Archinect - News

Is shipping container architecture really sustainable?

2023-03-09T13:50:00-05:00

Ultimately, removing containers from the circular economy by retrofitting them into usable spaces could put a strain on the industry and result in the need to use more iron ore, causing even more harm to the environment. Even as the tiny house movement continues to gain popularity and shipping containers are beloved both for their aesthetic appeal and supposed sustainability, it’s worth asking if they’re the right material for this purpose.

While shipping containers do generally keep project costs down owing to labor hours saved, the fit-out of their interiors can add between $20,000 and $150,000 to each construction. Materials such as spray-on foam insulation used in making a container design habitable are rarely among the market’s most sustainable options. The lead-based paint coating typically applied for their seafaring protection against salt water only adds to the toxins produced while the insulation is applied.

University of Edinburgh professor Richard J. Williams said their prevalence was emblematic of “hipster modernity” in a popular 2019 essay, adding “they’re great for doing what they were designed to do, which is transporting stuff. A simple technology, they have helped facilitate global trade like no other. But they’re designed for things, not people."

Nevertheless, as FastCompany reported, the market for container homes is expected to grow to $67.96 billion by the year 2026.

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San Francisco now tops the most expensive cities to build in the world, new survey finds

2022-07-13T18:30:00-04:00

Turner and Townsend’s latest annual International Construction Market Survey names disruptions in the global supply chain, triggered in part by lockdowns in China due to COVID-19, and rising commodity costs following the invasion of Ukraine as key stress factors for construction markets worldwide.

According to the survey, the 2022 ranking is led by these cities, including four U.S. markets among the top ten:

San Francisco ($4,728.5/sqm)
Tokyo ($4,664.8/sqm)
Osaka ($4,558.5/sqm)
New York City ($4,517.3/sqm)
Geneva ($4,332.2/sqm)
Zurich ($4,285.8/sqm)
Hong Kong ($4,236.5/sqm)
Boston ($3,998.4/sqm)
Los Angeles ($3,981.8/sqm)
London ($3,909.8/sqm)

Driven by strong demand from tech corporations, a strengthening of the U.S. dollar as well as higher material and labor costs, San Francisco moved up from its third place position last year and surpassed Tokyo and Hong Kong as the priciest market for construction with an average cost of $4,728.50 per square meter ($439.29 per square foot).

Many more No...

San Francisco, New York, Boston, and Los Angeles among the ten most expensive cities to build in the world, according to new survey

2021-08-03T19:38:00-04:00

Tokyo ranks as the most expensive city to build in the world, driven by the extensive pipeline of real estate and infrastructure projects pushing up demand for construction resources, according to the report. Following Tokyo are Hong Kong, San Francisco and New York. Boston and Los Angeles rank seventh and ninth, respectively, as both of these markets generally have high labor costs for construction.

According to Turner and Townsend’s 2021 International Construction Market Survey, the top 10 most expensive cities to build, in order, are:

Tokyo
Hong Kong
San Francisco
New York City
Geneva
Zurich
Boston
London
Los Angeles
Macau

With increased activity levels in construction markets in 2021 as the world recovers from the covid-19 pandemic, supply chain constraints are increasing and skill shortages are worsening, resulting in substantial construction cost inflation, as detailed by Turner and Townsend. International border closures have impacted the availability of imported labor, which has been detrimental to construction markets that depend on migrant workers.

Previously on Archinect: According to ABC chief economist, construction industry is rebounding despite high prices and lack of skilled labor

In addition, more than a third of respondents to the survey said the pandemic has had a high or significant impact on their supply chains. This is evident in increased material costs, such as st...

Construction costs on the rise in major US cities, new report shows

2021-01-28T13:29:00-05:00

A new report details how construction costs have changed across 12 U.S. cities since the coronavirus pandemic began. Broken down by market, all of the U.S. cities in the Rider Levett Bucknall report saw at least small gains, except for Chicago, which experienced a 1.29% decrease in comparative costs from October 2019 to October 2020.

According to Construction Dive, the new report by construction consultancy firm Rider Levett Bucknall signals a 2.03% increase of the national average for construction costs.

The survey tracks the RLB Comparative Cost Index for major cities across the United States and found the biggest cost increases in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Boston, and Seattle. Costs in Phoenix, Honolulu, and Washington, D.C. saw smaller gains. A drop in comperative costs was reported in Chicago.

