Hudson Yards it is the largest private real estate development in the United States by area.
The architectural firm Kohn Pedersen Fox designed the master plan for the site, and architects including Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, Thomas Heatherwick, Roche-Dinkeloo, and Diller Scofidio + Renfro contributed designs for individual structures.
The Shed
The Shed is a nonprofit organization flexible structure focused on providing cultural programming.
Construction on the Shed started in 2015, using a design from lead architect Diller Scofidio + Renfro and collaborating architect Rockwell Group. Structural engineering, façade and kinetic design was provided by Thornton Tomasetti.
As of March 2019, the Shed had received $529 million in donations for its $550 million capital campaign to fund building construction, programming and start-up expenses.
The building’s roof features a 8,000,000-pound (3,600,000 kg) retractable shell, made of an exposed steel diagram frame, clad in a Teflon-like material called ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE). This material has the thermal properties of insulating glass at a fraction of the weight.
The shell can close and open within 5 minutes and when the shell is retracted, the open-air plaza becomes a publicly accessible outdoor space. The shell retracts on eight bogie wheels, each 6 feet (1.8 m) in diameter.
15 Hudson Yards
Is a residential building completed in 2019, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The nickname for the tower is “the Corset Tower”, there are traps along the middle and top part of the building to make it more “fluid-like”, giving it an appearance of having a corset.
The building includes 285 residential units. The 50th and 51st floor are a 40,000 square feet (3,700 m2) amenity space containing an aquatics center with a 75-foot-long swimming pool, spa, fitness center, yoga studio, children’s playroom, private dining suites, screening room, golf club lounge, wine storage, and business center.
The tower is integrated with The Shed.
The Vessel
Permanent art installation designed by Thomas Heatherwick. Heatherwick took inspiration from Indian step wells in the design. honeycomb-like structure rises 16 stories and consists of 154 flights of stairs.
The original cost for the this construction was $75 million, the projections were later revised to between $150 and $200 million. The designer a attributed this at the complexity of building the steel pieces. The pieces were assembled in Italy and then shipped to the Hudson River docks.
One nice way to get to Hudson Yard is walking in the High Line. The High Line is a 1.45-mile-long elevated linear park, greenway and rail trail created on a former New York Central Railroad.
