Over the past few months, NFTs have taken on many forms. From celebrity tweets to Gucci sneakers, the blockchain seems to be utterly unbounded. And clearly, it is still far from reaching its limits. Now, financier Todd Morley has announced plans to build the world’s largest NFT museum inside of the new 111 West 57th Street Skyscraper.
Developed by JDS group and designed by SHoP architects to be the tallest and skinniest residential building in New York, the new aerie will appropriately house the leading tech trend of the moment. It will also serve as an antenna—quite literally rising like one into the sky with its 1:24 width to height ratio—to facilitate decentralized communication between various blockchain networks. “It’s the perfect place, as sort of a symbol of technology to announce new technology. . .” Morley told a reporter in an interview with Bloomberg TV, “this one building will be able to connect, sort of like a ham radio operator, connect everyone in New York City to wireless trading, wireless crypto trading, wireless communication.”
Standing 1,428 feet above the clouds, the 84-foot tower, Morley believes, symbolically acts as the next step into a digitized future. And with this push, it is easy to wonder why a physical museum to house digital assets even matters. As the Bloomberg reporter called this into question, Morley reasoned by drawing comparisons to a more classic institution: “Depends on what you mean by museum, right? The Guggenheim Museum has had phenomenal success at becoming a real estate development tool using culture to develop assets and convene people. So we think there’s that," the financier noted. "But we are also very interested in global infrastructure—technology-driven infrastructure. So it gives us the ability to not only allow investment into those areas but to sort of capture the culture of those areas. So it becomes a global ambassador, a digital ambassador, if you will—so why not centrally located in the tallest building in New York?”
Location is also key. Situated a mere four blocks from MoMa, it has yet to be seen if the blockchain institution will draw the regular museum-going crowd. Nonetheless, it is sure to continue to bring the NFT trend—both physically and symbolically—to new heights.
