Hudson Yards Massive $6B Phase One

Related Companies will break ground on its massive 26-acre Hudson Yards development in the next couple of weeks. Recently, all the designers met to discuss their respective buildings. Here's a look at the details of the $6 billion first phase. The city-within-a-city will cap the yards with an $800 million concrete roof and top it with the country's largest and densest real-estate development. Imagine the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, only five times bigger.

> Click here to see the Master Plan

The Office Towers

Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, the tallest buildings within Hudson Yards will be two office towers, one of which will house Coach.

According the designer, the tower at 30th Street "genuflects toward Tenth Avenue on muscular concrete legs, and the crown greets the skyline at a jaunty tilt."

At West 33rd Street, another tower rises 1,300 feet, sloping away from its sister, creating a cone of space in the skyline.

The Retail Plaza
The two office towers will be linked by a five-floor, two-block long retail space. Its architect Howard Elkus says, "We don't want this to feel like a mall." Pedestrian walkways will extend the streets inside, cutting through the building, and glass walls to let in sunlight.

On the fourth floor, restaurateur Danny Meyer will curate a slew of "informal, but high-end" food options. The fifth floor will have restaurants that are more expensive and a ten-screen movie theater.

The Culture Shed
Davidson calls the Culture Shed the "most intriguing and mysterious" piece in the Hudson Yards development. The city refuses to discuss details of the space, like what it would be used for, but Related really wants it to happen.

DS+R Architects and the Rockwell Group worked together to design a flexible gallery complex that could accommodate just about anything. The architect believes it will give the project "the highbrow legitimacy and cutting-edge cool it needs, to become an integral part of New York."

The Residential Tower

Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the project's only all-residential tower (680 apartments in all) sits at 30th Street and 11th Avenue.

"It's an architectural griffin, grafting together rectilinear rental units on the lower floors with flower-petal condo layouts up high.

The idiosyncratic bulges and dimples join in complicated ways that make the glass facade look quilted."

The Everything Tower

David Childs of Skidmore Owings and Merrill is tasked with creating a tower to house a large Equinox gym, offices, an orthopedic hospital, a sports emporium, a hotel, as well as luxury condominiums.

The slender tower has a curved base and textured exterior that has "vertical folds with stone on one side and glass on the other, as if a palazzo had merged with a modernist shaft. Hudson Yards is a city within a city. This tower is a city within a city—within a city," says Childs.

The Public Space

Stephen Ross, chairman of Related, sees the public plaza as "a modern-day Trevi Fountain, a town square alive with purpose and electricity." Landscape architect Thomas Woltz was tasked with designing the five-acre space, and plans are still somewhat up in the air.

Currently, the design is a paved eclipsed outlined with artistically trimmed trees. Ross is still searching for an artist to create the monumental fountain.