
A city for the rich, built poorly: The construction of Hudson Yards - jsjohnst
https://www.villagespoke.com/2019/05/03/a-city-for-the-rich-built-poorly-the-construction-of-hudson-yards/
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davidwihl
I live across the street from the Shed (and Hudson Yards).

1) Since opening, the mall has added a ton of indoor seating. The place is so
popular that sometimes people still sit on the floor. This is success not sour
grapes.

2) The escalators seem purposefully designed to make you wander around the
mall. If you want vertical speed, there are many elevators, which the author
neglected to mention.

The place is very popular. I’m certainly happy to have world class dining,
shops and arts instead of a rail yard.

The article is basically a hatchet job.

~~~
txcwpalpha
The entire article reads as someone specifically searching for something to
criticize, and some of these are a real stretch. The sloppy cladding and
bricks is surely not ideal, but is it really a big deal at all? It's hardly
noticeable unless you are specifically looking for things to nitpick. The
"damaged wheel" picture in particular is literally just paint chipping on a
piece of machinery that hardly anyone will actually see. Who cares?

As for the design criticisms, it's clear this person doesn't know much about
actual design principles, despite criticizing the designers for it.

1) The escalators are almost certainly purposefully designed like this. This
is common in many places, and I especially have seen this design used in many
malls. Along with the fact that it guides people to product display areas, it
also prevents dangerous traffic jams on the landings between escalators (it
takes longer to get on an escalator than it does to get off, so in high
traffic situations, you can end up with a lot of bunching at the top of an
escalator, which can mean dangerous situations like this [1]).

2) Stairs are a common bottleneck since it takes longer to go up/down stairs
than it does to walk on a level walkway. To prevent bottlenecking, the stairs
_should_ be wider than the walkways they connect to. This is the same
principle you see when tollbooth plazas have more lanes than the highways they
connect to.

3) The complaint about the gap in the railings again seems like an incredible
nitpick. The author claims it is a 6 inch gap, but based on the photo, unless
this person has _massive_ hands, it looks more like a 3-4 inch gap, and I
think it's a real stretch to call that "dangerous".

1:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVqg6sjJK-M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVqg6sjJK-M)

~~~
pranjalv123
If there are problems like this with the finish work, it's likely that there
are problems with the stuff you can't see as well. Just like a slow, buggy
piece of software is more likely to have security issues than one that runs
smoothly and presents a good user experience.

~~~
CydeWeys
People in the construction industry in the /r/nyc subreddit are saying that
finish issues are common when a building first opens, and that overall quality
should be judged a year out from opening, when everything has been addressed.
The logic goes that there are lots of custom-fab components required in any
sizable construction, some of which will inevitably be damaged during transit
or install. It may take months to replace them, and you don't want to hold up
the entire opening for months for some insignificant fit & finish issues
because you'd be losing huge amounts of money.

So you get the place to the point where it opens, and then you do a trickle of
night work over the coming months as replacement parts come in and you can
finally get everything perfect.

Hell, this happened to my parents' house remodel recently. They scratched a
custom-order door in a way that wasn't repairable. Rather than leaving my
parents without a door for a month, they left it as-is and then came back a
month later with a new door (once it was ready) and installed it.

------
joe_the_user
So basically the skyscraper version of a McMansion [1] or even, given the talk
here of money laundering, an example of Narcotecture creeping into America
[2].

[1] [https://mcmansionhell.com/](https://mcmansionhell.com/)

[2]
[https://stephanierogers.typepad.com/stephanie_rogers/2007/07...](https://stephanierogers.typepad.com/stephanie_rogers/2007/07/narcotecture.html)

Also:

[https://www.google.com/search?hs=MvG&channel=fs&q=Narcotectu...](https://www.google.com/search?hs=MvG&channel=fs&q=Narcotecture&tbm=isch&source=univ&client=ubuntu&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjB8PzjppTiAhURRKwKHTfNDgcQsAR6BAgIEAE&biw=1366&bih=611)

~~~
rootusrootus
Been a long time since I visited McMansionHell.com. It seems to have jumped
the shark a while back. I used to think it was funny.

It's also possible that the web page design is intentionally ironic.

~~~
twblalock
It's a smug and mean-spirited site, even though what it says about McMansions
is generally true.

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tallasabuilding
As an actual architect, this article is pretty hilarious. There are a couple
of egregious things, such as the entry portal panel misalignment - that should
have been (or will be?) fixed. Too important of an area to let that slide. The
other items like small panel gaps, overextended saw cuts in pavers, etc...
come on. I challenge anyone to go to any building ever and not find
imperfections. Maybe surprisingly, building buildings is complex, and i'd
rather goofballs complain about non-walkable rock areas then a building
collapsing on itself. or its facade falling off.

also: per code, railings can be gapped by 4" \- its pretty much one of the
only things installers need to make sure of so i'd be pretty surprised if that
rail gap is > 4" last, one of the images has a piece of blue tape indicating a
"fix this" marker. Looks like they (arch? owner? contractor?) said "nah".

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
I don't know if you've been to the UK, but you should look at some Victorian
building projects - town halls, libraries, theatres - for comparison.

It's easy to ignore imperfections with a modern sensibility, but those older
buildings were _crafted_ in a way that modern buildings don't seem to be.

The driving ethic was typically local pride, and the buildings were designed
and built as public statements to showcase that.

Modern mall projects seem to be the opposite. There's no pride among either
designers or builders. Everyone is there to do a job, including the building -
which is primarily a cash extraction machine optimised for ROI, ineptly dabbed
with superficial signifiers of status so it can appear appealing to people
with money they can be parted from.

At a guess, that's what this article is really objecting to.

