![]() ![]() ![]() In June, a project manager told the New York Post it would likely be finished by the end of the summer: “We are working really hard to make that happen.” And they did make it happen, just four years or so since construction started. Last summer, though, the bean ruptured because the exposed side of bean expanded more in the hot sun than /TkxK9VxxIM- Architext14 January 28, 2023 4 years ago, work started on anish kapoor’s 85 ton bean which is tucked under herzog de meuron’s 56 Leonard st. ![]() This is the story of Differential Expansion. (Alexico did not respond to my questions about the alleged rupture.) By September 2021, construction had picked up again, and Curbed bid farewell to the half-bean amid expectations it would be done in a matter of weeks.īut the bean’s troubles were not yet over, at least according to one report claiming the stainless-steel shell ruptured last summer as the unshaded part of the sculpture expanded in the sun’s heat faster than the portion in the building’s shadow, causing it to split like an overcooked garbanzo. For a while, it was known as the “half-bean,” its insides open for all to see. In 2018, the Tribeca Citizen obtained an email from the fabricator, Performance Structures Inc., to the developer, elaborating on its complexity: 38 stainless-steel plates plus a supporting framework, all welded together precisely “so that when all were assembled the results would create a perfect sculptural form.” (Alexico Group, the building’s developer, told me in an email that “the proprietary means and methods used to actualize the seamless finish had never previously been utilized.”) Then came COVID, stalling the project yet again: Kapoor’s British installation crew couldn’t enter the country, and the parts themselves got caught in shipping delays. What took so long? It is, it turns out, really hard to make a big outdoor bean. And not just because of the great new bean: “I’ve felt bad for the people living here, always above the construction.” One passerby, a dog walker named Milena Derevyanko, expressed relief to see it completed. On Tuesday, the day of its great unveiling, the bean reflected its gray surroundings - the early-afternoon sky and the luxury tower squishing it. Only now, five-plus years later, is the bean complete. Yet when the skyscraper was completed in 2017 - and Kapoor himself bought a four-bedroom apartment there - it was noticeably beanless. So have my partners.” Senbahar insisted that the New York bean, which would end up 48 feet long and 19 feet tall and weigh 40 tons, was worth it. When New York asked the developer Izak Senbahar why he’d spent $8 million on the bean, he laughed and said, “The bankers have asked me that. Anish Kapoor was to offer New York City its own version of Chicago’s Cloud Gate sculpture, one that would appear to be squashed under a corner of the tower. When Herzog & de Meuron’s luxury Tribeca Jenga tower went up at 56 Leonard Street, it came with the promise of a bean. ![]()
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