Archinect - News

Miami Beach preservationists sound the alarm over concerning new building safety law

2024-03-26T15:04:00-04:00

The New York Times has picked a side in the fight between Miami Beach historic preservation advocates and developers supporting the recently signed Resiliency and Safe Structures Act, a law those in the former category claim will augment a devastating erasure of the local architecture character over time.

The rift that has for years played out amidst a backdrop that includes the tragedy at Surfside and a spate of new starchitect-designed developments on the nine-mile island has recent salients in the demolished Deauville Beach Hotel and the yet-decided fate of Miami Marine Stadium.

Advocates say the new law is a guise that uses climate change and building safety as its premise to usher in what is, in reality, a slate of insidious and destructive requirements. The Commercial Observer said they also work to "hamstring the powers of municipalities to dictate what can replace demolished structures."

Arizona's state water supply loophole is causing a gold rush for multifamily construction

2023-11-14T12:31:00-05:00

Local leaders near Phoenix are placing limits on where new homes can be built, with the goal of protecting long-term access to water. But there's a significant loophole. [...] Policymakers may try again, and the governor has set up a task force on the issue. Ferris says the strength of Arizona's water law is that it links building decisions with water decisions. No other Western state requires cities to look a hundred years into the future.

Permitting of new subdivision construction has been curtailed in the Phoenix area over water scarcity, though a loophole over multifamily construction has led to a recent boom there as developers are still free to open state taps when needed in search of a requisite 100-year groundwater supply.

Small cities like Casa Grande and Buckeye are making the news as prolific cases, with around 3,000 and 6,500 new units permitted in each in the last two years alone. The official statewide need stands at 200,000 overall. Lawmakers are now trying to put a halt to the build-to-rent exemption in the face of a population influx and despite developer’s lobbying.

Relics of an industrial past are the key to future of affordable housing in Massachusetts

2023-07-19T11:37:00-04:00

As Massachusetts continues to suffer from a shortage of affordable housing, former mills like those in Lawrence are a bright spot. With the assistance of state and federal funding, developers have renovated and converted more than a hundred mills around the commonwealth into housing complexes in recent decades — projects that both provide much-needed homes and help revitalize post-industrial areas.

Conversions are often marketed towards high-end buyers, critics say. But the demand from young professional renters and the state’s affordable housing crunch means its stock of former textile mills are once again a vital economic cog considering their costs versus new construction and in spite of the considerable price of built-in environmental cleanups. The recent CUBE 3 conversion of the historic Riverwalk complex in Lawrence (once the largest worsted wool mill in the world) leads the field, followed by billions of dollars worth of other revitalization projects in the area that could help alleviate the need for new units which currently stands at around 175,000.

Canada's traditional shopping centers are turning into mall cities

2023-06-07T14:00:00-04:00

“It’s less about e-commerce than it is about how people want to live and what they want to experience [...] People want to connect, they want to be social, so we’re trying to give them more reasons and more opportunities to do that.”

The movement is not without its detractors, however, as planning experts like the University of British Columbia’s Dr. Penelope Gurstein balance the media’s mostly effusive coverage for such projects with criticism that they are marketed towards affluent retirees and wealthy overseas buyers whose apartments are vacant much of the year.

The government has attempted to mitigate this via a new ban on foreign property ownership. Still, most feel the industry is well-positioned to adapt, as evidenced by the 420 units of below-market-rate units that were included in the 28-acre Henriquez Partners master-planned Oakridge Park development in Vancouver.

“Ten years ago, I was expanding malls, 20 years ago I was building malls, five years ago we were talking about demolishing malls,” one developer tells the Globe and Mail. “You can’t predict the future.”

Montana makes history as the first U.S. state to approve 3D printed alternatives to concrete walls

2022-08-31T17:51:00-04:00

Montana has become the first state in the nation to adopt broad-ranging regulatory approval for the use of 3D printing in construction.

The state’s building code regulators recently voted to approve local contractor Tim Stark’s request to 3D print walls as an equal replacement for either CMUs or standard cored concrete blocks.

Stark was petitioning to use the special wall prototype developed by the Florida-based construction technology company Apis Cor and later tested at the University of Connecticut’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, resulting in a specification that was published by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) in 2019.

