This Mega-Development Was Built on an Active Railway

Executive Producer and Narrator - Fred Mills
Producer - Jaden Urbi
Video Editing and Graphics - Aaron Wood

Special thanks to The Dronalist, Adam Parker Goldberg and Samuel Stein. Additional footage and images courtesy of Hudson Yards and The Edge.

#construction #architecture #NewYork

Ripping and/or editing this video is illegal and will result in legal action.

© 2021 The B1M Limited

[jonathankleinow]

I appreciate that this channel is not simply, "look at these amazing new developments!", but also looks critically at the effect these developments have on the communities in which they're built. It would be easy to just make a fluff piece, but taking into account the lack of affordable housing and the risk to taxpayers really elevates The B1M to a journalistic standard.

[scott.macdonald]

Regardless of the specifics of Hudson Yards, building over "empty" areas of cities like that is such a great idea. I would love to see something like that done for stretches of the Mass Pike in Boston (the already did at Back Bay).

[LususxNaturae]

It’s actually kinda of hard to even get over there. The 7 train station be closed for no reason and waiting for a bus in the shadows of those skyscrapers be having you feel like Spongebob at Rock Bottom.

Hopefully the area gets better over time.

[kay]

Well done once again The B1M. You make me regret not having fallen in love with Engineering when I was younger and am now envious of people who work on these projects. Thanks a lot. Great video.

[foxbat]

As an African developer in Africa BM1 has been my go to guide in understanding how real estate can be functional for as long as it exists.

[andreipopescul]

These videos are getting better and better. Awesome topics, high quality videos and consistent uploading, i love this channel

[johnmiller]

Most of what goes on in Manhattan real estate isn't about "doing good." It's about making massive amounts of money for real estate agents and developers, and to make sure that the rich can dodge taxes, since those who run the city, like Eric Adams, are all about protecting the rich over the working people.

[MultiEquations]

Like Samuel, I live half a mile from Hudson Yards but I've been there a total of two times. Once to buy mustard at the Whole Foods and another time in an ill-fated attempt to see the Vessel with my friends. Even though the location isn't all that bad, the 7 train is relatively accessible to all my friends, it just feels so sterile, with all of its spaces and activities catered to the extremely wealthy. When you and all of your friends make less than 50k, the whole neighborhood feels alien. Honestly, there are more things for us to do and eat on the traditionally expensive UES.

[thedaltons]

Hard to believe that massive sky scraper is held up with those tiny pylons between TIGHT train tracks.

[cowser]

Visited in July and went to the Vessel and Edge and this place is amazing.

[literallyunderrated]

I’m not too sure its what NY needed but I cant deny it looks good. The 7 train takes you there, then probably the longest escalator I’ve ever been on takes you up to street level. The High Line Park starts/ends there its a very pleasant walk. I still have to check out the Edge what a cool vantage point to see the city from

[xpaperxcutx]

I live in NYC and I’ve been in Hudson Yards a few times. The station is clean and it’s right next to the Javits Convention Center. The pandemic has really affected traffic not to mention the Vessel has attracted some negative attention in the form of people jumping off it, they have officially closed it off indefinitely.

[sweetroller]

This Hudson Yards project reminds me of a song Melanie wrote years ago, and performed by the New Seekers: Look What They Done To My Song, Ma. When I visited New York before the pandemic hit, I wasn't too thrilled to see those ginormous skyscrapers which ruined one of the most beautiful skylines in America. I missed seeing the classic Empire State and Chrysler Buildings as the bus I rode on was making its way to the Lincoln Tunnel. What the hell were they thinking? my mind was screaming! None the less, when the other projects, a new stadium for the Olympics and other proposals fell through, this one came along. I did see it up close, but was not too impressed by it. I liked the video's explanation of how this work was done and how they manage to keep a delicate balance between the buildings and the rail yards underneath. It may be years after the pandemic or other urban challenges until these places gain acceptance from New Yorkers and visitors. I liked this video. Keep up the good work!

[sf]

Even though I'm not an engineer, engineering student, nor do I have any great interest in engineering, I love this channels vids. They make it so much easier to understand and appreciate.

[Jay-nkdm]

If they want to "fix" the development, make the western development mostly the same, but connect the buildings with ground level street facing shops and restaurants instead of mall-like development, and make the park an area to sit, eat and enjoy. That will make the place a destination for upper/middle class people for restaurants, which will bring more people to the entire area as a whole. Also allow the park to be used for rotating art installations, public free events, and flea/farmers markets. That will bring the area economic prosperity up and down the socioeconomic range. But since these developers only care for the ultra wealthy, they wont change anything and hudson yards will become a worse and more boring fidi in 5 years

[datsthebesticando]

Architecture critic Kate Wagner described the Vessel best:

THE VESSEL IS REALLY A PERFECT NAME for the sixteen-story monument nestled in the midst of the now complete “neighborhood” (read: real estate scheme) of Hudson Yards, New York City. Designed by Thomas Heatherwick, one of architecture’s premier grifters, a man who should be banned internationally from using the term “parti, ” the Vessel is composed of 154 flights of stairs, 2, 500 steps, and 80 landings. Apparently the architect drew inspiration from an early experience with, to nobody’s surprise, an old staircase. The depth of architectural thinking at work here makes a kiddie-pool seem oceanic.



