8 ms·

I live across the street from the Shed (and Hudson Yards). 1) Since opening, the mall has added a ton of indoor seating. The place is so popular that sometimes

I live across the street from the Shed (and Hudson Yards). 1) Since opening, the mall has added a ton of indoor seating. The place is so popular that sometimes people still sit on the floor. This is success not sour grapes. 2) The escalators seem purposefully designed to make you wander around the mall. If you want vertical speed, there are many elevators, which the author neglected to mention. The place is very popular. I’m certainly happy to have world class dining, shops and arts instead of a rail yard. The article is basically a hatchet job.

subpixel 7y ago
People sit on the floor b/c of a lack of seating which is by conscious design so as to inhibit people lounging around.
- walterbell 7y ago
  Since lack of seating is forcing people to sit on the floor, they can try some other anti-seating technologies that have been deployed in London and New York.
- dTal 7y ago
  In other words, hostile design. If you're not doing a New York hustle walk on your way to or from spending money, you're not welcome. No sitting down to chat, not even if you've bought food. Because the unforgivable sin in a capitalist culture is engaging with your fellow humans for free, instead of paying money to engage with goods and services.
asveikau 7y ago
I think the questions of building quality are a bit broader than just this project. It causes me to ponder how ambitious new construction projects always end up very expensive and showing issues. It feels like the US has lost its knack for big ambitious construction that it had in the 20th century. This seems independent of whether or not it's a popular attraction.
- tormeh 7y ago
  Having read a lot, and listened to podcasts, about BER, the takeaway seems to be that quality control is of utmost importance. The amount of money you spend on quality control almost can't be high enough. 30% or more of the budget just for quality control now seems entirely reasonable to me. And it can't be just at the end, it has to be an ongoing thing where everything is sanity checked as it is being done by people who preferably know their shit better than the people actually doing the work. Starting with the fundamental assumptions of the architectural drawings and ending with the carpets. Because we see the alternative and it's just depressing how far over budget things can go.
rayiner 7y ago
> The article is basically a hatchet job. Also labor propaganda.
- theoh 7y ago
  Come on, as if "retail" was intrinsically a good thing. High-end shopping destinations are not part of the solution to the capitalism/consumerism situation we are in, and, most importantly, they don't even cater to the majority.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    Whether or not we need more retail, the article offers no basis for its conjecture that the quality defects are due to use of non-union labor. (And given the raging tire fire that is the MTA, there is ample reason to believe the opposite.)
    - theoh 7y ago
      It's almost routine for high-end architects to produce substandard buildings. Zaha Hadid's work in Guangzhou is a good example. It's not necessarily the fault of the contractors, particularly with complex buildings, but the general message is that you get what you pay for. Unions can be dysfunctional, resisting new tech, but construction is a pretty simple business.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  - harryh 7y ago
    There's a Cartier and a Dior there, but there's also an H&M and a Uniqulo. There is plenty there to cater to the majority.
gatherhunterer 7y ago
I also live in NY and the opinion expressed in the article is a common one. The NYT tore it apart in an article (with particularly well-executed visual effects)[1]. The fact that a lot of people visit it is just a factor of Manhattan being an ever-expanding series of tourist traps. Along with the 9/11 Memorial Shopping Mall the island is looking more and more like Mall of America. Madame Tussaud's is popular, yet it is generally reviled among residents and frequent visitors along with the knock-off Broadway characters at Times Square that will kick your teeth in if you take a selfie with them without paying (yet they remain a popular attraction). New Yorkers will tolerate crappiness if it is at least convenient and will tolerate opulence if it is at least nice to look at. Hudson Yards is neither. If you have a dire case of FOMO then it might seem like a nice addition but it's just a shinier version of the malls that you see at every highway exit in the country. The city's venerable institutions have not changed and still quietly offer arts and music and there was certainly no shortage of world-class dining before Hudson Yards went up. Unless you've been pining for Thomas Keller's latest take on a thousand-dollar bowl of bong water[2], who needs it? 1. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/14/arts/design/hudson-yards-nyc.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/14/arts/design/h... 2. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/dining/pete-wells-per-se-review.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/dining/pete-wells-per-se-...
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  "the 9/11 Memorial Shopping Mall" I think those words should not be ever strung together, and as they are it kinds of says way too many things about a culture that would use them as such. Not to condemn all of New York, but the implications of that sentence is way beyond kitsch. Maybe this is the way NY has always been: it changes, it hustles, it moves. It's never been about a quaint kind of perfection. Maybe it's always been a kind of a rugged, slightly aggressive New World place that maybe should offend the senses of anyone expecting a more refined serenity? So maybe that's just NYC. I'm sure a guy like Trump and his tastes is not some random outlier ...
  - jdavis703 7y ago
