The latest hotel to open in Manhattan’s rapidly gentrifying Lower East Side, the Public, has been getting a lot of attention. It is not simply because it was designed by name-brand Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron for the high-concept hotelier Ian Schrager. And neither is it because the new, reinforced-concrete tower is distinctively glazed with slightly canted windows that give the exterior surfaces a craggy but glossy air. No. The Public’s publicity revolves around certain intimate acts enthusiastically carried out by some hotel guests and visible through those architectonic apertures. This spontaneous sex-in-the-city performance art helped make the Standard Hotel on the High Line (designed by Ennead Architects) all the talk when it opened in 2009. Are X-rated floor shows now de rigueur for ultracool caravanseries?
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