A condition approaching mass hypnosis appears to have descended upon the citizens of New York. We have come to believe that those parts of the city wherein we would not have dared to set foot a decade ago are now among the most beautiful and desirable on the island of Manhattan. It may have been a foregone conclusion that, as the real estate market approached incandescence and as traditionally desirable areas like the Upper East Side reached the point of saturation, the West Side Highway, the meatpacking district, and other industrial zones would have to be redeemed for the leisured classes. But that still does not explain the fervent activity that has engulfed the formerly industrial zone at Spring and Greenwich Streets.

That this area is viewed with almost libidinous desire by well-heeled apartment hunters is nothing less than astounding; indeed, it is even clamoring for its own name. (Hudson Square and West SoHo have been suggested.) No fewer than six big projects are going up or are now complete, among them two contiguous buildings just north ofCanal Street, 505 and 497 Greenwich (also known as the Greenwich Street Project.)

The latter is no better than 505, but the architect, Winka Dubbeldam, is Dutch, which means she has apprenticed with Rem Koolhaas, which means we must give it priority. (Sorry, but such are the protocols of architectural criticism.) This building positively brays its iconic ambitions: A six-story converted warehouse stands locked in the bear-hug of an 11-story “parabuilding” whose 10,000-square-foot glass-and-steel curtain wall buckles and spills down the facade. The glass slings over the roof of the warehouse, and the two structures are separated by six cantilevered concrete balconies.

Though Ms. Dubbeldam exhibits some imagination in reinterpreting the traditional mandates of the New York setback, the willful chaos of her facade is too vexatious to sit quietly on this newly residential block, but not nearly chaotic enough to advance the Deconstructivist agenda it serves. Part of the problem is that with so many of these Deconstructivist artifacts littering the planet, it is increasingly difficult for new ones to seem quite as shocking as in the past. Frank Gehry’s Fred and Ginger Building in Prague has some juice to it, and so perhaps has Mr. Koolhaas’s new student center at the Illinois Institute of Technology. But in this latest building, the style feels fundamentally defanged.

I suspect that some of this can be blamed on a quality that hangs in the very air over Manhattan, dragging all things down toward inevitable mediocrity. Doubtless the unnumbered compromises and permissions that had to be worked out with the city doomed the project from the start. It should also be said that, for decades now, New York has been behind the curve when it comes to adopting new styles. Indeed, the fact that this building was built at all is probably proof that Deconstruction, at last, is on the way out.

Just to the north, 505 Greenwich Street is the work of Gary Handel, who has built abundantly in Manhattan. Among his projects are the Ritz-Carlton in Battery Park City and much of that spit of real estate where Broadway and Columbus Avenue converge at 67th Street. Mr. Handel designed or collaborated on Lincoln Square (with the Sony Theater), Lincoln Triangle (with Barnes & Noble), and Lincoln West (directly behind Alice Tully Hall). In addition, he has collaborated with the prestigious Christian de Portzamparc on the LVMH Building on East 57th Street, and they appear to be collaborating on another on Park Avenue South.

None of that, however, makes him a name to reckon with, which is why the real estate prospectuses surrounding 505 do not see fit to mention his firm. It is a much more staid affair than 497: a 14-story slab that doubles around to form a second slab on Renwick Street. The Greenwich facade consists of an infinitely regular glass-and-steel curtain wall that protrudes slightly from a matrix of pre-cast concrete and rises over a base of burnished copper.

Beyond the opulent ratio of infill to glass, the general appearance of this slab bears a great affinity to the Phillips Club, which Mr. Handel completed in 1999 near Lincoln Center and which houses the new Balducci’s on 66th Street. And the fact that the same general solution has been applied to two rather different sets of circumstances argues for a general lack of imagination that is borne out in the details of both projects. That said, the lobby of 505 manages to achieve an energetic tone of high-Modernist integrity, and Mr. Handel’s 255 Hudson Street, which is nearing completion right around the corner, will probably be a little more interesting.

jgardner@nysun.com