Every apartment is shaped a little differently because the building's exterior support beams cross the floor-to-ceiling windows at various angles, Nouvel said. It made for an interesting design challenge.
"We tried to do a kind of dialogue with the views and with the buildings around,'' he says. "You frame it with different shapes in the city and the neighboring buildings."Wine Vaults
Amenities at the tower include a movie theater, a private dining room overlooking Central Park, and temperature-controlled wine vaults. Residents can buy studio apartments on the 14th through 16th floors for their personal service staff.
The project was conceived in 2006, before Houston-based Hines acquired the site from the museum for $126 million. The tower—initially planned to be 200 feet taller, about the height of the Empire State Building—was shelved amid the credit crisis, which brought property sales to a near standstill and made construction financing scarce.
In 2013, closely held Pontiac Land Group helped revive the project with a $200 million equity investment. A consortium of Asian banks provided $860 million of construction financing. Hines expects to finish construction by November 2018.
Manhattan's luxury property market has soared in recent years, with wealthy investors paying ever-higher prices for trophy homes. A duplex atop Extell Development's One57 tower sold in December for $100.5 million, a New York City record. A penthouse at Macklowe Properties and CIM Group's 432 Park Ave., the tallest residential building in the Western hemisphere at 1,397 feet, is under contract for $95 million.
While plans for 53W53 predate those transactions, the developers always intended the project to be in an elite sliver of Manhattan's luxury market, Penick says.
"The basic strategy hasn't really changed,'' he says. "It's a very attractive location adjoining the Museum of Modern Art. We always knew that it would be high end.''