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Fifth Wall venture capital decided to set the hive mind of Artificial Intelligence onto re-imagining Hudson Yards. They picked five different styles and let AI do its work. What’s your favorite? Or are you a fan of the current design?
The VC firm posted five different versions of Hudson Yards — as if designed by JRR Tolkien, Dr Seuss, the Soviets, Wes Anderson and Gaudi — on their Instagram account.
We detect a touch of Middle-earth in this Tolkien-inspired redesign – but no sign of the Hobbits from the east with their pipe-weed just yet. Maybe The Vessel is the one true ring after all?
How to design like Dr Seuss?
Here the AI plays fast and loose.
Curves and corners, swirls and bends.
Welcome to Hudson Yards, my friends!
There’s something forbidding about Hudson Yards, Russian style. You can almost imagine the winds howling in from the Baltic. Vodka, anyone?
The acclaimed movie director has a style all his own, and AI uses it to full space-age effect here — using symmetry and smooth lines for a flavor of Wes Anderson’s visual imagery.
It already boasts Mercado Little Spain — but if Hudson Yards moved lock, stock and barrel to Barcelona, this strangely contorted but beautiful Gaudi-inspired look would fit right in. Ole!
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Based in New York, Fifth Wall focuses on technology for the global real estate industry. They invest a fund of over $3.2bn under their management in “technology companies tackling some of the most pressing, real world problems, be it climate change, aging buildings and infrastructure, inaccessible housing markets, unreliable supply chains, or the future of work, to name a few.”
The Instagram post has been attracting lots of comments, with Fifth Wall VC themselves saying: “We’ll take any of these designs over the current one.” Agree? Tell us which options are your favorites in the comments below. And just in case you cannot remember the original version, here is Hudson Yards now…
Hudson Yards is as gray as the January sky. Where Rockefeller Center and is warm and inviting, Hudson Yards is ominous and foreboding. I don’t know why anyone would want to live or work there. Because there are no craftsmen or women left, they build these glass towers with funking angles because they think it’s modern and appealing, it is not. No arches, no carvings, no turrets, no sun reflecting the natural elements, just glare. Hudson yards is a stinker of the highest order. KLB