• ID# 2.1
  From: Jonesinc ([email protected]) - 23 Dec 1997

  Do you know anything about the new energy efficient building being constructed in Times Square? It will reportedly use 40% less energy than a conventioanl building. I would like to find out who the architect is and who is doing the construction.

  • ID# 2.2 (reply to #2.1)
    From: Scott Murphy ([email protected]) - 3 Jan 1998

    >From the NY TIMES, March 30, 1997:
    "While attention has focused on potential development, the Dursts, their architects, Fox & Fowle, and construction manager, Tishman Construction Corporation, have continued to refine the design of a building that is actually under way."
    There's another article about the building in the June 30, 1996 NY TIMES.

  • ID# 2.3 (reply to #2.1)
    From: Alex Chmel ([email protected]) - 18 Jan 1998

    A picture of the scale model for the new Durst Tower can be seen in the "Earth Almanac" section in this February's issue of National Geographic.
    The uninterupted curved element bordering 42nd and Broadway tries to emphasize the vericality of this relatively bloated structure.
    The garrish scale of the Broadway side of the building is a sign that this tower wants to gain acceptance among its exhibitionist neighbors-new and old. The 42nd street facade is puzzling however. The stone-clad grid patern tries to create an ambiance of corporate respectability in a neighborhood better known for its tight skirts than pin stripes.
    While the tower wants to stop the deplorable Disneyfication of Times Square, it still accomplishes the wishes of Mickey and Company.
    The building shows a disregard for The Great White Way's rich history by transplanting a foreign architechtural language to Broadway.
    New Yorkers are proud of Times Square's heritage, and so should be their architects. Greater effort must be directed towards discovering a new mechanism that will express the uniqueness of this all-American neighborhood-one that embodies the hope-despair dichotomy of modern-day New York.

  • ID# 2.4 (reply to #2.1) - 12 Feb 1998
    Here are images by Scott Murphy of the Durst Tower under construction. ED.

  • ID# 2.5 (reply to #2.1)
    From: Massimo Beltrame ([email protected]) - 21 Jun 1998

    "The most striking thing about the design is its composite form, a sort of cocktail in the making whose various separate ingredients can still be recognised in the form of fragments of imaginary skyscrapers and cans of soda (...)Durst Tower is actually more an adding together of different elements than a synthesis: Joycean fragmentation rather than Kantian unity."
    FROM L'ARCA PLUS ANNO IV n°13,1997 Milano

See also DURST TOWER - TIMES SQUARE and NEW YORK DECONSTRUCTIVISM.