The Vessel is a structure that invites parody—it has already been likened to a giant shawarma, a beehive, a pine cone, a wastebasket. Apparently, there is to be a competition for a new name, as “The Vessel” was only supposed to be a temporary one. It really is the perfect name, however, not least because it implies a certain emptiness. One asks, though, what it is a vessel for?

It is a Vessel for the depths of architectural cynicism, of form without ideology and without substance: an architectural practice that puts the commodifiable image above all else, including the social good, aesthetic expression, and meaningful public space. It is a Vessel for the architecture of views, perhaps the hottest spatial commodity of all.


It is a Vessel for capital, for a real estate grift that can charge more for an already multi-million dollar apartment because it merely faces it. It is a Vessel for a so-called neighborhood that poorly masks its intention to build luxury assets for the criminally wealthy under the guise of investing in the city and “public space.” What is public space if not that land allocated (thanks to the generosity of our Real Estate overlords) to the city’s undeserving plebeians, who can interface with it in one of two ways: as consumers or interlopers, both allowed only to play from dawn ‘til dusk in the discarded shadows of the ultra-rich? Unlike a real neighborhood, which implies some kind of social collaboration or collective expression of belonging, Hudson Yards is a contrived place that was never meant for us. Because of this, the Vessel is also a Vessel for outrage like my own.

It is a Vessel for labor without purpose. The metaphor of the stairway to nowhere precludes a tiring climb to the top where one is expected to spend a few moments with a cell-phone, because at least a valedictory selfie rewards us with the feeling that we wasted time on a giant staircase for something—perhaps something contained in the Vessel. The Vessel valorizes work, the physical work of climbing, all while cloaking it in the rhetoric of enjoyment, as if going up stairs were a particularly ludic activity. The inclusion of an elevator that only stops on certain platforms is ludicrously provocative. The presence of the elevator implies a pressure for the abled-bodied to not use it, since by doing so one bypasses “the experience” of the Vessel, an experience of menial physical labor that aims to achieve the nebulous goal of attaining slightly different views of the city. Unlike the Eiffel Tower, to which the Vessel has been unfathomably compared, the Vessel is just tall enough to make you feel bad for not hiking up it. To climb the Eiffel Tower is equally pointless, but its sheer size makes taking the elevator the de facto, socially normalized experience. The elevators of the Vessel and their lackluster architectural integration belie the architectural profession’s view of accessibility as a code-enforced concession rather than an ethos, a moral right to architecture for all. By taking the elevator up the Vessel, you are both inviting the judgment of your peers who insist on hauling ass up sixteen stories and confirming its sheer pointlessness as a structure; for, unlike the Eiffel Tower, which has a restaurant and shop, there is nothing at the top other than a view of the Hudson and the sad promise of the repeat performance of laboring your way back down.

The Vessel is a vessel for another type of labor: digital labor. Until a few days ago, after a moment of social media outrage, if you were to take a selfie or a photo at the Vessel, the Hudson Yards developers would own the rights to your content in perpetuity. (Now they have the right to circulate and use your media, but not to own it outright.) Regardless of these changes, by taking a selfie or photograph (an act that, to be fair, is perhaps the only true purpose of the Vessel), you are still doing the unpaid work of promotion and content creation for a developer conglomerate, regardless of your intent. By merely stepping foot in the complex, you waive your right to privacy and are ruthlessly surveilled by subtly hidden cameras. What is done with this footage can only be suspected, but it doesn’t stop our malevolent shawarma from serving as a convenient, yes, architectural vessel—not only for affective labor but also the dystopian world-building of surveillance capitalism itself. The Vessel betrays the fact that behind the glitzy, techno-urbanist facade of the Smart City™ lies the cold machinations of a police state. That architecture is used as live bait for these purposes is but one of many symptoms pointing to a field in a state of ethical decline.


The Vessel has invited nearly universal vitriol, even amongst the politest architecture critics. It is an object lesson teaching us that, in our neoliberal age of surveillance capitalism—an era where the human spirit is subjected to a regime of means testing and digital disruption, and a cynical view of the city as an engine of real estate prevails—architecture, quite frankly, sucks.

[augustinembala]

Wow! I love your editing, high quality video

[JKDC]

The production quality on these videos is absolutely incredible. The B1M is by far the best architecture/engineering channel on YouTube.

[madanonymous]

Hudson Yards reminds me of Mordor, with the Edge being Barad-dûr and the Vessel as Mt. Doom.

[ericdudley]

The Hudson Yards is an extraordinary development and very creative architecturally, especially considering it is built over active rail yards. 30 Hudson Yards in particular, with its protruding observation deck is a very unique and interesting building. Thank you for your work on this wonderful video and channel.