Archinect - News

In Japan, abandoned and vacant homes are on the rise

2024-05-02T11:42:00-04:00

New government figures show that 5.9% of all Japanese homes are abandoned, while 13.88% of homes are vacant (a total of 9 million homes). The issue is predominantly impacting the country's rural areas, while the number of vacant and abandoned apartments and condo units is also increasing.

Several measures have been undertaken by local and national governments to address the increased cases, which can have consequences for building upkeep and maintenance. In 2022, the city of Nagoya began requiring condo building management to update authorities on the state of their complexes, while, in 2018, Yokohama city asked architects to assess undermanaged condo buildings and set up management associations.

Related on Archinect: Minimalist concrete apartments fill a narrow site in Tokyo, designed by Ryuichi Sasaki Architecture. Image credit: Sherpa

More broadly, Japan passed a law in 2015 allowing local authorities to issue warnings about vacant homes at risk of collapse, including powers to de...

Oceanwide Plaza: Graffiti 'vandalism' or the greatest tag 'takeover' of all time?

2024-03-09T08:00:00-05:00

The New York Times has entered the debate surrounding LA's troubled Oceanwide Plaza development this week after social media and the outside press tied its celebrity status to the neglect of downtowns, housing rights issues, and their relationship to developer capitalism.

The Times piece follows news of the city’s recent order on Oceanwide to install a security fence to prevent against interlopers' vandalism and the 'public nuisance' the highly publicized graffiti artwork has turned the unfinished project into.

'Vandalism' is a charged term to apply in this case, but it has affected other sites near Downtown Los Angeles, like the copper wire-stripped Sixth Street Viaduct, in the midst of its delayed economic rebound. The street art community is here portrayed alongside BASE jumpers as a lawless quandary that considers their “takeover” a bar-raising move geared mainly at promotion and exposure. A smarter take is that taggers have the broader consensus of society so well-figured tha...

LA City Council orders graffiti removal on infamous unfinished Oceanwide Plaza towers

2024-02-12T13:33:00-05:00

City Council Members in Los Angeles have issued a mandate to owners of the graffiti-tagged Oceanview Plaza development in Downtown to remove the artwork weeks after its unfinished exterior became a national news item and the latest flash point in a debate over the citywide housing crisis that has lingered for a number of years.

By a vote of 14-0, Council Members approved Kevin de León’s motion calling for the city to foot the bill for cleaning up the stalled $1 billion towers if China-based developer Oceanwide fails to meet their February 17th deadline for removal. (CoStar first reported on the motion this weekend h/t Bizow.com.)

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The internet sensation was covered in tags last month by artists apparently inspired by an early December operation in downtown Miami and able to bypass the security detail on site, which has been embroiled in a payment dispute with developers since last ye...

Lana Del Rey is right: There is a tunnel under Ocean Boulevard

2024-02-01T13:10:00-05:00

With days to go until the 2024 Grammy Awards, one nominee in the running for Album of the Year contains an unexpected architectural overture.

Lana Del Rey’s Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, nominated in three categories, contains a song of the same name that dwells on an abandoned piece of infrastructure in Long Beach, California.

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In the song “Did You Know There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” Del Rey draws on themes of being forgotten and underappreciated in the future despite current fame. The lyrics draw a parallel between Long Beach's Jergins Tunnel under Ocean Boulevard which was closed to the public in 1967 and has since been largely forgotten, a historical fact Del Rey entwines with her own foreboding of one day being unappreciated and overlooked.

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Constructed in 1927, the su...

MAD's Ma Yansong occupies abandoned Chinese market with colorful, reflective art installation

2023-03-20T10:59:00-04:00

Architect and MAD founder Ma Yansong has completed an art installation set within an abandoned market in China’s Guangdong province. Titled 'Timeless Beacon,' the project sees the three-story structure wrapped in reflective film and topped with a colorful cloth covering.

Image credit: Lu Yu

Located in the village of Taiping Xu, the installation occupies the former Taiping market, the village’s largest abandoned building. Once a bustling trading fair for fishermen, businesspeople, and villagers, dating back to the late Ming Dynasty, the market became abandoned in the 1980s as a younger generation moved from the village towards larger cities and online commerce lessened the need for physical marketplaces.

