People with a net worth of over 30million USDs are called "Ultra-high-net-worth individuals", and an average "ultra-high-net-worth individual" owns 5 properties, so logically they don't live in 4 of those. What is your next goal? Private views a high-rise panorama of manhattan september 24. In all of these apartments, the best view is from the living room, and the second-best is from the master bedroom. She compiled her photography, essays, and transcripted dialogues from the real estate showings into a book: "Private Views: A High-rise Panorama of Manhattan. I have no expectations at the start of any project… It really is just some sort of curiosity that drives me.
Andi's most recent publication is "Private Views: A High-Rise Panorama of Manhattan", which she spoke about during her TEDxVienna talk at this year's UNTOLD conference. Today, an 82nd-floor penthouse in the building is currently on the market for an eye-popping $90 million. Did anything stand out to you as particularly unique besides the views, the address, and the amenities? And in the apartments themselves, the layout and the proportions of spaces are almost identical throughout the buildings. What was your reason for wanting to document them? "They are all the same! To some extent, they are the symbols of our times, and the only thing they represent is private surplus wealth. Lower manhattan restaurants with a view. As for the fancy apartments themselves? The crème de la crème of Manhattan real estate.
What kind of experience were you expecting when you posed as a billionaire viewing these properties? And as I kept taking pictures of this view, a view which is seen and photographed by thousands every day, I started to have this yearning to see the city from above, but from all different perspectives. Private Views: An Interview with Andi Schmied at TEDxVienna UNTOLD. Following Andi's talk, I had the chance to learn more about her personal experience posing as a billionaire in order to attend viewings of the most elite high-rise apartments in Manhattan. I loved discovering this completely hidden and obscure universe, which people don't even know exists.
Amenities are already just simply part of the weird race between the developers to seduce the buyers of this competitive market. What are you taking away from your experience touring the apartments? Private views a high-rise panorama of manhattan by zip code. Homes, and the major purpose of the purchase is just to keep their money safe, not to actually live there. One of these towers is 432 Park Avenue, which was the tallest residential building in the world at the time of its completion in 2015. Not really, to be honest. Another building Schmied visited, Steinway Tower at 111 West 57th, is considered the world's skinniest skyscraper when you look at its height-to-width ratio. During an artist residency program in New York, in the fall of 2016, I climbed up to the very top of the Empire State Building, and like everyone around me, I was really amazed.
Her persona was that of a wealthy art gallerist with a personal chef and a personal assistant named "Coco. What sparked your initial interest in high-rise properties of the elite in New York City? "And they'd just put me in this box of 'artsy billionaire, ' and would start to talk to me about MoMA's latest collection. So, my only knowledge of the buyers, is that the vast majority of them are buying these homes as second-third-fourth-fifth (etc. ) Andi Schmied is a visual artist and architect from Budapest, Hungary. Currently, these are the tallest buildings that you can see from every corner of the city. How did your expectations of the experience differ from reality? Thinking about it further, it seemed that my only choice was to pretend to be a Hungarian apartment-hunting billionaire. And I figured that nothing worse can happen to me, than being sent away and told that I can not use my photographs. Photographer Andi Schmied duped New York City real-estate agents last year by posing as a Hungarian billionaire art gallerist to get inside 25 luxury condo buildings in Manhattan – many of which sit along the city's ultra-exclusive "Billionaires' Row, " Christopher Bonanos reported for Curbed. And as a Hungarian artist visiting the city for a limited amount of time, I simply had no way of entering those towers.
From simple things like casting huge shadows over up-until-then sunny areas, or raising square-footage prices to an extent that people must leave their neighborhoods, these buildings in my opinion also represent something very unhealthy for society. Or if an agent asked if she had a chef, at the next viewing she would start talking about "our chef" and his needs, she said. The 1, 428-foot tower is 24 times as tall as it is wide and has only one residence on each floor. "They are all the same, " Schmied said of the penthouses. It made Gabriella an "artsy billionaire" with whom they suddenly started to speak about MoMA's new collection. She told me what she took away from the experience which resulted in the creation of her book. Several of the skyscrapers she toured for her project sit on Billionaires' Row, a wealthy enclave made up of eight recently-built luxury residential skyscrapers along the southern end of Central Park in Manhattan.
Sure, you might have a few inches difference in ceiling height or a different tone of oak flooring in the living room, and in some places, you have the Grigio Orobico book-matched marble as a backsplash for your freestanding soaking tub, while in others Calacatta Tucci—but does it matter? The address and the view are the main selling points. She says she toured 25 luxury buildings in Manhattan, including several in the ultra-exclusive wealthy enclave of Billionaires' Row. I never really plan, and my projects come along as I go… My artistic process is usually quite intuitive; first I do things, then I think about what I did and why it is relevant.
Are they worth the price? Then once I am more rationally approaching my subject, I go back and continue. She said she went by her middle name, Gabriella, so that her previous projects on luxury buildings in China wouldn't raise suspicions if agents Googled her, and invented a fictional husband and 21-month-year-old son. I come from Budapest, which is a low-rise city, so it was mesmerizing to be able to observe the city's motion from so high above. If an agent asked about the designer of her necklace, for example, she would simply tell them it was a Hungarian designer. So I was really just going to capture the views initially.
The buildings that Schmied toured for her project are home to some of the most coveted and expensive real estate in New York City. She graduated from the Barlett School of Architecture (UCL) in London and has since exhibited worldwide. However, as I spent three months in New York, I had time to immerse myself in this obsession. As Schmied pointed out in her interview with Curbed, most people can only get such views of the city by visiting one of the city's observation decks at places like the Empire State Building or One World Trade Center. To keep up with Andi's next projects, and to have a closer look at her previous ones, visit her website here. What I did think through though, is what would be the absolute worst-case scenario if during a viewing they would realize I am not an actual billionaire. Basically, it all started with the biggest cliché. First I was sure there must be a lot of Russian/Chinese/Middle-Eastern oligarchy… and while there sure is, most of the buyers are Americans, at least this is what agents told me. For example, some agents noticed that the camera which I was supposedly using to document the apartment for my husband was a film camera.
There are a lot of strange rich people, so that is not a big deal. The access was instant. So everything around them, amenities, interior, fancy architects' names are only there to assure the buyer that the real estate will keep its value. Schmied wasn't particularly impressed. For one thing, they have horrible effects on our cities and their direct surroundings. Would you like to live in one? But once you are accepted as someone who has access, they don't really doubt anymore. What do you have planned, or what are you working on now? In 56 Leonard—a building by Herzog & de Meuron—, the interior was also designed by the Swiss architect duo, and it was probably the only building where the interior felt a bit different with bare concrete columns in the middle of the luxury space.