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Behold The Giant $150 Million Public Art 'Vessel' Coming To Hudson Yards
By
David Colon
Published Sep 14, 2016
Modified Sep 14, 2016
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Heatherwick Studios
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By
David Colon
Published Sep 14, 2016
Modified Sep 14, 2016
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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.
Vessel, the Heatherwick Studio-designed structure that will rise 150 feet over 30th Street in Hudson Yards' public square, was revealed today at a press conference on the West Side. The interior of the ambitious work features 154 interconnected flights of stairs as well as 80 landings where people can pause to make life-changing Instagrams. Vessel, which will be paid for by Hudson Yards developers the Related Company and reportedly cost between $150 million and $200 million, is part of Hudson Yards' Public Square and Gardens, five acres of gardens and public plazas that will connect Hudson Yards to the High Line.
"When I was a student, I fell in love with an old discarded flight of wooden stairs outside a local building site. It caught my imagination and I loved that is was part furniture and part infrastructure. You could climb up stairs, jump on them, dance on them, get tired on them and then plonk yourself down on them," designer Thomas Heatherwick, said explaining his inspiration for the Vessel renderings.
It's definitely a bold addition to the city's landscape, even if the interlaced copper exterior of the structure kind of makes it look like a giant bedbug stuck underground, or at the very least the place where our evil insect overlords will be headquartered after they invade Earth and enslave the Upper West Side. On the inside, the interlocking stairways keep the hive-vibe going, although there's also the possibility that the dizzying sensation one gets when looking at the interior is because the multi-level structure that was supposed to be New York City's Eiffel Tower is in fact a portal to Hell. Or maybe this is all actually pretty cool, and I'm the one trapped in a cynical hell of my own jaded devising?
Whatever the true nature of Vessel is, we can finally start arguing over it for real after its planned opening, which is set for 2018.
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