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NEW YORK Before Mayor Michael Bloomberg headed for a press confab unveiling Christo's "The Gates" installation in Central Park, he first celebrated a far more permanent design feat - the new Hearst Tower on W. 58th Street, which was topped off Feb. 11 with its final piece of steel.
Project by project, media and entertainment congloms are reshaping the skyline of Gotham. Some are even breaking the decades-old, conservative stranglehold on commercial design.
Norman Foster designed the $500 million Hearst Tower, adding a glass and steel exoskeleton onto the facade of William Randolph Hearst's original 1927 headquarters. Foster is known for such "interventions." He also refurbished the Berlin Reichstag as the new home of the German Parliament.
Renzo Piano is architect of the New York Times' Eighth Avenue skyscraper project, drawing up a new headquarters for the Gray Lady that will have a clear-glass curtain screened by slender ceramic tubes jutting through the roof line. And not too far away, Frank Gehry is designing the headquarters for Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp in Chelsea.
All three projects are skedded to be completed in 2006.
Catty-corner from the Hearst Tower is the year-old,...