The obsession for upscale apartments has reached a new peak in New York City with the tower at 432 Park Avenue that the Uruguayan architect Rafael Viñoly (with offices in New York, Palo Alto, London, Manchester, Abu Dhabi, and Buenos Aires) recently inaugurated and which, rising all of 425 meters and 96 stories, is the current tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere. The complex has been jointly developed by CIM Group and Macklove Properties, and construction took no more than five years.

Located very close to the eastern border of Central Park, the new skycraper contains 104 luxury condominiums of two to six bedrooms, and the selling prices range between 7 and 95 million U.S. dollars. From a square footprint with sides barely reaching 30 meters, the slender and rectilinear structure of concrete shoots up with a loadbearing external grid serving as facade, freeing up the interior spaces of any elements serving a structural, loadbearing function. Some of the floors have been kept open in order to let wind blow through the building, thereby limiting eolic impact on the construction as a whole.

Among the posh amenities provided to residents of the 2,780-square-meter high-rise are a moviehouse, a billiards room, a heated swimming pool, a spa, a restaurant, a fitness gym, and a tree-planted plaza. Nothing is ever too much for the new oligarchy that continues to appropriate the skyline of Manhattan, and looks down from towers of preposterous proportions driven by the impulse of the real estate business.