ENTER the lobby of the Platinum — a sparkling glass-and-steel popsicle of a condominium that rises 43 stories above the circus lights of Eighth Avenue — and you may think you’ve stumbled into the lair of James Bond’s latest big-screen foe.

Twenty-six feet of roaring flames run along one wall, a deconstructed fireplace whose orange embers dance behind a blue-hued sheet of glass. Enormous plasma television screens stare down from stark white walls. Geometric furniture sits surrounded by a bubbling moat that circumnavigates the space.

The Web site for the building, where one-bedrooms start at $920,000, describes this scene as “a rarefied world etched in water and fire, stone and glass … and power.” A woman leaving the lobby on a recent evening offered a less charitable opinion: she called it “a den of hell.” (The woman, who had been visiting a friend, declined to give her name for fear of offending the hostess.)

In an increasingly tough market that has left some high-rises sitting half-empty, the lobby has become a site of innovation for developers who find it more urgent than ever to make their buildings stand out from the crowd.

Forget the still life over the sofa: ho-hum accouterments have given way to ambitious design schemes that are equal parts amenity and advertisement. Owners are using their ground-floor spaces as an important marketing tool that can entice buyers with the promise of a certain lifestyle.

Some lobbies, once meant to capture the feel of a gallery, have become active commercial spaces where art is bought and sold. Other buildings try for a twist on familiar themes like Zen gardens, waterfalls and the traditional fireplace.

But the lobby is also a space that greets residents each morning and welcomes them home at a tough day’s end. It is a first impression for guests and a tantalizing glimpse for passers-by. Not quite public, but not quite private either, the lobby occupies a liminal state in one’s home life, and with that ambiguity comes a set of priorities that can shift and, oftentimes, conflict.

“There’s a desire to make a statement about the particular personality and status of the building,” said Mayer Rus, a longtime observer of the Manhattan design scene and a former design editor of House & Garden magazine. “But you also have the desire to appease as many of the tenants as you can.”

Developers, he added, “are not going to roll the dice that someone is going to be turned off from buying in the building.”

Mr. Rus noted that this can be a tricky path to tread. “There needs to be some sort of attempt at consensus,” he said. “Of course, consensus is the quickest road to mediocrity.”

Art arrives in lobbies via a variety of channels, from the personal collections of building owners to commercial arrangements between galleries and developers. The decision can be personal: architects who turn to friends for inspiration. Or it can be made by committee, as a team of in-house designers sifting through catalogs and gallery books.

With so many factors at play, judging the success of a building’s lobby art is a subjective game. Developers and sales agents, predictably, are often agog; according to its owners, to enter the Platinum is to “realize that you have arrived at a cutting-edge building that is unlike any other you have seen before.”

Hard facts like occupancy rates and closing prices (at the moment, 63 percent of the apartments at the Platinum have closed) do not necessarily speak to the lobby. Residents can be indifferent, and many artists are unaware their work is being displayed at all.

“This is the first time I’ve heard of it,” Dale Chihuly said when informed that three of his paintings were hanging in the lobby of Tribeca Park, a rental building designed by Robert A. M. Stern at the far west end of Chambers Street. Studios there start at $3,000 a month.

Mr. Chihuly said he had no idea which of his works were on display. “They usually look pretty good when they’re in a lobby,” he said, then paused. “Or hopefully they look good. Depends on the lobby.”

At Tribeca Park, Mr. Chihuly’s works hang behind a simple arrangement of sofa and chairs, a traditional approach in keeping with the conservative aesthetic of Mr. Stern, whose postmodern architecture often celebrates styles of the past. Vaguely figurative, the works feature pink, red, and teal swirls against brightly colored backgrounds, a polychromatic contrast to the polished brown wall behind.

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By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

Source: New York Times – U.S.A.