London, New York, Hong Kong are the most expensive cities in new International Construction Cost Index

2020-04-02T17:35:00-04:00

The latest International Construction Cost Index has just been released, and the top spots don't really come as a big surprise: London, New York, Hong Kong, Geneva, and San Francisco are the planet's most expensive cities for construction.

Compiled by design and consultancy organization Arcadis, the 2020 ICC Index surveyed construction costs, market conditions, and expert opinions in 100 large cities across six continents.

The top ten most expensive cities are:

1. London
2. New York
3. Hong Kong
4. Geneva
5. San Francisco
6. Copenhagen
7. Tokyo
8. Zurich
9. Dublin
10. Edinburgh

The ten cheapest surveyed cities are:

91. Hangzhou
92. Bangkok
93. Chengdu
94. Guangzhou
95. Wuhan
96. Shenzhen
97. Kuala Lumpur
98. Mumbai
99. New Delhi
100. Bengaluru

Arcadis 2020 International Construction Cost Index (Source)

The report also highlighted emerging industry trends associated with climate change, such as sustainable construction, decarbonization, climate resilience, and emission reduction goals.

New this year...

Construction costs for Herzog & de Meuron's Museum of the 20th Century ballooning

2019-11-15T15:30:00-05:00

The budget committee of Germany’s lower house of parliament yesterday approved additional funding for Berlin’s planned Museum of the 20th Century, designed by the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, after estimates for the construction costs spiralled to €364m from €200m.

According to The Art Newspaper, the new Herzog & de Meuron-designed museum in Berlin's central Kulturforum arts district is needed because "the Neue Nationalgalerie can only display about a quarter of Berlin’s vast stores of 20th-century art at any given time."

Current situation at the planned site for the new museum with Mies van der Rohe's Neue Nationalgalerie from 1968 on the left. Photo: Miriam Guterland/Wikimedia Commons.

Estimated cost for L.A.'s football stadium project climbs to $5 billion

2018-03-28T14:19:00-04:00

The cost of Stan Kroenke's stadium in Inglewood is climbing [...]. Owners approved raising the debt waiver to $4.963 billion for the first phase of the project, which includes the football stadium where the Rams and Chargers will play, the neighboring 6,000-seat performance venue, the 200,000 square feet of office space for NFL Media, the parking lots surrounding the stadium, and the cost of the entire 300-acre parcel.

The price tag for the stadium itself was originally estimated at $2.6 billion but is now closer to $3 billion — eye-wateringly higher than the most expensive NFL venues to date: MetLife Stadium, the shared home of the New York Giants and Jets, and the Atlanta Falcons' Mercedes-Benz Stadium, both clocking in at 'only' $1.6 billion.

Seized “Skopje 2014” documents could lead to criminal investigation

2016-10-20T14:36:00-04:00

Documents that Macedonia's Special Prosecution, SJO, seized on Tuesday with a court order from the Culture Ministry refer to a million-euros-worth tender to build the Museum of VMRO and Macedonian Struggle for Independence...The SJO [...] says it will reveal the start of two new investigations. If one refers to "Skopje 2014", it will be the first-ever serious criminal investigation into this costly project which, according to BIRN’s database, has cost 667 million euros already.

Balkan Insight reports that the hefty €667 million+ price tag (approx. $730 million+) of the grandiose revamp “was mainly due to the signing of 123 contracts with firms and individuals for its construction, many of which were annexes to the original contract.”

Balkan Investigative Reporting Network's database: Skopje 2014 Uncovered.

Previously on Archinect:

Macedonians protest to protect modernism

Macedonian Makeover: Europe's Flailing Capital of Kitsch

The price of keeping Britain's 'Downton Abbeys' from crumbling

2016-04-14T15:06:00-04:00

“Downton Abbey is just down the road from us," Mockler-Barret said. “And we’re so jealous of Lord and Lady Carnarvon. Although they won’t tell us how much they’ve made from 'Downton Abbey,' I think they’ve done quite well out of it.” But that’s the fairytale. The residents of Milton Manor will be happy if they can just patch up their inheritance and avoid the humiliation and disgrace of losing the ancestral seat after 250 years of family ownership.

American curtain wall crisis further drives up costs of skyscrapers

2015-09-14T15:10:00-04:00

A shortage of US curtain walling makers caused by the 2008 crash is so severe that it is halting projects and has even forced one developer to open its own factory. [...] As a result the price for curtain walling systems has risen between 35% and 45% in the past 18 months, and lead times have increased dramatically [...] In New York, the availability of cladding systems has become the single main determinant of programme and schedule.