    > "the 9/11 Memorial Shopping Mall" I was disgusted the last time I went there. I was there with someone who lost a family member in 9/11. They were clearly still emotionally burdened by their loss, even in 2017. Yet just a few feet away people were taking smiling selfies next to a literal memorial! I've been to many public memorials, and they are somber places. The 9/11 memorial feels like an almost fitting monument to crass 21st century capitalism.
txcwpalpha 7y ago
The entire article reads as someone specifically searching for something to criticize, and some of these are a real stretch. The sloppy cladding and bricks is surely not ideal, but is it really a big deal at all? It's hardly noticeable unless you are specifically looking for things to nitpick. The "damaged wheel" picture in particular is literally just paint chipping on a piece of machinery that hardly anyone will actually see. Who cares? As for the design criticisms, it's clear this person doesn't know much about actual design principles, despite criticizing the designers for it. 1) The escalators are almost certainly purposefully designed like this. This is common in many places, and I especially have seen this design used in many malls. Along with the fact that it guides people to product display areas, it also prevents dangerous traffic jams on the landings between escalators (it takes longer to get on an escalator than it does to get off, so in high traffic situations, you can end up with a lot of bunching at the top of an escalator, which can mean dangerous situations like this [1]). 2) Stairs are a common bottleneck since it takes longer to go up/down stairs than it does to walk on a level walkway. To prevent bottlenecking, the stairs should be wider than the walkways they connect to. This is the same principle you see when tollbooth plazas have more lanes than the highways they connect to. 3) The complaint about the gap in the railings again seems like an incredible nitpick. The author claims it is a 6 inch gap, but based on the photo, unless this person has massive hands, it looks more like a 3-4 inch gap, and I think it's a real stretch to call that "dangerous". 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVqg6sjJK-M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVqg6sjJK-M
- njepa 7y ago
  The standard for luxury malls in the Middle East and Asia can be pretty high, so if it is some sort of international play it matters for sure.
  - txcwpalpha 7y ago
    I have been to many 'luxury' malls in places in Tokyo, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and they suffer from the same small insignificant 'flaws' just like the ones mentioned in this article. In fact, many of the luxury developments in Asia and the Middle East (Singapore, Qatar, and the UAE especially) are notorious for cutting corners by using underskilled, underpaid labor to build these luxury developments, causing cut sloppy work. I would say the standards are only 'pretty high' if you only look skin deep.
btown 7y ago
In isolation it my be great that this is better than a rail yard, but it's important to note that Hudson Yards was financed in part by a diversion of a year's worth of funding from low-income housing elsewhere in New York: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/04/hudson-yards-financing-eb5-investor-visa-program-immigration/586897/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/04/hudson-yards-financin... ... and in that context, it's notable that it's not a set of constructions that's built to last. Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19644880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19644880
- Ericson2314 7y ago
  Yeah OP has to develop an LVT mindset. It's not "is the development good" or "is the development better than what was there before", but "is this the best use of the space". The real good design is the rail yard person who left space for pilings to put something above in the 70s. (Some NYT article led with this fact.)
- bradleyjg 7y ago
  The EB-5 visa isn’t an affordable housing program and NY state doesn’t have a fixed allotment from it.
- leereeves 7y ago
  I can't find anything in that article about "diversion of a year's worth of funding from low-income housing elsewhere in New York". Though it certainly discusses some questionable gerrymandering of the targeted economic area.
  - btown 7y ago
    > All in all, Related solicited investments from some 3,200 foreign visa-seekers. This figure is significant, since the number of new visas that the U.S. issues each year under EB-5 has a hard cap of 10,000. Given that each eligible investor may claim visas for immediate family members—and since these family visas (an average of three) also count toward the overall cap—the Hudson Yards development may have easily claimed an entire year’s worth of visas issued under EB-5.
jseliger 7y ago
The article is basically a hatchet job. I have a theory that writers in the media are disposed towards complaining, or rewarded for it with readers. It's also easier and frequently more fun to be negative than positive. So on almost any topic (Facebook, Hudson Yards, Tesla, whatever) there's a tendency to needlessly accentuate the negative. Meanwhile, the writer has no idea what he (or she?) would've done with Hudson Yards, given the same opportunity and budget. Neither do I, for that matter.
- megaremote 7y ago
  Good. That is they way they should be. Maybe you would prefer if they were all optimists just talking everything up, ignoring issues? No, I prefer them to point out issues.
- winningcontinue 7y ago
  I'd expand that negativity not only to the media writers but societal culture in general. We live in a culture of snark where anything done is torn down and picked apart. These critics have never built anything, accomplished anything themselves. I suppose though, this is better than the alternative of people slurping and ingratiating themselves to everything.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
Camillo 7y ago
The article is accompanied by several pictures, and what they show is shoddy build quality for what is supposed to be a luxury development. Would you accept that level of quality if you were having your own house built? Given that what they're saying is the plain, visible truth, what's the objection?

