4 Cool High-Tech Building Lobbies
From a robot that picks up your luggage to a wall of colored lights that functions as a clock, here are four lobbies that push the envelope on high-tech amenities.
Yotel at 570 10th Ave has a giant robot in its lobby with forklift-like claws that picks up your bags and puts them in a vertically stacked filing system. It’s been called a “robotic concierge.” Bonus: You don’t have to tip a robot.
The lobby in TF Cornerstone’s 4610 Center Blvd in LIC has a high-concept clock that lights up 48 “boxes” on the wall, each representing a half hour of the 24-hour day. Bright colors show up when it’s midday, and around dusk the clock takes on orange and red colors that look like a sunset. The lights in two of the boxes pulse to act like the “second hand” of a conventional clock and the whole thing chimes every hour on the hour. It does a lot, but it will not remind you that you have a meeting at 3:45 today.
InterActiveCorp’s HQ building at 555 W 18th St had the world’s largest video wall when it opened in 2007. (You can see the Frank Gehry-designed building from the West Side Highway.) A video screen in the lobby shows real-time data on Internet traffic on the websites IAC manages, racking up a self-reported 2 billion hits per month.
Row NYC, formerly the Milford Plaza Hotel, at 700 Eighth Ave has a piece of video art by former graffiti artist Yorgo Alexopoulos lining its lobby walls. An “abstract tableaux” of animated images, as developer Highgate Holdings calls it, greets guests in a way that’s designed to invoke a full day in New York City.