Japanese government hopes to cap Olympic stadium costs at US$1.28 billion

2015-08-28T12:17:00-04:00

The government hopes to cap the cost of building the main stadium for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics at ¥155 billion, much lower than the ¥252 billion projected under a recently scrapped plan [...]. The government intends to make sure that the stadium will be built by April 2020. But given the International Olympic Committee’s request that the venue be built by January of that year, it plans to ask a yet-to-be-named contractor to propose shortening its construction schedule, the sources said.

Read more about the troubled New National Stadium Tokyo in the Archinect news:

LA mayor Garcetti confident that 2024 Olympics in his city would pay for themselves

2015-08-11T19:51:00-04:00

As Los Angeles moves closer to bidding for the 2024 Summer Olympics, officials said they can host the massive 17-day sporting event for $4.1 billion and offered to guarantee that the city will cover any cost overruns. [...] Garcetti and his team have proposed to spend $500 million less than what Boston had planned and expect to finish with a $150-million surplus by generating billions in broadcast and sponsorship revenue.

Related Olympic news on Archinect:

Berlin's $6 billion airport drama

2015-07-28T15:22:00-04:00

The architecture and engineering teams fought to keep up. As the terminal ballooned from 200,000 to 340,000 square meters (dwarfing Frankfurt’s 240,000 and just shy of Heathrow Terminal 5’s 353,000), they parceled out the work to seven contractors. That soon grew to 35, and they brought in hundreds of subcontractors, says Delius. [...] At the very moment Merkel and her allies are hectoring the Greeks about their profligacy, the airport’s cost, borne by taxpayers, has tripled to €5.4 billion.

“I thought, ‘What?’ when I heard it would cost ¥252 billion,” Tadao Ando says about National Stadium

2015-07-16T14:32:00-04:00

World-famous architect Tadao Ando was astonished to learn that the design he chose for the new National Stadium would cost ¥252 billion to build, he said at a press conference Thursday, where he spoke for the first time since the swelling cost became an issue.

According to Reuters, the massive ballooning in the construction costs of Zaha Hadid's relatively unpopular proposed design for Japan's National Stadium are not the fault of the chairman of the design committee, Tadao Ando: "Soaring construction and labor costs, along with a rise in Japan's sales tax, are blamed for much of the price surge." Ando also noted that “We shouldn’t drop Ms. Hadid’s design, otherwise we’ll lose credibility internationally.” The enormous increase in the cost of the stadium is awkward, as the country is still not fully recovered from the devastation of the March 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.

As Garden Bridge procurement process is headed for review, London group claims that 30 new parks could be funded instead

2015-06-22T13:24:00-04:00

[...] has ordered a review of the procurement process for London’s garden bridge design after the Architects’ Journal revealed apparent irregularities in the tendering process. [...] Heatherwick’s £173,000 fee was more than three times more expensive than the £49,939 offer by Wilkinson Eyre, and more than 11 times that of the £15,125 offer by Marks Barfield. [...] cost of the project could fund 30 new London parks or 30 times the amount of open space the bridge would provide.

Previously

Calatrava: "I have been treated like a dog."

2015-05-20T14:30:00-04:00

In the U.S., he isn’t getting asked to compete for new projects at all, he said, amid criticism of the rail project’s delays and costs. [...] These overruns and years of delay have taken a toll on Mr. Calatrava’s reputation, with local press and some observers painting him as an architect prone to overruns—a point he believes is quite unfair. “It has not been easy for me,” he said. After living in the city for 12 years and feeling pride in the city, “I have been treated like a dog.”

Previously:

NYMag talks to Santiago Calatrava about his WTC Station, budget, reputation

2015-03-12T13:41:00-04:00

Calatrava told me that it wasn’t his job to monitor the budget. “It is very difficult,” he said. “I have never estimated anything in this project, because there was a whole team, maybe 25 people, working the whole time on cost estimation and cost control. But I kept looking at those fellows and telling them this is like geology: You only know what you have under your feet when you excavate.”

