For all its metropolitan dynamism and heady sense of possibility, New York is not a city that produces good housing. Its building codes are so strict, its land values so high, and its construction practises so intractable, that the results tend towards grim stacks of cells. New apartment blocks – even at the high end – do little to disguise the fact that they are simply physical spreadsheets of units, expressions of brutal economic efficiency, occasionally garnished with a thin architectural dressing.
“New York is supposedly the greatest, most competitive city on Earth,” says Sam Alison-Mayne, who grew up in Los Angeles, son of the prominent west coast architect Thom Mayne. “Competition usually breeds the best solutions for things – but not when it comes to housing.” While he was working as a contractor, he met Sebastian Mendez, an Argentinian architect at Foster + Partners at the time, and the two realised there was scope to do things differently. They quit their jobs, founded a development company, Tankhouse, and, 10 years later, have built three of the city’s most innovative housing projects in recent memory.
