Bun and I were hanging out tonight and he was showing me some buildings for sale, and we were laughing and joking about some of the weirder ones.
He showed me this. This is a skyscraper in Manhattan. A penthouse suite is for sale for 180 million dollars. Bun only showed me a few pictures, where like, it had these GIANT windows looking out on Manhattan and I was like "...this looks high up... WHY IS THIS SO HIGH UP"
This was the tallest residential building when it was launched. I can literally see where my boyfriend lives from one of the windows, and he lives in Queens.
Is the air thinner up there? Do you need a respirator to live on the top floor? Not only that, but this thing is built like fucking garbage. Not even just the apparent leaking and shit that's common place. It's just a straight tower, like it's fucking Sim Tower or something! That's not how you build tall buildings! In windy days it apparently sways. There's gonna be a hurricane sometime soon and that thing is taking out half of Manhattan.
This building is disgusting in like every conceptual level. The architecture is garbage, the aesthetics are garbage, and the politics of its conception (one review calls its units "fancy prisons for billionaires") are EXTREMELY fucked up.
One last thing, I love that one part of the building that's open to the air. I dunno why. Structural reasons??? I'd expect it's covered in bird shit and is super nasty, but I dunno if the pigeons can fly that high.
This building is apparently an absolute hellhole. Very glad the horrible people who can afford to live there get to suffer through stuff like this
at least, that's what i always call it when i see it. all of the above is very true and very funny but you just can't leave out the fact that there's been flooding on the upper floors, and the building wasn't even built to code. there's not a good paywall-free primary source, but the wikipedia page summarizes things pretty well):
According to the report, a leak at a mechanical floor forced two elevators out of service for several weeks in 2018. Flood damage has been reported in several apartments, and at least one would-be buyer reneged due to that issue... A study commissioned by a group of residents found 73 percent of mechanical, plumbing, or electrical infrastructure in the building was not built to plans.
this is actually a common trend with NYC supertall buildings-- in fact, most are using "temporary certificates of occupancy"-- essentially pieces of paper that let them sidestep being held to new york's building codes while they move people in. what the supertalls' owners have been doing, however, is stretching "temporary" to last several years, if not longer. 432 park avenue is one such case of this. it's scary and dangerous.
all of this is on TOP of the fact that these buildings are built very differently from most in new york city-- the studies to understand the risk of fire haven't been done. a quote from the NYT article* about it:
“The answer is, I don’t know how safe these buildings are, and nobody does,” [Jose Torero, experienced civil engineer] said. “Nobody really knows what they’re truly approving.”
*i hate the NYT so bad but their local reporting is unfortunately very good
