Andre Balazs Properties’ Standard brand has no signature architectural style. Each hotel is unique; the brand is recognised for designs that are specific to and expressive of their context. Todd Schliemann’s design for The Standard, New York exploits this mandate; the hotel is undeniably of its place, it blurs the distinction between public and private in a city whose identity is as much about neighbourhoods and intimacy as it is about anonymity, and it immerses itself in the activity of the street at the same time as its hovering form disengages it. Completed in 2009, the new eighteen-story, 204,500 sq ft, 337-room hotel is located in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, a vibrant neighborhood on the City’s western edge. The design celebrates the opportunities and challenges of interacting with the High Line, an abandoned, elevated railroad line, which has been developed as a new linear public park.