Archinect - News

What about the developers who love—and love to donate to—Donald Trump?

2019-08-12T17:02:00-04:00

The billionaire real estate developer whose support for President Trump sparked calls for a consumer boycott is also behind one of the flashiest redevelopment projects coming to downtown Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Times points out that Stephen M. Ross, the controversial real estate developer and investor behind Related Companies, luxury gyms Equinox and SoulCycle, and other business interests, is also a driving force behind The Grand, a Frank Gehry-designed mega-project slated for Downtown Los Angeles.

Ross's business interests have recently taken a hit as news of the developer's plans to host a $250,000-a-seat fundraiser for President Donald Trump came to light just days after a white suprematist gunman evoked the president's own words before killing 22 people in El Paso, Texas. Nearly all of the victims in the shooting were either Mexican Americans or Mexican nationals, according to The Los Angeles Times, and the tragedy is widely seen as a direct and racially motivated attack on those communities, as a result.

Ross's political activities—and the consumer-focused business investments that fuel those activities—have come under fire as other elements of society, particularl...

FXFOWLE proposes attaching 300-foot spire to skyscraper to become Hudson Yards' tallest

2017-08-10T12:47:00-04:00

Hudson Yards has been making headlines in recent months...But immediately to the northwest, another tower that’s been in the making for an equally long period of time may have just received a boost to become the tallest of them all. A new rendering of the Moinian Group’s 3 Hudson Boulevard has surfaced, showing both an updated design for the building itself, as well as the addition of a 300-foot spire, that would make the supertall the tallest in the neighborhood.

Despite years of vigorous effort in the Hudson Yards, the Related Companies may not have the tallest skyscraper of them all, thanks to FXFOWLE's proposed spire-tastic tower on 3 Hudson Boulevard. Nothing's final as of yet, but as YIMBY notes, "Back in 2012, YIMBY heard speculation that the tower, previously dubbed The Girasole, could rise as tall as 432 Park Avenue. While 1,350 feet isn’t quite 1,397 feet, the new height would certainly rival the supertalls of 57th Street, ranking in between 30 Hudson Yards’ approximately 1,300-foot parapet, and 432 Park Avenue, as the city’s fifth tallest building measured by pinnacle."

Archinect's critical round-up: the week's best architectural critiques so far

2015-08-06T17:48:00-04:00

Over at the Los Angeles Times, Christopher Hawthorne eloquently pans the new addition to the 405 freeway, noting that "The expanded 405 might be the first L.A. freeway project to look haggard and disjointed the day it opened." His review comes at a time when infrastructure, especially in California, is starting to (violently) show signs of its age: last year, the University of California Los Angeles briefly flooded thanks to an aged water main breaking, and in July a freak thunderstorm collapsed a portion of interstate 10. Hawthorne's displeasure is focused primarily on the 405's haphazard design to please multiple neighborhoods, its tacky soil-nail construction retaining walls ("This technique is something like the comb-over of freeway design"), and its simple underwhelming-ness as a public works project.

Meanwhile, James S. Russell's thoughtful examination of Thomas Heatherwick in the New York Times delves into one of the perennially feisty debates of the architectural realm: just ...