“Do you realise we’re talking about a rental apartment building? It’s unheard of,” says a friend. We’re standing on a street corner discussing the new Frank Gehry building in lower Manhattan. Most new apartment buildings here are concrete and glass, flat and dull, every apartment the same white box, not worth a conversation (I’ve lived in two). Gehry’s building is different. New-York-by-Gehry, as it’s grandiosely monikered, is at 8 Spruce Street near the Brooklyn Bridge, bordering the financial district. When you come out of the subway at City Hall, it shimmers above you. It’s big: 76 stories high, 870 feet tall. It contains 903 rental units and is the tallest residential tower in the western hemisphere.