(New York) The lucky few who were able to immerse themselves this week in the latest New York attraction had the impression of “floating in the air”, evolving on mirrors and glass plates 300 m above the skyline. empty, in the fourth tallest skyscraper in the megalopolis.
Air, a so-called immersive art installation, created by artist Kenzo Digital, opens to the public on Thursday, in the new One Vanderbilt tower in the heart of Manhattan. An elevator takes the intrepid up in 42 seconds, for a breathtaking view of the New York Island framed by the East River and the Hudson.
There, visitors stroll over three floors in a kind of giant all-glass observatory, Summit One Vanderbilt, offering an extraordinary spectacle while losing all its bearings.
With the feeling of “floating in the air”.
The experience “changes the perception of space and plunges the visitor into a halo of silhouettes and skyscrapers”, according to Kenzo Digital.
For Nick Barat, one of the rare visitors handpicked before the opening of October 21, the experience allows “to think the relationship that everyone forges with the city”.
Located at the corner of the famous 42e rue and avenue Vanderbilt, the eponymous tower was designed by the firm Kohn Pedersen Fox, built between 2016 and 2019 and opened in September 2020. It is 397 m – 427 m with its spire – which propels it to the 4e place in New York, behind the One World Trade Center tower, on the site destroyed by the 9/11 attacks, the residential towers of the Central Park Tower complex and the skyscraper 111 on the 57e Street.