~~~
esoterica
Is it a better use of public money to have one grand, expensive, and
meticulously crafted library for tourists to gawk at, or 10 cheap and
uninspiring ones that regular people can use on a daily basis? Old buildings
were fancy because they were built by peacocking aristocrats with no
accountability to and zero concern for the unwashed masses.

~~~
jdavis703
Can we have a little bit of both? I’d like to be able to study in a
university-grade library (it doesn’t need to be a starchitect tourist trap). I
understand that people need local libraries too. I don’t know why so many
things have to be either or. Could we have 5 neighborhood libraries and 1
university grade library?

------
DoreenMichele
_You get the distinct sense that you’re walking through a computer rendering
rather than a real place. Aesthetic is prioritized over function everywhere
you go.

In the Shops and Restaurants at Hudson Yards, escalators are not positioned to
allow a seamless flow up and down the levels of the mall, but rather, to make
the complex photogenic; often requiring you to search at each level for the
next escalator down in order to exit._

We seem to have generally begun to err in this direction. We are surrounded by
visuals 24/7 via TV, magazines, internet, etc in a way that wasn't the case
when I was a small child and didn't exist at all when, say, my dad was a
child.

I think this is a consequence of that. Our focus is much more on looks than on
other aspects of the design experience or life generally.

I don't know what the solution is. I keep toying with the idea that I want to,
for example, blog about clothes or home related things without jumping on the
bandwagon of filling it with appealing photos. It seems like a non-starter
though.

But we have women undergoing cosmetic surgery because we are so focused on
these photo shopped images of women who are already statistical outliers in
some way and whose look was developed by a combination of a professional
makeup artist, professional wardrobe person and professional hair stylist.
Then they taped up her breasts and put 30 bobby pins in the jacket so it would
fall a certain way. Then a professional photographer took 300 pictures, only
one or two of which are going to be used in the publication.

Let me reiterate: After all that, they are photo shopped to boot to achieve
some completely unrealistic notion of beauty or perfection or whatever.

We think that's what real people are supposed to look like. The magazines that
do this literally try to sell us on the idea that they are in the business of
telling us how we are supposed to look, never mind that no one can actually
look like that in real life, not even the professional models who were used in
the shoot.

We do the same thing with housing, home decor, etc ad nauseum.

And it is going bizarre places in a manner that is negatively impacting how we
conceptualize and create real spaces, clothes to wear and so on. Then we
wonder why so much stuff out there is dreck.

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ghaff
What’s unclear is the degree to which these construction problems are unusual
for a project of this magnitude, especially given some fairly one-off designs.

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zild3d
> Unsafe railing gaps

what is unsafe about a space between railings at a corner that not even a hand
can fit through?

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ChuckMcM
I am unable to understand how people in Manhattan are so divided by this
development. It is just a bunch of buildings.

~~~
gliop
People are mad that $4B was spent building this tacky thing instead of on
improving the city for not multimillionaires.

~~~
TomMarius
Did the government fund it or where's the problem?

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headShrinker
The real problem with Hudson Yards is that it’s walled up so it’s separate
entity from the rest of the city. It completely breaks congruity with the rest
of the island. This was likely a purposeful design choice similar to how
Lincoln center was walled off before it’s redesign. The walls make you feel
that what’s in side the walls is protected from the rest of the city as if the
city and it’s people are hostile. At least that’s how it makes me feel as it
dominates the only view of the city I have from my apartment window 10 blocks
from it.

We aren’t a hostile people but are upset about how this was funded:

“As I reported back in 2017, records obtained by CityLab under the Freedom of
Information Act reveal the gerrymandered map that Empire State used to qualify
Hudson Yards for EB-5 financing. This particular TEA snakes up from the West
Side and includes Central Park. (Think about that: a map of Manhattan that
claims Central Park as an economically troubled area.) Beyond the park, the
qualifying zone for Hudson Yards captures several census tracts in Harlem,
where public housing projects boost the overall unemployment figure.”
[https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/04/hudson-yards-
financin...](https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/04/hudson-yards-financing-
eb5-investor-visa-program-immigration/586897/)

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cm2187
What I find is that a lot is so-called "luxury" new residential blocks in
London (often high rises) have pretty much no sound insulation between flats,
which for a modern construction is shocking, let alone a luxury building. I am
not convinced that upmarket constructions give you any guarantee of build
quality. In fact many of these luxury flats were sold off-plan in Asia to
people to whom it was a financial investment and had no intention to ever live
there, I can see why the developers wouldn't bother.

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neonate
Site is down for me but [http://archive.is/tURdz](http://archive.is/tURdz) has
the article.

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PorterDuff
It seems to me that they need to work harder at building temporary structures.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XopSDJq6w8E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XopSDJq6w8E)

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code4tee
I would imagine on most new construction you could find little things like
that if you look hard enough. They should be noted and fixed by the
contractors but such items don’t constitute the whole complex being “built
poorly.” That seems a bit of a stretch with an alternative agenda.

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purplezooey
the things he points out are indeed pretty janky.

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godzillabrennus
It’s my favorite part of NYC. The more the old complain about it the more
affinity I have for it.

They New York is to Europe as San Francisco is to Asia.

Hudson Yards stands in stark and stunning contrast to that analogy.

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nafizh
Every empire goes down eventually. The derision of the crown jewel (NYC) of
the US empire perfectly resembles the fact that the sun is setting.

~~~
walterbell
Hudson Yards has little to do with the rest of NYC, as stated in the article.
Many of the residences were sold to foreign owners. It did succeed at
extracting a billion dollars from foreign investors.

~~~
cco
That sounds like a terrible thing for New Yorkers and make just a bad thing
for Americans at large. Why do you categorize this as a win?

~~~
walterbell
It's not a win.

