A Luxury Condo by Arty Architects From the Fringe

THE NEW YORK TIMES June 28, 2007 By ROBIN POGREBIN

With so many developers relying on celebrity architects to market condominiums these days, it’s become routine to see names like Richard Meier and Jean Nouvel emblazoned across real estate ads and billboards. But Asymptote? Isn’t that the firm that designed that “steel cloud,” a highly conceptual (read: unbuilt) elevated memorial and park for downtown Los Angeles two decades ago?

Aren’t these architects a bit too avant-garde for a luxury condo building in the West Village?

But Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture, the husband-and-wife principals of Asymptote, say the eight-story structure taking shape at 166 Perry Street is intricately related to their ongoing experimental work.

“It was inspired by what the art world has done for New York,” Mr. Rashid said. The pair have become known for designing highly abstract environments for several galleries and art fairs in recent years. Among those were an animated installation for the Italian Pavilion and Corderie at the Venice Biennale in 2004 and a digital project from 1999 featuring choreographed electronic sequences for the gallery then known as TZ’Art.

In an interview at their Varick Street office, Mr. Rashid and Ms. Couture explained that their condo design enters into a subtle conversation with the art world. The perforated aluminum on the first level is a homage to the pointillist projects of Roy Lichtenstein, they say; the sculptural entrance alludes to Richard Serra’s “Tilted Arc.”

The curvilinear lobby pays tribute to Jeff Koons and Olafur Eliasson, and the window screens frame the views in a way that recalls the patterns of Andreas Gursky’s formal, abstract photographs.

“We were interested in something that had a cultural resonance,” Mr. Rashid said. As their first free-standing building in New York, there is no doubt that 166 Perry Street is a milestone for Asymptote — and something of a second act, given the firm’s onetime cult status in the late ’80s as the artists’ architects.

The developers Richard Born, Charles Blaichman and Ira Drucker decided that it was time for Asymptote’s moment in the sun. The 24-unit condo building is next to three new 16-story glass-and-steel towers on West Street by Mr. Meier, two of which the developers commissioned.

In some ways Asymptote tried both to depart from the neighboring Meier buildings. Whereas Mr. Meier’s buildings have smooth glass facades, Asymptote’s are angled vertically to reflect the Meier structures and the sky. Mr. Rashid likened the dynamic surface to “a waterfall of frozen ice.”

Parts of the glass can be changed electronically from translucent to opaque. “The idea of malleability was important,” Ms. Couture said. (Mr. Rashid enthusiastically dominated the interview, leaving relatively few openings for her.)

Whereas passers-by can peer into the Meier buildings from West Street, Asymptote’s building features screens on the windows to provide more privacy. And while the Meier towers are characterized by what Mr. Rashid calls “an austere Modernism,” 166 Perry Street is intended to mirror the surrounding neighborhood of low stone or brick structures, though it does not use those materials.

Brick would have been “way too confrontational with what Meier has done,” Mr. Rashid said. “Our big question was: Could we produce a building that knits or marries or merges what Meier started into the finer-grain nuances of the West Village?”

Like most development in the neighborhood, the Asymptote building, on the site of a former six-story brick garage, has not been without controversy. The developers were adding two stories to the garage when the City Council voted in 2005 to limit the size of new buildings in the area. A stop-work order was issued, but the developers argued that their building permit was approved before the council’s action. The order was lifted.

The apartments at 166 Perry Street will sell for $2 million to $11 million, Mr. Born said. Each unit is a corner apartment facing west or east. Each of the two penthouse units has a pool on the balcony and a fireplace in the master bedroom.

Rather than standard narrow balconies, which so often become bicycle storage in Manhattan, the apartments feature sliding glass walls that open to create an outdoor overlook with glass guardrails.

Mr. Rashid says the architects wanted the building to feel as if it belonged in the city. “We look at it from the point of view: What does it mean to be New York-based architects working in New York?” he said. “We live in this town. We walk these streets every day. We drew upon the cultural mix that drives New York.”

Although it is their first condo building here, the architects have designed several interiors in the city, among them the Alessi flagship store in SoHo, with an unusual shelving system and coffee bar, and the Carlos Miele clothing boutique on West 14th Street, with white sculptural elements. A firm once viewed as irreverent also designed two projects for the New York Stock Exchange: a virtual-reality trading floor displayed on large flat-screen monitors and a high-tech operations center on the trading floor.

But Asymptote sought most of its work elsewhere. “We didn’t try to get work in New York,” Ms. Couture said. “Getting commissions in interiors can give you a reputation that limits you.”

Asymptote has attracted several commissions outside the United States, from the Hydra Pier pavilion in the Netherlands (2002), a structure that floats on a lake as water courses over its roof and walls, to the Univers Theaters in Aarhus, Denmark (1997), a temporary structure for a theater festival that incorporated multimedia technologies.

Among its projects now under construction are two commercial office towers in Budapest and a luxury residential building in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The couple recently won a competition to design the Millennium Tower World Business Center in Busan, South Korea.

Their firm is named for the mathematical term denoting a straight line that approaches but never quite meets a curve, into infinity, because it seemed an apt metaphor for the “dialectics” of their personal and professional collaboration.

With the Perry Street project, Mr. Rashid said, he and Ms. Couture tried to break down the dichotomy between the architecture of the past and future. “It’s not just that’s old, this is new, the story’s over,” Mr. Rashid said. “Our take is: It’s not that simple.”