Over the past decade, Manhattan has been filled with colossal and hyper-slender residential skyscrapers.
They represent a structural challenge whose architects have resolved brilliantly and their silhouette is modifying the
skyline
of the most famous city in the world.
And yet they are half empty.
What is happening with these ultra-skyscrapers?
To understand the complexity of the phenomenon, you have to understand what exactly a skyscraper is, and for that, you have to go back to the beginning.
In 1885, Home Insurance was inaugurated in the city of Chicago, a building considered to be the first skyscraper in history.
Although in reality it only had twelve floors, it responded to the three essential conditions that define what a skyscraper is: that it can be built, that it can be used and that it is economically profitable.
The Home Insurance could be built thanks to its very thin but very resistant metallic structure, it could be used because it incorporated one of the first elevators with an emergency brake and, above all, the building was profitable because there was a company behind it that could afford to pay for a building that it was much more expensive than any other that had been built up to that time.
More information
This is how the world's first earthquake-proof skyscraper was built (more than six decades ago)
In reality, skyscrapers exist for pure economic use;
When the price of land in the center of cities began to skyrocket, companies found it more profitable to build floor-to-floor high up than to buy a huge plot of land.
That's why, for more than a century, skyscrapers have always been essentially office buildings, because that expensive building needs to
produce
economically.
Make enough money to pay for it and then keep it.
From the great urban gods like the Chrysler or the Empire State Building, to the Twin Towers, the Willis Tower in Chicago or the headquarters of the big banking corporations in Hong Kong or Shanghai, skyscrapers have not only been architectural works but also economic artifacts.
The Home Insurance Building in Chicago.
It was standing between 1885 and 1931 and is considered, with its 12 floors, the first skyscraper in the world.Bettmann (Bettmann Archive)
On the other hand, the new ultra-skyscrapers in Manhattan, since they are intended for housing, seem to violate this maxim.
How do they get profitable?
The answer is counterintuitive: the apartments that occupy these buildings are very expensive but, in reality, what makes them profitable is that they are half empty.
Supposed construction and structural problems have been reported in various media, and it seems that the exclusive residents of the elegant 432 Park Avenue have complained that the building moves too much, that there is flooding, pipe noise and even cracks.
When you've paid millions for your house, you certainly don't want any mundane inconvenience, and these problems may be real.
After all, such a slender skyscraper is always going to move because, as you all know at the old Citigroup headquarters,
The main enemy of a skyscraper is not gravity;
It is the wind.
All skyscrapers are moved by the wind, and in the case of ultra-hyperslender skyscrapers, that movement can be quite noticeable, up to more than a meter at the top.
To limit the deformation of the building, engineers and architects have resorted to solutions as ingenious as they are brilliant.
For example, in 432 Park itself, the architect, Rafael Viñoly, decided that the facilities floors would be open to the air so that the wind could flow without completely pushing the building.
And on the other hand, they placed two
mass dampers
, two 400-ton mass dampers.
Without going too deep, let's say a
mass damper
It is a technological gadget that uses inertia to counteract the horizontal thrusts of the wind.
And yet, based on the complaints from the neighbors, it does not seem that these solutions are working perfectly.
Is this what is throwing them out of their luxurious apartments?
Absolutely.
The point is not that some owner does not want to have pipe noises and has resold his house, it is that almost half of the ultra-skyscraper homes have never been inhabited.
And it is not because there is any structural risk.
The residential skyscraper 432 Park Avenue Building, in Manhattan.Petr Svarc (Universal Images Group via Getty)
These flats can cost up to 150 million euros.
In other words, although the floor plan of the tower is usually very small and, therefore, there is not room for too many homes, each apartment is so expensive that its sale would already make the promotion profitable.
In a way, they are like super luxury cars, like a Ferrari.
For this reason, 57th Street, where most of the ultra-skyscrapers have been built, is called
Billionare's Row (
The Street of
Billionaires) .
).
What's more, to increase the value of these homes, the developers have taken advantage of a few tricks of the regulations.
The most visual affects precisely the installation floors.
At 432 Park there are six floors of facilities each measuring six meters high, and since the facilities do not count as buildable area, you can build as many as you want and as high as you want.
In the case of the Viñoly building, they occupy a height of 36 meters, which is almost 15% of the entire residential height of the building.
With this legal ruse, the developers manage to artificially raise the tower, which allows them to sell the most expensive homes.
The higher, the more expensive.
In fact, the 96th floor penthouse has been for sale for $169 million.
New York's Steinway Tower, one of the thinnest (and most expensive) residential buildings in the world. UCG (UCG/Universal Images Group via G)
But there is another, uglier trap.
Under New York law, if city developers want to save a specific type of building tax, they must include at least one-fifth of affordable social housing in each building they build.
This means that ultra-luxury skyscrapers, whose apartments have been sold to the richest people on the planet, should also include a fifth of cheap housing, but of course there are no affordable units there, that would lower the status of the building. .
So what the developers have done is build affordable housing blocks outside of Manhattan, in the suburbs of the city, like Queens or the Bronx,
Thanks in part to this urban juggling, but also to the undeniable beauty and architectural quality of the buildings, most of the homes have indeed been sold, and yet, according to the specialized media The
B1M
, 44% of the flats have never been occupied.
Because?
Well, because, in reality, although the buildings are very beautiful and the apartments are the epitome of luxury, they are not understood as places to live;
They are just a speculative mechanism.
Half of the people who have bought one of these flats have never occupied it and perhaps never even went there.
He buys it to resell it, possibly to another billionaire who will never go there either, and so on.
They're not really like Ferraris;
they are more like a Van Gogh that someone bought to keep in a warehouse and then sold to someone else who also kept in a warehouse.
A beautiful Van Gogh, but one that no one would ever see.
And it's this perpetual wheel of useless trading that really makes ultra-skyscrapers profitable.
He
The city's skyline
is changing because of buildings that are aesthetically flawless, but are half empty.
Just because people with a lot of money would rather keep amassing more money than live in a special place like Manhattan.