The public space will connect to the High Line and the new Hudson Park and Boulevard. The Vessel will comprise a 150-ft (46-ft) tall “geometric lattice of intersecting flights of stairs” designed for climbing and exploring.
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In a press release about the project, Heatherwick’s London-based company, Heatherwick Studios, wrote: ‘Rather than just be something to look at, Heatherwick Studio’s design undertook the challenge of creating a landmark every inch of which could be climbed and explored.
The price tag: $150 million for the centerpiece and another $50 million for the landscaping by Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, according to Stephen M. Ross, chairman of Related Companies, the developer of Hudson Yards.
“It caught my imagination and I loved that is was part furniture and part infrastructure”, Heatherwick explained to News Atlas.
The renderings for the forthcoming public art installation at the Hudson Yards development have been revealed, and if you’ve ever wanted to clamber around inside a huge bedbug exoskeleton, this one’s for you.
“In a city full of eye-catching structures, our first thought was that it shouldn’t just be something to look at”, Heatherwick says. The unusual piece-the shape of which may evoke a beehive, or a ribcage, or perhaps a doner kebab, depending on your perspective-will feature 154 interconnected staircases that altogether will create of mile’s worth of climbable pathways.
The Hudson Yards will get a state of the art, 16-story sculpture next year that consists nearly entirely of stairways.
The video below provides an introduction to Vessel. A painted steel structure will be clad on the bottom with a polished, copper-colored steel skin.
Seemingly inspired by the mind-altering work of Dutch artist MC Escher, New Yorkers got a glimpse this week of what will be a very big sculpture with 154 stairways going nowhere.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said: “This incredible open space will define this neighborhood”.
“We had to think of what could act as the role of a landmarker”, he said.
Stunning … Unique sculpture will be centrepiece of Hudson Yards project Interactive …
A view of the Pavilion Grove.
The park will also include over 28,000 plant species, 200 trees and a 200-foot-long fountain.
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The structure will be located in the central plaza of Hudson Yards, where it will be surrounded by native perennial gardens and a canopy of native trees, as well as a variety of seating options where visitors to the nearby Culture Shed or High Line can rest their feet.