Stark seeks to incorporate 3D printing into multiple housing developments in the hopes of expediting the construction process while at the same time reducing overal...

Spec buildings have increasingly become the answer to commercial clients' pandemic growing pains

2022-07-29T18:09:00-04:00

“Historically, spec buildings have been risky, but in a market environment like we are in now, where there is a race to get goods to people faster and to manufacture more things, the flexibility of the spec space becomes an asset, not a liability.”

Biomedical clients are among the most popular movers of the building trend, propelled by demand imbalances for lab space. E-commerce is another common tenant, followed by light manufacturing operations from companies like IBM that leverage high-paying jobs in smaller communities like West Chester, Ohio already targeted by developers for their easier-to-navigate zoning laws.

The rise of inflation, labor shortages, materials costs, and ongoing supply chain lags are seen as both threats and contributors to the trend continuing unabatedly. Marquette University's Andrew Hunt estimated that the average warehouse construction costs 40% more when compared to last year but still thinks the economy is in developers' favor. As he told the Times, "It doesn’t feel like that party will end any time soon."

The project's ‘architect’ says he had no active role in Hudson Yards tower design

2022-06-13T13:48:00-04:00

But Mr. Schiffman said he had no active role in those projects, a statement that raises questions about whether the buildings were approved for construction without the oversight and involvement of a registered architect — a requirement in New York State to ensure that buildings are properly designed and do not pose a safety risk.

The New York Times has obtained a document showing that the credentials of a retired architect in his mid-80s were used to fake his approval of building designs that he did not review. Warren L. Schiffman has been designated as the architect of record on an under-construction, 642-feet-tall hotel rising in Hudson Yards, along with a hotel near LaGuardia Airport and dual high-rise residences in Queens. Each of these projects fall under developer Marx Development Group.

The document shows a contract Schiffman signed upon his retirement from Marx Development Group in 2016 that details how the company’s design firm, DSM Design Group, could continue to use his seal of approval following his absence. Signed shortly before Marx Development Group embarked on the three aforementioned projects, the contract called for Schiffman to provide his architectural stamp and signature to DSM Design Group when requested. However, Schiffman claims he was never asked to review any building plans.

In addi...

L.A. gives the O.K. to massive Angels Landing high-rise development

2022-03-30T15:15:00-04:00

The city of Los Angeles is moving forward with a historic plan from Handel Architects and OLIN for a slice of Downtown’s Bunker Hill neighborhood called Angels Landing.

The LA Times is reporting the city’s granting of entitlements needed to build on the parcel designated Y-1, which features the site of the historic Angels Flight funicular railway system.

Image courtesy Handel Architects

The project, backed by developers Victor MacFarlane and R. Donahue Peebles, is being hailed as the largest ever by a Black-owned development firm and, at 1.26 million square feet, is one of the largest in the recent history of the city.

Image courtesy Handel Architects

A once bespoke residential area west of LA’s downtown core, Bunker Hill has developed into a commercial high-rise district since the city initiated a redevelopment scheme in the late 1960s.

Image courtesy Handel Architects

Now, with only the funky funicular railway remaining as a vestige of what used to be, MacFarlane and Peebles will lo...

How revolutionary are design proposals for homes of the future?

2020-12-08T14:48:00-05:00

What will homes of the future look like? According to a recent UK housing competition, Home of 2030, selected winners have an idea. However, are these ideas all that new? The Guardian's Oliver Wainwright unpacks these winning design proposals and explains, "according to the winning architects, most of the best ideas have been around for generations."

RIBA and the BRE organized the HOME of 2030 competition on behalf of government departments within the UK. The winning projects were asked to design "environmentally friendly homes that support people in leading independent, fulfilling lives as our society ages."

Connector Housing designed by Openstudio with Hoare Lea, LDA Design and Gardiner & Theobald are joint winners of the competition alongside igloo Regeneration. Image courtesy of OpenStudio/Home2030

Wainwright chats with Openstudio's Jennifer Beningfield to unpack their project Connector Housing. Beningfield explains, "You can't get much more flexible and adaptable than the Georg...

