On 11 hectares of the Hudson Yards mixed-use complex in western Midtown, Vessel takes center stage. Compared to the surrounding high-rise buildings, the 46-meter structure, consisting of stairs and horizontal platforms, does not seem huge. The viewer retains this impression on a short journey from the new metro station, the last on the 7th line, until the moment when he is nearby. Waiting for your turn among people like you who want to climb to the top of this giant “basket”, sparkling with red polished metal, you feel like a Gulliver in the land of giants.
It is surprising that the giant spatial structure in the portfolio of the London studio of Thomas Heatherwick is placed in the section of objects, where its neighbors are a London double-decker bus, perfume bottles, an Olympic flame, outdoor furniture, voluminous decor of building facades and just as much more. In terms of the scale and complexity of its design, the Vessel fits well among the architectural projects.
The task of creating an art object for the public area of Hudson Yards at Heatherwick's studio was creatively solved. The result of the design was a spatial structure, a full-fledged element of the urban environment with which one can interact at the physical level.
The idea of a structure consisting of stairs and horizontal platforms-links between them was borrowed from India. In ancient times, due to lack of water, giant stone wells were built here. And although the architecture of these wells is very different, it has one thing in common - the stairs, along which people went down to the water.
The prototype of Vessel was the staircase of ancient Indian wells, located along the walls at several levels in a certain given rhythm. Heatherwick's bureau came up with the idea of arranging them in a circle: alternating flights of stairs and horizontal platforms, they got a structure of lintels and voids, reminiscent of honeycombs. The shape of the structure repeats a truncated cone turned upside down with a generatrix bent outward. This technique partially smoothed out the image of the waste paper basket, which inevitably arises at the sight of an inverted cone, but still not completely. Having equipped the “basket” with 80 platforms-platforms and 154 spans with 2,500 steps with a total length of more than three kilometers, which do not lead anywhere, it has been turned into a tourist attraction, a giant attraction - an object of desire for selfie lovers.
The outer surfaces of the structure were covered with polished copper-red metal, which repeatedly reflects what is happening on the square. Heatherwick's creation has been unambiguously criticized for this shiny red cladding: Thomas Kimmelman, architecture critic for the New York Times, calls it tasteless, he also calls Vessel a wastebasket. And if the comparison with a basket looks more or less appropriate, then the cladding of the surfaces of the structure, which sharply contrasts with the inexpressive gray shades of the skyscraper frames, the glazing of the facades and the paving of the square, attracts the eye, and the reflections multiplying in the mirror surfaces create a feeling of movement. Obviously, the authors expected to get this effect, supporting the name Vessel, if translated from English as a vessel.
Heatherwick is also criticized for gigantism, far from human scale. I don't want to agree with this either - on the square framed by high-rise towers, an object commensurate with them can organically exist. In addition, the necessary human scale is set by the trees planted between the “basket” and the mall.
Heatherwick's studio sees its mission to make the world a better place by creating “interesting and soulful places” where you can forget about the complexities of the world around you for a while: you can find out about this on the studio's website. In Vessel's case, she undoubtedly succeeded: climbing up and down her own, unique route, contemplating the urban landscape and the river beyond the railway tracks, for a while, you forget about everything that does not come into view here and now.
