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Completed in 1954 for Robert and Marianne Snower, Marcel Breuer designed the house site unseen. The Snowers had reached out to Breuer after seeing his work in a magazine, and lived there until it was bought in 2014.The current owners, Rob Barnes and Karen Bisset, then renovated some key aspects of... View full entry
Today, Airbnb is revealing a new division tasked with inventing new futures for the company, called Samara. Airbnb is also unveiling Samara’s first project: a communal housing project designed to revitalize a small town in Japan. That model isn’t meant to be a one-off. After this project, Airbnb will look to scale it to other declining small towns across the world. The idea is that Airbnb could become a force not only in sharing homes, but in urban planning. — FastCo.Design
Airbnb's experiment in urban planning was sparked by the success of an elderly woman in a rural Japanese town, Tsuyama Okayama, who listed her home on the site. While near Japan's most famous cedar forests, the town didn't receive many tourists.But build it and they will come: soon, tourists... View full entry
Lenders often give special treatment to the wealthy, of course, but the tech industry has created a particularly ripe crop of clients who are rich or on their way. [...]
“Lenders get so caught up trying to stay competitive and finding a market edge, they basically allow greed to overcome common sense ... Easy money does fuel and accelerate the inevitable bubble.”
— bloomberg.com
Related on Archinect:Facebook enters the housing market – and it's probably not a good thingGoogle acquires LinkedIn's HQ in huge, unexpected property swapWhat's the newest project for Silicon Valley investors? Building citiesSilicon Valley is set to get over 10K more housing units – is this... View full entry
Nudge down the design and development fees, pay the construction workers less, drop the interest rate as low as it will go, spend nothing on maintenance, even assume that someone gave the land for free — and the buildings still aren't feasible. A 50-unit apartment is still millions short.
"Even if you try to tweak a lot," Poethig says, "for people of extremely low incomes, there’s just going to be this gap to the cost of development and production of housing."
— washingtonpost.com
A very enlightening (and depressing, but with tentative solutions!) interactive from the Urban Institute uses data from Denver, Colorado's housing market to show how building affordable housing just doesn't "pencil out"—meaning, as Emily Badger puts it for the Washington Post, "The costs of... View full entry
Built in a scant ten days, “Proyecto Chacras” is described as “pop-up productive housing.” The 30 square meter home was designed by Natura Futura Arquitecture and Colectivo Cronopios out of donated materials and tools, with volunteer labor. Located in Chacras, Ecuador, it houses a family... View full entry
Researchers from the University of British Columbia have suggested that modular construction techniques are key to assuaging cities' housing shortages.Associate engineering professor Kasun Hewage at UBC, along with PhD candidate Mohammad Kamali, conducted "the first comprehensive review of... View full entry
"House Housing; An Untimely History of Architecture and Real Estate", a globally touring exhibit, has finally arrived in its place of conception, New York City. After first appearing at the 2014 Venice Biennale, “House Housing” has popped up in Chicago, Berlin and Los Angeles. The exhibit... View full entry
This week on the podcast, Julia Ingalls joins us to discuss the byzantine considerations behind how architects charge for work, and shares some helpful guidelines from her recent piece about how residential architecture fee rates are determined.We also dip into the recent $3M lawsuit against... View full entry
The thousands of new old houses in New Orleans reveal the ethos of a people in a place nearly destroyed. New Orleanians have embraced their city’s architectural heritage as they’ve rebuilt for an uncertain future. — Places Journal
What does post-Katrina architecture look like in New Orleans? And what does it reveal about its society? In their survey in Places, Richard Campanella and Cassidy Rosen discover that historical styles are 14 times more popular than contemporary styles in the rebuilt city, despite the focus of... View full entry
Congratulations to triumphant Tigh na Croit by HLM Architects & Lansdowne Drive by Tectonics Architects who were crowned the 2016 UK Passivhaus Awards winners. The Winners were announced at a ceremony held in London on the 7th July, attended by approximately 80 delegates.The winners were decided by PHT members and Award Ceremony delegates. — Passivhaus Trust
HLM have won the Rural category of this year's UK Passivhaus Awards. The house, which aimed to create a low-energy, modern solution for the 'outdoorsy' clients, has been designed to reflect its Scottish Highland context.Tectonics Architects gained the award for the Urban category, with their... View full entry
Brokers say the very top of the market — consisting of eight- and nine-figure homes — is faring the worst as slowing economies overseas and volatile stock markets have spooked buyers. The supply of homes for the rich exploded as builders aimed at the high end after the financial crisis. — NYT
Robert Frank highlights a worrisome pileup in the overinflated; luxury housing, megamansions and penthouse market. View full entry
Unwilling to accept a life utterly dependent on caretakers, [Steve] Saling designed a series of systems that let patients with ALS control their environment in the assisted living center with ...blinks and facial twitches.
“The notable impact that ALS had on my ability to design is speed,” he said. “I am a lot slower. [But] Because much of my profession had been computerized and I excelled in computer-assisted drafting, I was still able to convey my ideas with a lot of precision.”
— STAT
Read more about amazing architects who never let their disabilities get in their way:Working out of the Box: Francis TsaiFrancis Tsai, previously featured on Archinect's Working Out of the Box, passes awayBuilding Voice: Visually impaired architect, Christopher Downey, lectures in Downtown... View full entry
The couple claims the firm Pereiras Architects Ubiquitous and property owners Daniella and Ari Schwartz accessed their exclusive plans in property records last August through the Lawrence buildings department — without their permission.
“There is no doubt that you have accessed and intentionally copied the plans of the Fortgang residence intending to create a replica of our clients’ home and distinctive exterior,” the Fortgang’s lawyer Steven Stern wrote in a cease-and-desist letter
— nypost.com
Rivka and Seth Fortgang from Long Island had their custom 4,400 square foot house built in 2004, in the neighborhood of Five Towns. After learning Pereiras Architects Ubiquitous were building a very similar looking house a mile away, the Forgangs sued. Rivka Fortgang, an interior and exterior... View full entry
Your dream home is not your grandmother’s, and it certainly won’t be your granddaughter’s. As the modern family evolves in an increasingly unaffordable housing market, with populations pushing out of the suburbs towards downtown, current models of the single family home don’t seem so... View full entry
The areas most likely to benefit from EU structural funding voted predominantly to leave [...]
With 12% of those working in construction migrants from the EU and with the construction industry already struggling to keep up with demand, any drop in skilled migrants will hit Britain’s ability to build. [...]
Analysts are already predicting a drop in supply of new homes, due to market volatility, predicted slowdown on skilled migration flows and share price drops for developers.
— theguardian.com
Related on Archinect:RIBA release a statement following EU referendum resultArchitects react to shocking EU referendum resultTell us what does the EU referendum means to youSay no to a "Brexit," says David Chipperfield View full entry
