary aesthetic of the skyscraper was a trash can from 1905 designed by Austrian architect Josef Hoffmann.
Buying a version of the trash can is thankfully a bit cheaper than getting a penthouse in the building. You can fill that up with your garbage for $225 instead of an entire apartment.
Macklowe has compared the building to the Mona Lisa, but unfortunately for he and Viñoly, its critics seem to think the inspiration isn’t too far removed from the skyscraper itself.
Fortune called it “a monument to the epic rise of the global super-wealthy,” and that it’s “the house that historic inequality built.” The New York Times said it’s “A giant upraised baton cuing us all to a symphony of conspicuous consumption.” BuzzFeed compared it to a “dried piece of spaghetti,” while a story referencing it on WNYC said it “looms over the neighborhood like a cornstalk in a vegetable patch.”
It’s such an eyesore that even the FDNY and the New York Mets declined to update their logos to include it.
Now that the news of the inspiration behind the building is out, maybe it’ll finally let developers realize that huge unseemly additions to iconic skylines are, in fact, garbage.
