The skyscraper, planned on Eighth Avenue between 40th and 41st Streets, would be the seventh home of The Times since 1851 and its first in an era of electronic communication and transmission built without printing presses. Although cultural institutions reach outside the New York architectural establishment in search of innovative design, office developers rarely take a chance on outsiders, no matter how renowned. This would be the first New York building for Mr. Piano, whose blend of lyrical structural expression and formal geometry has defined the modern face of Paris, Berlin and Houston. This is the idea. In some ways, it is like information.
Information is immaterial.
But in some way, I love the idea that the spirit of a newspaper like The New York Times is expressed semantically. Mr. Golden said he expected a decision on whether to proceed from the board of directors by the end of the year. The site is now in the hands of 11 property owners, but New York State would condemn it under its powers of eminent domain. In broad outline, the new building would be 600 to 700 feet tall, or around 45 stories, with 1.37 million square feet of space. The Times would occupy the larger, lower floors, taking up a little more than half of the building.