Leaving Shame on a Lower Floor

Among the many vertiginous renderings for the penthouse apartments at 432 Park Avenue, the nearly 1,400-foot-high Cuisenaire rod that topped off last month, is one of its master (or mistress) of the universe bathrooms, a glittering, reflective container of glass and marble. The image shows a huge egg-shaped tub planted before a 10-foot-square window, 90 or more stories up. All of Lower Manhattan is spread out like the view from someone’s private plane.

Talk about power washing.

The dizzying aerial baths at 432 Park, while certainly the highest in the city, are not the only exposed throne rooms in New York. All across Manhattan, in glassy towers soon to be built or nearing completion, see-through chambers will flaunt their owners, naked, toweled or robed, like so many museum vitrines — although the audience for all this exposure is probably avian, not human.

It seems the former touchstones of bathroom luxury (Edwardian England, say, or ancient Rome) have been replaced by the glass cube of the Apple store on Fifth Avenue. In fact, Richard Dubrow, marketing director at Macklowe Properties, which built 432 and that Apple store, described the penthouse “wet rooms” (or shower rooms) in just those terms.

Everyone wants a window, said Vickey Barron, a broker at Douglas Elliman and director of sales at Walker Tower, a conversion of the old Verizon building on West 18th Street. “But now it has to be ­ a Window.” She made air quotes around the word. “Now what most people wanted in their living rooms, they want in their bathrooms. They’ll say, ‘What? No View?’ ” (...)

From the corner bathrooms at 215 Chrystie Street, Ian Schrager’s upcoming Lower East Side entry designed by Herzog & De Meuron and with interior architecture by the English minimalist John Pawson, you can see the Chrysler Building and the 59th Street Bridge, if you don’t pass out from vertigo. The 19-foot-long bathrooms of the full-floor apartments are placed at the building’s seamless glass corners. It was Mr. Pawson who designed the poured concrete tub that oversees that sheer 90-degree angle.

Just looking at the renderings, this reporter had to stifle the urge to duck.

“Ian’s approach is always, If there’s a view, there should be glass,” Mr. Pawson said. “It’s not about putting yourself on show, it’s about enjoying what’s outside. Any exhibitionism is an unfortunate by-product. I think what’s really nice is that at this level you’re creating a gathering space. You can congregate in the bathroom, you can even share the bath or bring a chair in.”

by Penelope Green, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: DBOX for CIM Group & Macklowe Properties