subpixel 7y ago

People sit on the floor b/c of a lack of seating which is by conscious design so as to inhibit people lounging around.

walterbell 7y ago
Since lack of seating is forcing people to sit on the floor, they can try some other anti-seating technologies that have been deployed in London and New York.
dTal 7y ago
In other words, hostile design. If you're not doing a New York hustle walk on your way to or from spending money, you're not welcome. No sitting down to chat, not even if you've bought food. Because the unforgivable sin in a capitalist culture is engaging with your fellow humans for free, instead of paying money to engage with goods and services.

asveikau 7y ago

I think the questions of building quality are a bit broader than just this project. It causes me to ponder how ambitious new construction projects always end up very expensive and showing issues. It feels like the US has lost its knack for big ambitious construction that it had in the 20th century. This seems independent of whether or not it's a popular attraction.

tormeh 7y ago
Having read a lot, and listened to podcasts, about BER, the takeaway seems to be that quality control is of utmost importance. The amount of money you spend on quality control almost can't be high enough. 30% or more of the budget just for quality control now seems entirely reasonable to me. And it can't be just at the end, it has to be an ongoing thing where everything is sanity checked as it is being done by people who preferably know their shit better than the people actually doing the work. Starting with the fundamental assumptions of the architectural drawings and ending with the carpets. Because we see the alternative and it's just depressing how far over budget things can go.

rayiner 7y ago

> The article is basically a hatchet job. Also labor propaganda.

theoh 7y ago
Come on, as if "retail" was intrinsically a good thing. High-end shopping destinations are not part of the solution to the capitalism/consumerism situation we are in, and, most importantly, they don't even cater to the majority.
- rayiner 7y ago
  Whether or not we need more retail, the article offers no basis for its conjecture that the quality defects are due to use of non-union labor. (And given the raging tire fire that is the MTA, there is ample reason to believe the opposite.)
  - theoh 7y ago
    It's almost routine for high-end architects to produce substandard buildings. Zaha Hadid's work in Guangzhou is a good example. It's not necessarily the fault of the contractors, particularly with complex buildings, but the general message is that you get what you pay for. Unions can be dysfunctional, resisting new tech, but construction is a pretty simple business.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- harryh 7y ago
  There's a Cartier and a Dior there, but there's also an H&M and a Uniqulo. There is plenty there to cater to the majority.

gatherhunterer 7y ago

I also live in NY and the opinion expressed in the article is a common one. The NYT tore it apart in an article (with particularly well-executed visual effects)[1]. The fact that a lot of people visit it is just a factor of Manhattan being an ever-expanding series of tourist traps. Along with the 9/11 Memorial Shopping Mall the island is looking more and more like Mall of America. Madame Tussaud's is popular, yet it is generally reviled among residents and frequent visitors along with the knock-off Broadway characters at Times Square that will kick your teeth in if you take a selfie with them without paying (yet they remain a popular attraction). New Yorkers will tolerate crappiness if it is at least convenient and will tolerate opulence if it is at least nice to look at. Hudson Yards is neither. If you have a dire case of FOMO then it might seem like a nice addition but it's just a shinier version of the malls that you see at every highway exit in the country. The city's venerable institutions have not changed and still quietly offer arts and music and there was certainly no shortage of world-class dining before Hudson Yards went up. Unless you've been pining for Thomas Keller's latest take on a thousand-dollar bowl of bong water[2], who needs it? 1. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/14/arts/design/hudson-yards-nyc.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/14/arts/design/h... 2. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/dining/pete-wells-per-se-review.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/dining/pete-wells-per-se-...

sonnyblarney 7y ago
"the 9/11 Memorial Shopping Mall" I think those words should not be ever strung together, and as they are it kinds of says way too many things about a culture that would use them as such. Not to condemn all of New York, but the implications of that sentence is way beyond kitsch. Maybe this is the way NY has always been: it changes, it hustles, it moves. It's never been about a quaint kind of perfection. Maybe it's always been a kind of a rugged, slightly aggressive New World place that maybe should offend the senses of anyone expecting a more refined serenity? So maybe that's just NYC. I'm sure a guy like Trump and his tastes is not some random outlier ...
- jdavis703 7y ago
  > "the 9/11 Memorial Shopping Mall" I was disgusted the last time I went there. I was there with someone who lost a family member in 9/11. They were clearly still emotionally burdened by their loss, even in 2017. Yet just a few feet away people were taking smiling selfies next to a literal memorial! I've been to many public memorials, and they are somber places. The 9/11 memorial feels like an almost fitting monument to crass 21st century capitalism.