Brooklyn's Pacific Park development running out of time to honor affordable housing agreement

2019-08-13T19:00:00-04:00

In the 2014 deal, Forest City Ratner vowed to expedite affordable housing for the 17-building development, under threat of a lawsuit from neighborhood groups that alleged the firm had broken faith with a community benefits pact signed nearly a decade earlier.

After years of delays and false starts, construction on Brooklyn's Pacific Park development is finally moving along. But, the number of affordable housing units that the developer—Greenland Forest City Partners—agreed to construct through the project is falling short of expectations.

The agreement calls for a total of 2,250 units of affordable housing to be completed by mid-2025, but "so far, 782 have been completed. Another 94 will come online in a building now under construction, while approximately 200 units will be housed in two buildings set to rise early next year," minutes from a March presentation to the project’s oversight board show, according to The City.

"Additionally, 258 units at a tower that broke ground in April are slated to be affordable," writes The City. But some city officials don't think that the agreement can be met. "I don't think they'll meet the benchmark by 2025," one assemblymember told The City.

Greenland Forest City Partners has assured the public tha...

Are real estate developers good or bad?

2019-07-31T09:09:00-04:00

In Seattle, Austin, New York, Denver, Minneapolis, Washington and the Bay Area, developers are the antiheroes of an urban drama over the high cost of housing and what must change to bring it down. But their arch-villain status today — merely invoking “developers” can shut down civic debate — deserves scrutiny

The New York Times profiles the real estate developer, an arch-villain of contemporary society who, by some accounts, makes too much money, bulldozes humble neighborhoods to make room for the rich, and wills inequality and displacement as a matter of business.

But is there another side to the story? Are real estate developers bad or can they be good, too?

Carol Galante, a former nonprofit housing developer, defends the development, in general. She tells The New York Times, “In places where frankly there isn’t a lot of development happening, how is that working for you right now? In terms of getting increased housing affordability, it’s obviously not.”

Galante also takes aim at the notion that developers make too much profit, adding, “There is just a total lack of understanding of the economics of building new housing today, of the math behind it, and what developers actually make or don’t make. This is not your father’s subdivision process of the 1950s.”

...

How much pollution does cement really produce? Is there a cleaner solution?

2019-06-28T19:06:00-04:00

Cement is everywhere, but few notice the impact it has on the environment. A standard building material used everywhere, it is often confused with concrete. Cement is a key component in making concrete. By burning limestone at extremely high temperatures, this process turns the stone into a fine powder that's then mixed with clay and other minerals. This powder material, called clinker, is mixed together with other materials to create concrete. Despite its inexpensive and readily available supply, cement production is responsible for high levels of carbon dioxide emissions surpassing the emissions produced from trucks.

Image © Bloomberg

Huelva Cultura & Leisure Center in Andulusia is constructed with Larfarge Holcim's Agilia® ready-mix concrete. Image © LafargeHolcim

Thanks to Vanessa Dezem's Bloomberg piece, we learn why cement is so hazardous to the environment and what solutions have been made by manufacturers to help alleviate its hazardous output. The science behind cement and wh...

Where will Google's $1 billion commitment to tackle affordable housing in the Bay Area really go?

2019-06-25T19:55:00-04:00

...one issue stands out as particularly urgent and complex: housing. The lack of new supply, combined with the rising cost of living, has resulted in a severe shortage of affordable housing options for long-time middle and low income residents. As Google grows throughout the Bay Area—whether it’s in our home town of Mountain View, in San Francisco, or in our future developments in San Jose and Sunnyvale—we’ve invested in developing housing that meets the needs of these communities.

Last week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the company's pledge to invest in the development of affordable housing across the Bay Area. With the multi-billion dollar tech company calling the San Francisco Bay Area home with its beginnings starting over 20 years ago, Google is aware of its impact in the area. Considering the company is one of the largest employers within the area, Pichai expresses the need to "being a good neighbor" and investing $1 billion into housing projects.

Initiatives to repurpose already purchased Google land which would have been used for commercial space or extended office space is said to be turned into residential housing. Goals of creating "at least 15,000 new homes at all income levels in the Bay Area, including housing options for middle and low-income families" is a statement Pichai shares in last week's press release. In addition, initiatives to establish building incentives for developers and the creation of more grants for nonprofits that focus...

