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Today, an 82nd-floor penthouse in the building is currently on the market for an eye-popping $90 million. So everything around them, amenities, interior, fancy architects' names are only there to assure the buyer that the real estate will keep its value. Andi Schmied is a visual artist and architect from Budapest, Hungary. Private views a high-rise panorama of manhattan by richard. Andi's most recent publication is "Private Views: A High-Rise Panorama of Manhattan", which she spoke about during her TEDxVienna talk at this year's UNTOLD conference. Andi Schmied, a photographer from Budapest, crafted a fake identity as a Hungarian billionaire art gallerist to tour some of New York City's most expensive penthouses last year, Christopher Bonanos reported for Curbed.
Basically, it all started with the biggest cliché. What are you taking away from your experience touring the apartments? Private views a high-rise panorama of manhattan review. So, my only knowledge of the buyers, is that the vast majority of them are buying these homes as second-third-fourth-fifth (etc. ) This was the way both my previous book Jing Jin City, and my current book Private Views: A High-Rise Panorama of Manhattan came along… So only time will tell.
To master this guise, Schmied adapted Gabriella's persona based on the questions she got from real-estate agents. So I was really just going to capture the views initially. Private views a high-rise panorama of manhattan institute. What kind of experience were you expecting when you posed as a billionaire viewing these properties? These are the buildings that are breaking engineering records. How did your expectations of the experience differ from reality?
What kind of people do you imagine buy these types of property? As for the fancy apartments themselves? Following Andi's talk, I had the chance to learn more about her personal experience posing as a billionaire in order to attend viewings of the most elite high-rise apartments in Manhattan. The access was instant. Then once I am more rationally approaching my subject, I go back and continue. 75 million to $66 million for the 72nd-floor penthouse. And as a Hungarian artist visiting the city for a limited amount of time, I simply had no way of entering those towers.
As Schmied pointed out in her interview with Curbed, most people can only get such views of the city by visiting one of the city's observation decks at places like the Empire State Building or One World Trade Center. But by simply saying that I got the camera from my grandfather, who had urged me to document all my special moments in life, I more than got away with it. So it didn't seem like too high of a risk. From simple things like casting huge shadows over up-until-then sunny areas, or raising square-footage prices to an extent that people must leave their neighborhoods, these buildings in my opinion also represent something very unhealthy for society. "They'd just put me in this box of 'artsy billionaire'". And I figured that nothing worse can happen to me, than being sent away and told that I can not use my photographs. Schmied told Curbed that she toured the New York skyscrapers with her phony identity during an artist residency in Brooklyn. And as I kept taking pictures of this view, a view which is seen and photographed by thousands every day, I started to have this yearning to see the city from above, but from all different perspectives. What do you have planned, or what are you working on now? However, as I spent three months in New York, I had time to immerse myself in this obsession. What I did think through though, is what would be the absolute worst-case scenario if during a viewing they would realize I am not an actual billionaire.
Currently, these are the tallest buildings that you can see from every corner of the city. I was left with two options: forget about getting up there, or become someone who would be granted access. If an agent asked about the designer of her necklace, for example, she would simply tell them it was a Hungarian designer. "They are all the same! Visit Insider's homepage for more stories. And Central Park Tower - where Schmied says she toured the 100th floor - boasts the ranking of second-tallest skyscraper in the city after One World Trade Center and the tallest residential tower in the world. Of course, ultimately it is still the same thing, but it was packaged a bit differently. She told me what she took away from the experience which resulted in the creation of her book.
"They are all the same, " Schmied said of the penthouses. Another building Schmied visited, Steinway Tower at 111 West 57th, is considered the world's skinniest skyscraper when you look at its height-to-width ratio. Amenities are already just simply part of the weird race between the developers to seduce the buyers of this competitive market. With this persona, I could even choose the specific apartment I wanted to enter一at least from the possibilities that were currently for sale or rent on the market. The address and the view are the main selling points. What sparked your initial interest in high-rise properties of the elite in New York City? I come from Budapest, which is a low-rise city, so it was mesmerizing to be able to observe the city's motion from so high above.
The 1, 428-foot tower is 24 times as tall as it is wide and has only one residence on each floor. People with a net worth of over 30million USDs are called "Ultra-high-net-worth individuals", and an average "ultra-high-net-worth individual" owns 5 properties, so logically they don't live in 4 of those. Are they worth the price? Or if an agent asked if she had a chef, at the next viewing she would start talking about "our chef" and his needs, she said. I certainly would not want to live in these places. The crème de la crème of Manhattan real estate. She said she went by her middle name, Gabriella, so that her previous projects on luxury buildings in China wouldn't raise suspicions if agents Googled her, and invented a fictional husband and 21-month-year-old son. Several of the skyscrapers she toured for her project sit on Billionaires' Row, a wealthy enclave made up of eight recently-built luxury residential skyscrapers along the southern end of Central Park in Manhattan. But once you are accepted as someone who has access, they don't really doubt anymore.
So I opted for the second one. First I was sure there must be a lot of Russian/Chinese/Middle-Eastern oligarchy… and while there sure is, most of the buyers are Americans, at least this is what agents told me. To take the photographs for her book, Schmied used a film camera and told the real-estate agents they were to show her husband. High ceilings, glass facades, huge walk-in closets, very specific kitchen layouts with a breakfast bar in the middle, and large white walls to hang up out scaled art are everywhere. One of these towers is 432 Park Avenue, which was the tallest residential building in the world at the time of its completion in 2015. The developers and sales teams for 432 Park Avenue, Steinway Tower, and Central Park Tower did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment. What was your reason for wanting to document them? In an interview with Bonanos, Schmied, who is from Budapest, explained how she convinced real-estate agents to show her the priciest pads in some of the city's most coveted buildings, including 432 Park Avenue, Steinway Tower, and Central Park Tower, which became the world's tallest residential building when it topped out last fall.
It made Gabriella an "artsy billionaire" with whom they suddenly started to speak about MoMA's new collection. Did anything stand out to you as particularly unique besides the views, the address, and the amenities? There are a lot of strange rich people, so that is not a big deal. It is a place full of tax avoidance, name-dropping, millions of dollars, the ecological workings of architecture, huge designer names, etc. The tower is right around the corner from 220 Central Park South, where billionaire hedge-fund CEO Ken Griffin paid $238 million for a penthouse spread last year, breaking the record for the most expensive home sale in the US. And in the apartments themselves, the layout and the proportions of spaces are almost identical throughout the buildings. Homes, and the major purpose of the purchase is just to keep their money safe, not to actually live there. Schmied wasn't particularly impressed. As an architect yourself, what was your initial impression of the apartments? And what I know about the actual buyers is mainly based on research.
I never really plan, and my projects come along as I go… My artistic process is usually quite intuitive; first I do things, then I think about what I did and why it is relevant. The buildings that Schmied toured for her project are home to some of the most coveted and expensive real estate in New York City. A full-floor residence in the building is currently listed for $65. So I started to walk for miles and miles and listed all the buildings I wanted to climb to take pictures, but I very quickly realized that all those supertalls, with their robust presence in the city, are newly-built luxury residential skyscrapers一a secluded and secretive universe, only accessible to the very few who belong there. In 56 Leonard—a building by Herzog & de Meuron—, the interior was also designed by the Swiss architect duo, and it was probably the only building where the interior felt a bit different with bare concrete columns in the middle of the luxury space. I loved discovering this completely hidden and obscure universe, which people don't even know exists. When some agents asked about it, she would tell them, "'Oh, my grandfather gave it to me - to record all the special moments in my life, '" she said. Not really, to be honest.