'Luxury' Redefined

“What used to be a 650-square-foot studio can now be a very well-laid-out one-bedroom,” he said. For new condominiums like 50 Clinton Street, a project on the Lower East Side where WD-50, the restaurant run by the chef Wylie Dufresne, now stands, he said, “I’m dubbing a new term, ‘cool luxury,’ where the building is super design-focused, but it doesn’t use the most high-end finishes or appliances.”

Real estate developers may be, outside of teens, our most precious source of new forms of language.