Selldorf's Co-ops: Leaning Tower of Chelsea?

The NY Daily News recently reported that the New York City Buildings Department had suspended construction of the Selldorf project, because, as an agency spokeswoman said, "the pillars forming the exterior are misaligned. This could be characterized as a structural deficiency." If true, this could be a deal-breaker for the building's major selling point---huge elevator shafts that would allow residents to drive straight in and be lifted up to their apartments in their cars, which would be parked there in a personal garage. If the structure's verticals are out of whack, fuhggedaboudit.

Had the tower been by Peter Eisenman---who designed a small building in Japan with lines so deliberately off-kilter that it looked like it had been through an earthquake--no one would have thought anything amiss.

For its "The I-Team: Special Investigation" series, the Daily News dispatched an independent engineer to weigh in, and he declared the building structurally intact. It's possible, then, that the criticisms are unfair. On the other hand, when execution problems plague even top-of-the-line local schemes like Yoshio Taniguchi's Museum of Modern Art expansion---which before completion looked more expressionist than its rectilinear-minded architect could have intended---you're reminded that building on the square is a challenge for anyone who braves the ordeal of New York construction.