When your new boutique condo project is surrounded by serious starchitecture, including buildings by Frank Gehry, Annabelle Selldorf and Jean Nouvel, how do you make it stand out? Easy. Hire an architect who’s used to thinking out of the box – and then let him.
That was the idea behind commissioning Japan’s Shigeru Ban to design the nine-unit, 11-story building on far West 19th Street now known as Metal Shutter Houses. He used as inspiration the garage-style doors seen on many a nearby Chelsea art gallery.
“The industrial buildings in the area have metal shutters,” says Ban. “I tried to use something contextual, multifunctional.”
Mechanized metal shutters, made of horizontal perforated slats, make up much of the building’s façade. When the shutter is closed, the resident is able to see out, but the city cannot see in. Press a button and the shutter rolls up into the ceiling, not unlike a garage door, though with considerably more finesse. Behind the shutters, the terrace is separated from double-height living rooms by windows, which are also motorized and able to fold up into the living room, making the exterior and interior one.
Klemens Gasser, the developer of the project along with Spiritos Properties (collectively known as HEEA Development), initially purchased the property in 1998 to house an art gallery. At the time, far West 19th Street was almost completely industrial, not to mention more or less deserted.
But in the intervening years, it has evolved into one of the most architecturally avant-garde blocks in the city, with the Gehry-designed IAC Headquarters, Selldorf’s 520 W. Chelsea and Nouvel’s 100 11th Ave. In addition, Tamarkin Co. is designing and developing an 11-story condo with 22 duplexes on the corner of 19th Street and 10th Avenue. The design includes four penthouses that will reside in a wavy structure that tops a rectangular base. The lesson being, edgy architecture begets edgy architecture.
“If I had to choose between doing something on the Upper East Side or in Chelsea, I’d choose Chelsea because of the interesting context,” says Ban, who admits to having another project in the works in New York but is reticent to reveal its whereabouts. We can assume it’s not on the Upper East Side.
Metal Shutter House units include four three-bedroom, 1,950-square-foot duplexes with terraces; four 2,700-square-foot four-bedroom duplexes with terraces; and one four-bedroom duplex penthouse measuring 3,319 square feet with 1,963 square feet of outdoor space, which includes a private roof deck.
Units start at $3.6 million, or about $1,850 a square foot; pricey when compared with other projects in the area: 459 W. 18th St., a Delle Valle building, is averaging $1,338 a square foot, and 520 W. Chelsea is seeing $1,600 a foot and up.
And while the penthouse at 520 W. Chelsea sold for almost $9 million, “a record for that area,” says Shaun Osher, president of CORE Group Marketing, which is selling the building. Though it might not hold the record for long. The penthouse at Metal Shutter Houses is on the market for $10.5 million.
“We’ve already had great interest in the penthouse,” says sales director Madeline Hult of Corcoran Sunshine Marketing. “Two people in the last couple days.”