The building in the illustration to the right was not designed by Enrique Norten, and therein hangs a tale. Was there ever an architect more shabbily treated by Gotham than this native of Mexico City, two of whose most ambitious projects have now come, protractedly and after much debate, to nothing — and in the same week?

News came down that the Borough of Brooklyn will not be building the ambitious Visual and Performing Arts Library that had been announced with much fanfare back in 2003, and that was supposed to be the centerpiece of what is known as the BAM Cultural District. None of the estimated $135 million has been raised, and the words of Kate Levin, commissioner of the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs, could hardly be more emphatic in deflating the ambitions of Mr. Norten: “There is a continued commitment to build on that site and have some component be a library.”

In other words, anything that is eventually built there will look nothing like Mr. Norten’s project and very likely will have nothing to do with him. But even if his oddly nautical-looking project was not the best entry in the competition that it eventually won (this distinction goes to Jean Nouvel) still it was a welcome change from the safe and standard architectural fare that is usually served up to the citizens of New York.

The other shoe that just dropped for Mr. Norten was the Marriot he designed for Park Avenue and 125th Street. As David Levitt told the Sun last Tuesday, this massive, bipartite slab on a base has been scrapped, and the site, which was quietly sold to Vornado about a year ago, is to be developed as a mixedused Class A office building.

Quite unexpectedly, the new plan — assuming that the rendering can be trusted — looks very good indeed. Whether something in this form should be built in Harlem, or in this part of Harlem, and whether it can ever find enough tenants, is another question. But in terms of the design, it is, if anything, an improvement over Mr. Norten’s. And I say this knowing full well that it is the sort of design that right thinking people are expected to revile: Massive and male, it laughs to scorn any attempt at ingratiating itself, through vernacular details, with the neighborhood over which it may soon rise. In this respect, one of the few consolations of Harlem Park, as it is now to be called, is that, at a projected 21-stories, it will not rise nearly as high as the Marriott was supposed to do. But even that benefit is offset, in the minds of its detractors, by its brutal squatness, by the way it appears to occupy its entire lot like some mountainous sky-scraper from 100 years back.

Conceived by the firm of Swanke, Hayden, Connell, the building has the distinction, I believe, of being the first to draw its inspiration from the not-yet completed New Museum down on the Bowery. Like that project, it consists of a series of boxes piled irregularly, one atop another. It is curious how that formal idea, which seemed so charmingly radical, so deconstructivist when it was announced less than two years ago, now seems almost establishmentarian at Harlem Park. Instead of the silvery white mirage that the museum promises in a much smaller building, Harlem Park will consist entirely of a curtain-wall whose dark metal mesh pleasantly invokes the spirit of Mies van der Rohe in the Seagram Building. All of this praise is provisional, of course, on the conformity, by no means certain, of the rendering and the result. All sorts of things can happen between now and completion, and even buildings whose fine renderings are born out can often appear disappointing in the flesh.

If there is any consolation for Mr. Norten, it is surely 1 York Street, his one New York project that is nearing completion. This 14 story structure off of Canal Street will be oriented toward the East, but will look out in all directions. If everything comes off as planned, this project will represent a major enhancement of northern Tribeca, with 40 loft spaces and, at the base, 9000 square feet of high-end retail space. This project purports to be, like so many others in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, an adaptive reuse of a far older structure, in this case a 19th-century warehouse. To judge from the nearly completed skeleton, there does not appear to be much left of the original building, beyond a single wall. But if the renderings are to be trusted, the building will be among the more radical that Mr. Norten has designed. It will consist of a fairly stable, sober, and rectilinear base, covered in pale cladding, that is suddenly split in two by a massive top section of jagged steel and glass that is quite strident compared to Mr. Norten’s other projects to date.

jgardner@nysun.com