I was in NYC on holiday last year. I’m from a different country, and was having trouble buying a week ticket. The machine took my money but didn’t print out a ticket. I approached the booth asking for help and was told that isn’t really their job. The turnstile then didn’t work for me, so I asked for help again and was told that wasn’t their job either. Curious as to what they actually get paid for

Just because something is white doesn't make it liminal or barren, blank white spaces can use their shape to give them character and personality, which Calatrava undeniably does. No one ever accused his work of having undistinctive shaping.

If empty white liminal spaces out of scifi are your thing then sure he's your man. But more typical real spaces are full of clutter like benches and other signs of humans actually living there.

Can we just actually fucking fix the train station part? All of this money should go to more platforms and more tunnels. Every cent spent on anything else is inexcusable.

Looks like a fucking Apple Store

You're saying this like Calatrava isn't absolutely brilliant. The dude's a terrible architect if you're on the paying end for any of his work but he is a pretty technically gifted architect and his work is undeniably unique and usually incredibly beautiful.

Not sure what axe you have to grind with architecture, but it reeks of the same attitude as "Modern art sucks" people.

Generic soulless design 🤮

A mall that will be leased out to the same shitty repetition of retail you will find in the surrounding blocks. Sweetgreen, Starbucks, Chopt, Poke Bowl, a bank at each corner, H&M, Duane Reade, Chipotle, Shake Shack, CVS, and four or five wannabe French places selling overpriced baked goods.

Looks pretty.

I've seen a LOT of these concept art renditions through the decades. Maybe I'm jaded, but I'll believe it when I see it actually happen.

Right now, the biggest problem is what the train station is meant for -- TRAIN SERVICE. We need more trains, we need more tunnels, we need more tracks, we need wider platforms, etc.

My 2 cents? I don't care if Penn Station looks like a soulless, utilitarian hellscape that's more artistically barren than a plain wall. As long as IT WORKS AS A TRAIN STATION. We can debate which open-air aesthetic we want to go with after we figure out the tough problems like capacity.

This train station was designed before the Wright Bros took to the sky, before the Model T reached popularity -- and it was intentionally overdesigned to anticipate 50+ years of expected growth. And then they tore the entire above-ground structure down around the time we sent mankind to the moon. And kept using the service for longer and longer -- so much that the "maximum" the original designers intended would be considered a slow day today.

We are at the maximum capacity the current system allows. We literally cannot fit more trains in the station. We literally cannot fit more trains in the tunnels. The trains themselves are bursting at the seams during rush hour. We have very real problems like tunnel degradation due to Sandy.

This concept art is just a fresh coat of paint. It adds nothing meaningful to solve the very real problems of the last 40-50 years of growth and deferred maintenance, let alone plannning for the next 40-50 years.

Developers do things either because it's cheap or get them attention. Architects loving giving pats on the and awards for shot like this.

GOOD TIMES =)

They suppose to run after the jumper and force him to pay? Guard the turnstiles like a soccer goalie?

It doesn't even get the aesthetics right. This is a boring, uninspired design that still lacks natural light.

Because architects are one of the most insular industries around. Rich people only want award winning prestigious architects because they have no taste themselves and just compete with other people from that class and architects are the ones that give each other the awards

Won't the kiosks get in the way of the players??

Is it going to be an actual skatepark or just the banks from before?

Thank you, will do! If I’m able to get anything, I’d like to let you know I’ll be adopting a snobbish Trans-Atlantic accent, referring to myself as a “Patron of the Arts,” and pretending I’m from an old money UES family. 😂

They chose the wrong place for Oculus. They thought tourists would flood the mall because of The One, but it never happened. It is far as fuck, they wasted so much space inside, and left all the stores pretty much on the sides, but wtf? Wrong place for a mall; terrible interior design. The exterior taste is subjective. Would have been better if they did the interior better and put this mall elsewhere.

Not at all the case. Architecture firms live and die by ADA guidelines. Those are hefty lawsuits if you design something not compliant. Fines can be in the millions. If there's nowhere to sit it's because the client, in this case the stakeholders on this project mandated it. Architects don't get to decide stuff like that.

Look, as long as no tax $$$ is going into this and no tax exemption, I am , oh wait, who am I kidding?

Out of curiosity what kind of help are we talking about? Directions? Or reporting something? I believe you but I don’t see what more info they can provide that google maps can’t provide (directions)

Unbelievable, we have a vaccine for polio! This is bringing us backwards almost 70 years

Gothamist wouldn’t publish that, NY Post would put it on the front page.

Didn’t know they had skateboarding parks in the 1800s

Being better than the rest of the USA is almost the lowest bar you could possibly set. Mediocre, decaying and filthy infrastructure is not going to keep NYC competitive into the future- we're basically just coasting on successes from generations ago, at this point. It can't (and won't) last