Peeping Through Windows at Roosevelt Island

Did you ever feel like someone was staring into your apartment following every move you made from the time you get up until finally going to bed? And later at night as well? Well, at least some residents of Roosevelt Island may know that feeling due to the proximity of the adjacent Riverwalk Buildings to each other and their mostly floor to ceiling windows. One discovers that it is quite easy to inadvertently or deliberately peer inside the opposite apartments across the small park dividing the buildings.

According to an article in the NY Times Week in Review, buildings are now being designed to showcase such transparent living.

JEREMY FLETCHER and Alejandra Lillo, designers at Graft, an architecture and design firm based in Berlin, Beijing and Los Angeles, were working out a dialogue between voyeurism and exhibitionism, they said, when they designed the swooping, shiny white interiors of the W Downtown, a glass-walled condominium tower to be built in 2009 in Manhattan’s financial district.Not only will the building’s glass walls allow W residents to see, and be seen by, passers-by on the street below, but Mr. Fletcher and Ms. Lillo have created peekaboo features within each apartment, like a window between the kitchen and the bedroom, and a bathroom that’s a glass cube, allowing residents to expose themselves to their roommates and family members, too. The idea, Mr. Fletcher said, was to frame and exhibit the intimate details of life, or at least ones that would be aesthetically pleasing, “like your silhouette in the shower.”

And:

In September, Curbed, the feisty New York City real estate blog, posted a photograph of a newly completed, glass-walled condo building on East 13th Street. You could see right into the apartments, which looked most like messy dorm rooms. It was a grubby retort to the marketing hoo-ha that surrounds these now ubiquitous buildings and trumpets a sleekly attractive lifestyle accessorized by midcentury modern furniture and designer clothing. There were unmade beds jammed right up against the glass, mangled paper Venetian shades, a towel over a chair.

Accompanying the photo was a report of a sighting of a guy in boxer shorts doing push-ups. “Doesn’t the first condo association meeting need to include a window coverings workshop?” the post wondered plaintively.

Here is the link to the Curbed post.

Image of Jimmy Stewart in movie Rear Window from IMDB.
Image is of building on the West Side Highway from NY Times.