Plans submitted for $1 billion Angels Landing mixed-use in L.A.

2018-06-20T16:06:00-04:00

The 1.26-million-square-foot project, which would rise at the northwest corner of 4th and Hill Streets in Downtown Los Angeles, will feature 120 condos, 450 apartments, 480 hotel rooms, a 45,000-square-foot charter school, and 50,000 square feet of commercial space, according to a case filing with the Planning Department. Handel Architects is designing the $1-billion project.

Finalists named for Portland's Broadway Corridor site

2018-03-15T18:22:00-04:00

Portland's urban renewal agency has named three finalists to shape the redevelopment of the soon-to-be-vacated downtown post office blocks. Not among them: a headline-grabbing but unlikely proposal for two massive skyscrapers, the taller of which would be nearly twice the height of any existing building in Portland.

Prosper Portland has selected 3 finalists for the 14 acre post office site located in the heart of the city: McWhinney, Related Cos., and Continuum Partners. It comes as no surprise that William Kaven's two tower proposal was not selected.

Broadway Corridor total development site of 32 acres in Portland. Image: Prosper Portland.

The redevelopment effort will include approximately 500 units of public housing developed by the Portland Housing Bureau and about 2,000 units of privately developed housing—of which 10 percent will include rent restrictions for low-income households.

The Colorado developer McWhinney has proposed a partnership with the James Beard Public Market, a food culture concept which would include 100 to 120 vendor stalls as well as full service restaurants. The New York developer Related Cos. has partnered with local real estate firm Melvin Mark Cos. and the homelessness nonprofit Central City Concern.

Are California homes burning from natural disasters or poor planning?

2017-12-11T19:08:00-05:00

The fires raging in Los Angeles County and Ventura are an urgent signal that we need to start asking the hard questions — about the true cost of expanding the local tax base with new residences in high fire hazard zones. We need to stop having the same conversation over and over again, a conversation laced with non-sequiturs and focused on outdated, ineffective solutions.

The fires consuming California homes are located in wildland areas, where developers continue to spread cities further. Planning agencies should be the first line of action, not firefighters.

Steinberg Architects proposes wavy white 40-story residential tower for historic Downtown L.A.

2017-08-03T15:13:00-04:00

Longtime DTLA developer and landowner Joseph Hellen has released a revised design for a proposed 40-story, 420-foot tall apartment tower at 525 South Spring Street.

What would downtown Los Angeles' historic core look like with a 40-story apartment building with a wavy white exterior? Probably a great deal like the rendering above, which was created by TSK Architects working with Steinberg Architects (who are carrying through to produce the design in an executive capacity), to demonstrate their concept of the proposed tower. The tower has gone through a few iterations with different design firms already, but according to Urbanize.LA, this new version also includes a plan to renovate adjacent structures, including "the three adjacent Broadway theaters also owned by [developer] Hellen - the Roxie, Cameo and Arcade."

Image: TSK Architects

Los Angeles and Honolulu are the toughest cities to build in

2017-07-27T17:15:00-04:00

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported on the housing shortage in Venice Beach. As one of Los Angeles' hottest neighborhoods—in large part due to the influx of tech companies that have made it their home and lent it the new nickname, Silicon Beach—it might come as a surprise to learn that the zip code has not added a single new housing unit in 15 years. In fact, Venice Beach had roughly 700 fewer housing units in 2015 than it did in 2000 and despite adding 4,000 new jobs, lost 3,800 residents.

According to Issi Romem, a chief economist at BuildZoom who conducted the analysis of data for the publication, the lack of new housing accommodations is a result of overly strict building and zoning restrictions as well as stiff community opposition that has caused the precinct to become the "Toughest Zip Code in America to Build In." When we expand from zip code to city limit, Romem's data found that Los Angeles, in general, sits right behind Honolulu to take second place in terms of t...

