From left: 653 West 187th Street and Karim Rashid

Designer-architect seems to be single-handedly trying to revive the ‘Mod’ strain of modern architecture

With the possible exception of the Magic Kingdom — “The Happiest Place on Earth,” its slogan says — I am not sure that I have ever seen architecture as fundamentally, giddily, all-conqueringly happy as that of Karim Rashid, the designer of 653 West 187th Street, which will soon rise in the Inwood section of Manhattan.

This multicolored, seven-story residential slab, containing 59 apartment units, is being developed by HAP Investments, which has announced that the architect will also design for them a similarly audacious condo building in East Harlem, at 1655 Madison Avenue, between 110th and 111th Streets.

If you were to go today and visit the Inwood site, you would surely be struck by how out of place Rashid’s new design is likely to be once it is completed. That is intentional, of course, since the entire aesthetic mission of the building seems to declare its uniqueness — its refusal to fit into any context.....Continue Reading

> via therealdeal.com