txcwpalpha 7y ago

The entire article reads as someone specifically searching for something to criticize, and some of these are a real stretch. The sloppy cladding and bricks is surely not ideal, but is it really a big deal at all? It's hardly noticeable unless you are specifically looking for things to nitpick. The "damaged wheel" picture in particular is literally just paint chipping on a piece of machinery that hardly anyone will actually see. Who cares? As for the design criticisms, it's clear this person doesn't know much about actual design principles, despite criticizing the designers for it. 1) The escalators are almost certainly purposefully designed like this. This is common in many places, and I especially have seen this design used in many malls. Along with the fact that it guides people to product display areas, it also prevents dangerous traffic jams on the landings between escalators (it takes longer to get on an escalator than it does to get off, so in high traffic situations, you can end up with a lot of bunching at the top of an escalator, which can mean dangerous situations like this [1]). 2) Stairs are a common bottleneck since it takes longer to go up/down stairs than it does to walk on a level walkway. To prevent bottlenecking, the stairs should be wider than the walkways they connect to. This is the same principle you see when tollbooth plazas have more lanes than the highways they connect to. 3) The complaint about the gap in the railings again seems like an incredible nitpick. The author claims it is a 6 inch gap, but based on the photo, unless this person has massive hands, it looks more like a 3-4 inch gap, and I think it's a real stretch to call that "dangerous". 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVqg6sjJK-M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVqg6sjJK-M

njepa 7y ago
The standard for luxury malls in the Middle East and Asia can be pretty high, so if it is some sort of international play it matters for sure.
- txcwpalpha 7y ago
  I have been to many 'luxury' malls in places in Tokyo, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and they suffer from the same small insignificant 'flaws' just like the ones mentioned in this article. In fact, many of the luxury developments in Asia and the Middle East (Singapore, Qatar, and the UAE especially) are notorious for cutting corners by using underskilled, underpaid labor to build these luxury developments, causing cut sloppy work. I would say the standards are only 'pretty high' if you only look skin deep.

btown 7y ago

In isolation it my be great that this is better than a rail yard, but it's important to note that Hudson Yards was financed in part by a diversion of a year's worth of funding from low-income housing elsewhere in New York: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/04/hudson-yards-financing-eb5-investor-visa-program-immigration/586897/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/04/hudson-yards-financin... ... and in that context, it's notable that it's not a set of constructions that's built to last. Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19644880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19644880

Ericson2314 7y ago
Yeah OP has to develop an LVT mindset. It's not "is the development good" or "is the development better than what was there before", but "is this the best use of the space". The real good design is the rail yard person who left space for pilings to put something above in the 70s. (Some NYT article led with this fact.)
bradleyjg 7y ago
The EB-5 visa isn’t an affordable housing program and NY state doesn’t have a fixed allotment from it.
leereeves 7y ago
I can't find anything in that article about "diversion of a year's worth of funding from low-income housing elsewhere in New York". Though it certainly discusses some questionable gerrymandering of the targeted economic area.
- btown 7y ago
  > All in all, Related solicited investments from some 3,200 foreign visa-seekers. This figure is significant, since the number of new visas that the U.S. issues each year under EB-5 has a hard cap of 10,000. Given that each eligible investor may claim visas for immediate family members—and since these family visas (an average of three) also count toward the overall cap—the Hudson Yards development may have easily claimed an entire year’s worth of visas issued under EB-5.

jseliger 7y ago

The article is basically a hatchet job. I have a theory that writers in the media are disposed towards complaining, or rewarded for it with readers. It's also easier and frequently more fun to be negative than positive. So on almost any topic (Facebook, Hudson Yards, Tesla, whatever) there's a tendency to needlessly accentuate the negative. Meanwhile, the writer has no idea what he (or she?) would've done with Hudson Yards, given the same opportunity and budget. Neither do I, for that matter.

megaremote 7y ago
Good. That is they way they should be. Maybe you would prefer if they were all optimists just talking everything up, ignoring issues? No, I prefer them to point out issues.
winningcontinue 7y ago
I'd expand that negativity not only to the media writers but societal culture in general. We live in a culture of snark where anything done is torn down and picked apart. These critics have never built anything, accomplished anything themselves. I suppose though, this is better than the alternative of people slurping and ingratiating themselves to everything.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

Camillo 7y ago

The article is accompanied by several pictures, and what they show is shoddy build quality for what is supposed to be a luxury development. Would you accept that level of quality if you were having your own house built? Given that what they're saying is the plain, visible truth, what's the objection?