If Chicago's John Hancock Center gets a new owner, it could get a new name

2017-05-22T18:55:00-04:00

[Hearn's] venture also controls rights to the building's name, which has remained unchanged since John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co. developed it [...] Hearn has been in talks with companies interested in putting their name on the skyscraper since the structure's namesake no longer pays for that right. "We've had interest in it, but have not made a deal yet," Hearn said. That process could be resumed by a new owner.

Chicago-based developer Hearn Co. currently plans on selling the John Hancock Center's office space, parking garage and, perhaps most interestingly, its naming rights later this summer. According to the Chicago Tribune, Hearn would use the proceeds from the naming rights toward a $10 million redevelopment of the tower's plaza.

So-called "parking podiums" are aesthetically ruining downtown Los Angeles

2017-04-18T13:58:00-04:00

As L.A. pats itself on the back for its freshly angular skyline, a new architectural trend — enabled by another city ordinance — threatens to turn the beating heart of modern Los Angeles into a cold, lifeless and unwalkable place.

This excellent piece by the aptly named Steven Sharp delves into the uglification of downtown Los Angeles via the "parking podium," wherein large buildings dedicate their first few floors to a parking garage to meet code requirements for parking, thereby plunging the pedestrian realm back into an unwelcome "City of Quartz" vibe. Putting the parking in the first few floors is cheaper than digging underground or creating surface lots, but honestly: ugh!

Developing flexible parking garages for a rideshare-dependent LA

2017-04-18T13:37:00-04:00

The strategy reflects a consensus among some developers and planners that California’s vaunted car culture is inevitably going to run out of gas...[Andy] Cohen, co-chief executive of Gensler, predicts car ownership will peak around 2020 and then start to decline, with more Americans relying on some form of ride-sharing than their own vehicles by 2025. That means cars gradually would disappear from home garages, curbs and parking structures, freeing up acre upon acre of real estate for new uses.

Some developers are already planning for a not-so-far-off future Los Angeles where more people primarily rely on ridesharing (including from autonomous vehicles) than driving their own car, particularly in the form of parking garages that can be redesigned for other uses like commercial spaces or live/work units.

“...despite what some believe is the inevitability of a transportation revolution, many builders are reluctant to pay for flexibility until changes in driving habits are more pronounced, said Los Angeles real estate attorney Justin Thompson of Nixon Peabody. A lot of developers may think, ‘Well, that’s going to be on the back burner for a while,’ Thompson said, ‘but the progressive developers are going to factor this in.’”

Swimming with Skyscrapers: Watch video from a glass-bottomed sky pool

2017-04-11T13:29:00-04:00

What's more relaxing than a glass-bottomed sky pool 42 stories above Houston? Well, pretty much every other thing in the known universe, which makes the existence of this Jackson + Ryan Architects-designed pool not only an eye-catching publicity stunt for the residential tower's developer, but a viral, stomach-clenching video that is now titilating news anchors over at CNN. Here's the video, in full, as posted on the developer's Facebook page:

Vietnam's architectural past is being erased by new economic forces

2017-03-09T12:42:00-05:00

What's the value of history? It's a question that keeps coming up around the world as new projects displace older architecture. In Vietnam, many of Ho Chi Minh City's distinctive (and, in many cases, French-colonial-era) structures are being dispatched to memory in favor of newer developments meant to stimulate the economy. As this article in USA Today notes:

Preservationists say developers and government officials are intent on making this city modern and care little for the vestiges of its colonial past. But destroying so many historic buildings, they warn, makes the city less livable and less attractive to tourists — which could undercut economic growth the government hopes to foster.

Donald Trump taps two of the richest developers to oversee infrastructure plan

2017-01-18T12:43:00-05:00

Donald Trump has chosen Richard LeFrak and Steve Roth, “two of the wealthiest men in real estate” according to Forbes, to head a “council of builders and engineers”. This new council will be tasked with overseeing Trump’s plan to invest $1 trillion in infrastructure. As Archinect previously reported, the Republican infrastructure plan relies heavily on private-public partnerships, so it’s not really a surprise that developers will be involved. That being said, scant details have been provided on how Trump plans to shore up the nation’s crumbling infrastructure.

