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It’s being described as the Stairs To Nowhere and nicknamed the social climber, but if you ask us, it looks like a set of ribs (human not pork). The thing in question? The much ballyhooed “Eiffel Tower” of Hudson Yards, the permanent public art centerpiece of the enormous development rising on the Far West Side. As reported by The New York Times and Design Boom, the project is expected to be completed in 2018 as the anchor for a five-acre plaza and garden.
Vessel, as it’s called, is the handiwork of designer de jour Thomas Heatherwick, a Brit known for envelope-pushing proposals such as a bridge across the Thames that is also a tree-filled park. Stairs do indeed factor into the installation—some 154 interconnecting flights of them, in fact, comprising 2,500 individual steps and 80 landings that add up to a mile of pathways rising from a 50-foot diameter base before widening at the top to 150 feet. Clad in glass and cooper, Vessel is 15 stories high and weighs 600 tons.
It will definitely be hard to miss, and will undoubtedly entice tourists from off of the High Line and elsewhere. A word of advice if you plan to visit Vessel some day: Make sure you’re in shape; 150 flights is a long climb.
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Rendering: Courtesy Visual House Nelson Byrd Woltz
Rendering: Courtesy Visual House Nelson Byrd Woltz
Rendering: Courtesy Visual House Nelson Byrd Woltz
Rendering: Courtesy Visual House Nelson Byrd Woltz
Rendering: Courtesy Visual House Nelson Byrd Woltz