Carter's Review

This mid-block apartment building at 441 East 57th Street is the city's most Chanel-inspired structure: a white dress with black piping and great proportions.

Chanel's classic designs are simple, clean lines with luxurious texture. Reflective glass, however, was not in her vocabulary.

This building's cladding is anodized metal in fritted glass. According to Jon Kully, principal and co-founder of FLAnk, the building's architect, "the assembly evokes a block of townhomes stitched into a unified column." "This coupling of distinction and unity is affirmed through employing fifty-one panel typologies, totaling over fifteen-hundred framed puzzle pieces. The ubiquitous frit pattern evokes the nearby brick texture on neighborhood façades creating a truly striking structure."

FLAnk architects fashioned this dazzling jewel, a 15-story building with just 6 units and managed not to spill over onto the next-door garden of Tina Brown, the editor of Newsweek and the Daily Beast and the former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, and Harold Evans, former president of the trade group of Random House. The media couple and the co-op board of their building sued to block the development but eventually withdrew their suit. Beauty overwhelms!

The apartments range in size from 1,700 to 5,500 squiare feet and feature charcoal stained maple flooring, BTX motorized shades and recessed cove lighting.

Kitchens have a built-in breakfast banquet and a La Cornue Cornufe range and oven, a Miele dishwasher, a Whitehouse 35-inch porcelain sink with a Dornbracht Tara faucet and a Viking refrigerator/freezer and wine chiller.

Master baths have radiant heated flooring, 18-inch bluestone flooring and white Thassos wall tiles, and sambuca-stained maple cabinets and a white Thassos marble vanity, and Toto Aquia Dual Floush water closets.

The bulding includes dedicated storage in the lobby to store packages and dry cleaning and offers a complimentary year membership at Sports Club L.A. and daily white-glove home cleaning by the Lindquist Agency.

Entry-control and delivery management and security is provided by CyberDoorman, an interactive touch screen control panel connected to a 24-hour monitoring and security service.

Each resident gets a special key that automatically opens the front door and keyed elevators.

The access and control program also operates on a biometric thumb print reader in which each regular vistor can be given access for particular time frames or days. Each resdient can operate their home remotely via Smart 441, a home automation operating system, that can adjust climate control, raise or lower shades, turn on or off lighting and control home video and audio.

The building, which is also known as The Collection, is on the former site of the townhouse of composer Cy Coleman.

Mick Walsdorf is also a principal and co-founder of FLAnk, whose other projects include the copper-clad apartment building at 385 West 12th Street.