Neo-Mod Idiom On the High Line

Even before its completion, Chelsea’s High Line Park is having as catalytic an effect on its neighborhood as Central Park has had, over the past 150 years, on the Upper East and West sides of Manhattan. This year, in celebrating the sesquicentennial of that greatest of urban parks, we can appreciate the foresight of the magistrates who predicted that it would lead to the logarithmic development of the surrounding area.A similar building boom is on in Chelsea, not least in the areas directly in contact with the High Line, that rusting hulk of elevated train tracks. One of the area’s boldest and most striking developments is something called HL23, renderings for which have just been made public by the firm of Neil M. Denari Architects. In June, this project will be the subject of an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, “Fast Forward: Neil Denari Builds on the Highline.”Mr. Denari is well known as a pioneer in the application of computer technology to the design of buildings. This permits him to conceive and configure his buildings in a far more extravagant and asymmetrical fashion than earlier technologies allowed. His latest endeavor, billed as the first freestanding building of his career, is an irregularly shaped 14-story residential tower of shimmering metal, expansive curtain walls, and concrete masonry walls, that buckles woozily as it beetles over the High Line. Along the perimeter of the curtain wall are diagonal braces that strongly recall those of Sir Norman Foster’s Hearst Building on 57th Street and Eighth Avenue. Because of these braces, the building’s interiors need not be interrupted by internal columns.Situated at 515–517 W. 23rd St., HL23 is one lot east of High Line 519, designed by Lindy Roy, and is informed by a very similar aesthetic. That is to say, it enshrines a neo-Mod idiom that is on its way to becoming one of the dominant building styles of the new millennium. Architecturally, this style is rooted in a 1960s-era response to the International Style. Rebelling against what was perceived as a severe straitjacket of right-angled curtain walls, the earlier Mod style embraced curves and asymmetry in its pursuit of a fundamentally anti-rational aesthetic. Two generations later, its grandchild, the neo-Mod movement, can be seen in part as a reaction against the current neo-Modern movement that is itself the grandchild of the International Style. Then, as now, Modernism and its severe progeny were favored for what we might call “grown-up” architecture — that is, office towers and institutional buildings. Then and now, Mod and its descendants were the preferred style for things such as museums, restaurants, and, to some degree, residences. But perhaps because leisure is more central to contemporary life than it was five decades ago, the neo-Mod style of Mr. Denari and Ms. Roy is far closer to the architectural mainstream than its stylistic forebear ever was.Because Mr. Denari’s HL23 also has roots in the deconstructivist style, the building embraces what many would consider aberration, incompleteness, and imperfection. From several angles, the building looks alternately as though it is on the verge of collapse and as though it were a thing fashioned from putty or clay by someone who didn’t know what he was doing and messed the whole thing up. This too, of course, is by design. Doubtless one could find, in everything from contemporary painting and fiction to fashion and alternative music, a corresponding affinity for artifacts that, in pursuing either cuteness or authenticity, aspire to a similar aesthetic.In its amalgam of Mod and Deconstructivist idioms, HL23 is but the latest example of a kind of architecture that, in its most general terms, has been subject to periodic abeyance and revival over the past few centuries. In Mannerism and Rococo, no less than in the sundry enormities of the Belle Époque, Western architecture has seen, every few generations, a similar embrace of all that is irrational, twisted, and corrupt.But one perceives a difference between those forebears and the examples of the latest generation. Given the boldness of HL23, it is likely that this building will promptly assume the status of a monument in its chosen style, and one’s response to it will be determined largely by one’s appetite for, and tolerance of, that idiom’s calculated clumsiness. Nevertheless, one can’t help thinking that, in reacting positively to this building, viewers will be responding more to its contemporaneity and boldness than to any grace or power of design. Once that newness evaporates — and it inevitably will — the building’s by-design ugliness will become simply ugly, without the palliation of scare quotes. In the process, New York City may become a more interesting place, but it will hardly be more beautiful.

Neo-Mod Idiom On the High Line

More from the New York Sun

Collectivists Turn May Day Into a High Holiday

U.S. Floats Netanyahu–Aoun Meeting as Path to IDF Exit From Lebanon

Louisiana Lawmakers Advance Bill Protecting College Faculty Members’ Ability To Engage in the ‘Rigorous Exchange of Ideas’

More from the New York Sun

Collectivists Turn May Day Into a High Holiday

U.S. Floats Netanyahu–Aoun Meeting as Path to IDF Exit From Lebanon

Louisiana Lawmakers Advance Bill Protecting College Faculty Members’ Ability To Engage in the ‘Rigorous Exchange of Ideas’

Assassination Attempt Exposes Danger of Liberal Bias — and Outright Trump-Hatred — at America’s Universities

The Marriage Gap Is the Biggest Cause of Inequality in America, but Gets the Least Attention

Kentucky Derby Arrives With History, Heartbreak, and Change in the Air

Actress Takes a Beating From Harvey Weinstein’s Lawyers Over Secret ‘Love Note’: It’s Latest Example of Why This Rape Case Is So Hard To Prove

A Tale of Moral Courage in World War II, Chronicled Through Cartoons