Roth founded Vornado, one of the most prominent real estate trusts in New York and Washington. Tornado is merging with JBG Smith, which is one of the short-listed bidders for the development of a new FBI headquarters—a $2 billion contract. The LeFrak family has played a sizable role in developing New York, New Jersey, Los Angeles and Miami.

In the past, the president had little to do with real estate decisions. That will likel...

Brooklyn, say hello to your new neighbors!

2016-08-24T18:10:00-04:00

You’ve always wanted to call Brooklyn home. But it’s complicated. You’re not really the pioneering type. Brooklyn can be rough around the edges. Amenities are lacking. We understand. Industrial-chic finishes are important in life. So are 25-year tax abatements. And European-style, car-sized parking turntables.

Failed Architecture takes a closer look at Brooklyn's wildly sprouting 'developer architecture':

Photographs by Cameron Blaylock. Find many more examples of subtle contextualism over on failedarchitecture.com.

A tragic tale of live-and-let-die development on Shanghai's Street of Eternal Happiness

2016-08-03T17:00:00-04:00

“One day at around eight in the morning, I was returning from the market when six of the developer’s thugs tackled me outside my home and pushed me into a car,” remembers Xi. Several others, she says, climbed a ladder to her balcony. Xi says she screamed for her husband, but it was too late. There was a scuffle inside, and then black smoke poured out of their balcony window before the house went up in flames. Xi’s husband burned to death, and the developer’s men escaped.

Donald Trump is architecture's nightmare client

2016-08-03T13:50:00-04:00

Two weeks ago at the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump's daughter introduced him as a man who has overseen the construction of skyscrapers, thereby qualifying him to somehow take stead of the vastly more complex civic architecture of the United States. Never mind that Donald Trump doesn't necessarily pay the architects he hires, making him less of an overseer and more of a cheap tyrant (with a terrible, reductive aesthetic sense, to boot). This tendency to inaccurately appropriate architecture is a theme within the Trump family—Melania made up an entire degree—but what Duo Dickinson notes over at CommonEdge is that Trump's blowhardism is counter to what architecture is: notably, an exchange of ideas, and a conversation about how best to implement those ideas. As Duo writes:

Agreement with the Donald is being right, anything else puts you in the other side of him—wrong and disqualified; not a great place for an architect if he’s your client and radically divisive even in a ...

"We can't sneer at developers": Herzog & de Meuron examine London's future

2016-06-16T12:35:00-04:00

In London, though the Tate is now finished, there is other work to be done... "We can’t sneer at developers," says Herzog. "They are the ones who will increasingly dominate the shaping of our cities. But we should try to convince them to add accessibility for everyone. To ask, can we do it better?"

Now that they've completed the Tate Modern extension, what's next for Herzog & de Meuron? In this piece, trilingual biking-afocidionado Jacques Herzog speculates on the architectural future of London, and his firm's potential (developer-positive) role in it.

Herzog & de Meuron, in the news:

Austin considering mandating affordable housing units in some areas

2016-05-24T20:06:00-04:00

A City Council committee could take the first steps Tuesday toward mandating that developers include affordable units in new housing complexes to be built in several East Austin neighborhoods. The proposal by Council Member Greg Casar, who chairs the council’s Planning and Neighborhoods Committee, comes as soaring rents have pushed poorer and minority residents out of the city.

The plan would mark a significant shift in direction from the current, incentive-based approach that allows developers to build larger buildings in exchange for including affordable housing units. As it stands now, developers can also pay a fee to the city's housing fund in order to build bigger buildings.

In related news:

Critic Mark Lamster on the dire state of architecture in Dallas (and most other American cities)

2016-04-12T14:52:00-04:00

bastardized visual language has become the de facto standard of Dallas residential architecture development. The explanation for its ever-increasing prevalence, however depressing, is fairly straightforward. Developers find something that’s profitable and want to reproduce it. Risk-averse banks are happy to lend them money given their track record, at least in the short term. Architects, stuck with low budgets, tight schedules, and conservative developers, serve to please and follow convention.

"But Dallas architecture shouldn’t be a joke, and it doesn’t have to be. A look at recent developments in Los Angeles, a historically auto-centric city faced with similar growth challenges, suggests how Dallas might break the vicious cycle in which it is mired."