The true costs of sprawl

2015-03-05T14:04:00-05:00

How much more does it cost the public to build infrastructure and provide services for sprawling development compared to more compact neighborhoods? A lot more, according to this handy summary from the Canadian environmental think tank Sustainable Prosperity. To create this graphic, the organization synthesized a study by the Halifax Regional Municipality [PDF] in Nova Scotia, and the research is worth a closer look.

How Cost of Train Station at World Trade Center Swelled to $4 Billion

2014-12-03T14:20:00-05:00

The current, temporary trade center station serves... only 10,000 more than use the unassuming 33rd Street PATH terminal in Midtown Manhattan. In fact, the hub, or at least its winged “Oculus” pavilion, could turn out to be more of a high-priced mall than a transportation nexus, attracting more shoppers than commuters. The company operating the mall, Westfield Corporation, promises in a promotional video that it will be “the most alluring retail landmark in the world.”

The Bidding For The 2022 Olympics Is A Disaster Because Everyone Figured Out That Hosting Is A Total Waste

2014-05-28T17:23:00-04:00

Researchers have known for years that hosting large sporting events like the Olympics always costs more than expected and always yields less revenue and useful long-term infrastructure than estimated. Now voters and politicians in democratically elected countries are starting to realize the same thing. Potential host cities are dropping out of the bidding process for the 2022 Winter Olympics like crazy.

Applications to Cooper Union stumble in wake of decision to charge tuition

2014-04-10T17:59:00-04:00

[Cooper Union], which announced last April that it would charge undergraduate students tuition for the first time, released figures on Friday that showed overall applications were down this year by just over 20 percent. [...] The new figures indicate that the admission rate nearly doubled, from 7.7 percent last year to 14.4 percent this year, which still places Cooper Union among the most selective schools in the country.

The freshmen class of Fall 2014 will be the first in Cooper Union's history to pay tuition. It remains to be seen whether Cooper Union's reputation overtime will falter, as quality considerations are matched against tuition rates and student debt, and students are given fewer options to pursue affordable education.

Should tenants pay for earthquake retrofitting costs?

2014-02-25T20:17:00-05:00

The city of Los Angeles is considering a proposal from Councilman Bernard Parks that would pass the cost of retrofitting apartment buildings on to tenants. Currently, only 50% of major renovation costs may be passed along to tenants, with landlords and building owners paying the cost of retrofitting.

In Brooklyn, Rejecting the Monotony of the Glass-and-Steel Look

2014-02-17T14:49:00-05:00

David Boyle did not build his house out of shipping containers to be hip, though he does live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He left the water pipes exposed not in pursuit of an industrial chic aesthetic, but to make them easier to fix. [...] Their goal, he said, was not style, but a place immune to the neighborhood’s rising rents, built out of materials cheap enough that it could inspire other urban homesteaders to do the same.

Can offering free rides invigorate public transit?

2014-01-30T19:27:00-05:00

Last January, Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia, did something that no other city its size had done before: It made all public transit in the city free for residents. [...] One year later, this city of 430,000 people has firmly established itself as the leader of a budding international free-transit movement. [...] What’s less clear on the first anniversary of free transit in Tallinn is whether it has actually changed commuting behavior all that much.

As it turned out, Tallinn's bold move last year to offer free-transit to its residents did not have a very dramatic effect on its own ridership. But the experiment has clarified some subtle issues in public transit:

Free-transit as a "second-best pricing scheme": if a city wants to curb drivers and increase public-transit use, it may be best to de-incentivize driving, rather than incentivizing public transit. Fees on drivers and increased taxes for car ownership may be more effective in getting folks on public transit than offering free rides.
Price affects accessibility, but not necessarily use: This may seem obvious, but without price-barriers, the unemployed could commute through all of Tallinn and increase access to potential employers. Transit ridership grew the most in Lasnamäe, a densely populated area with high unemployment.
Free-rides for everyone may not be sustainable, but it can still be good policy for some demographics. Cities like Hasselt, Belgium and Chengdu in China ha...

A Prefab, Short on the Fab

2012-04-19T15:52:00-04:00

Affordability, along with a minimalist aesthetic, were the reasons she decided on a prefab house — points on which Mr. Buryk, who had years before remodeled a 100-year-old house in Portland, Ore., wholeheartedly agreed. “I, similar to Zoe, was coming from a place of not wanting to do that again,” he said. But it wasn’t quite as affordable as they had hoped. The house cost $260,000 to build, from start to finish (the kit itself was $47,000) — nearly $100,000 more than they’d expected.