Image credit: Tian Fangfang

“I see many plants growing towards the sun from the gaps of the abandoned building,” explained Ma Yansong in a statement. “We hope to create a sense of vitality and rebirth from the ruins so that people can feel new energy and perception from the old structu...

The abandoned mall featured in hit show, The Last of Us, will undergo a redevelopment led by Toronto-based practice DIALOG

2023-03-16T18:53:00-04:00

HBO’s The Last of Us has taken the TV world by storm, with its season finale recently airing last Sunday. The show has brought to life the immensely popular and acclaimed video game series, placing viewers into a dire post-apocalyptic, zombie-ridden world.

Following the journey of characters Joel, played by Pedro Pascal, and Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey, we see them undertake a cross-country trip where they encounter a range of landscapes and urban locations.

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One of the most memorable is seen in the show’s seventh episode, “Left Behind,” set primarily in an actual vacant shopping mall. This location is Calgary’s Northland Village Mall, which has been partially closed since 2021 as it undergoes a redevelopment plan led by Toronto-based practice DIALOG.

Rendered in courtesy of DIALOG.

The firm has recently shared renderings of the reimagined mall, depicting an open-air, mixe...

Is momentum building to revitalize Rust Belt cities?

2019-10-07T12:32:00-04:00

To local leaders, a row of abandoned redbrick buildings in the heart of this Rust Belt city’s ailing downtown presents the best hope to spark a citywide revival. The buildings—stripped down to their plaster walls, tin ceilings and worn wood floors—are part of a $150 million plan to draw more people to live and work downtown.

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the resurgent efforts being undertaken by local, state, and federal entities aimed at revitalizing Erie, Pennsylvania, a city that has suffered through persistent economic and population decline over the last 60 years.

John Lettieri, CEO of the city's Economic Innovation Group tells WSJ, “One of the biggest questions policy makers, economists and pundits are asking now is, ‘What do we do for places like Erie?’ Is there a future for these places when the industry they were built around has withered?”

The hidden potential of vacant homes

2019-08-28T12:28:00-04:00

Now comes encouraging news of a Detroit program to take abandoned homes which can be saved into a land bank and then auction them off. The program is coupled with forgivable loans for repairs.

Detrroit is auctioning off vacant homes to "people who commit to fix them up and live in them." The implementation has supported Detroit's growing identity as a financially feasible place to "make a start with a home and a business."

The House of the Century is falling apart

2019-07-12T15:59:00-04:00

When the so-called House of the Century rose from the swampy earth back in the early 1970s, it arrived as a vision of the future, a biomorphic experiment in modern living. Back then it was a bright white jumble on the shoreline, and depending on your angle of approach, it looked like either a man's erect genitalia or a giant schnoz. Today, this futuristic house is a decaying relic of the past, and its future is a subject of concern and conjecture.

Though Ant Farm, the experimental architecture firm founded by Doug Michels and Chip Lord in 1968, is not among the most well known firms of that era, they produced a number of projects both famous and deserving of fame. They are perhaps best known for their early experiments with inflatable buildings or their art installation of 10 half-buried Cadillacs in the Texas desert (titled 'Cadillac Ranch'). Less publicized, however, is the House of the Century, an indescribably-strange lake house.

"The light beam entry to the House of the Century, shown in 1973." Photo by Chip Lord.

Built in 1973, the house was built for wealthy art patron Marilyn Oshman and her family as a weekend getaway. According to Mark Lamster, Oshman let the architecture firm conjure anything that came from their wildest dreams. The design was inspired by "Automotive styling; the Apollo program; the Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi; and above all Buckminster Fuller, the inventor of the geodesic dome and honorary capta...

A democratic presidential candidate is pitching to save "dead malls"

2019-07-09T13:31:00-04:00

Entrepreneur and presidential hopeful Andrew Yang has a new policy proposal that promises to set him apart in the crowded Democratic field. He hopes to address an issue affecting the economic vitality of communities all across the country. Yang wants to save the malls. According to his campaign, some 300 malls will fold over the next 4 years, a number in line with an estimate by Credit Suisse that one-quarter of all malls will close by 2022.

In the U.S., the presidential race has already begun with potential candidates showcasing their intended policies and platforms to the American people. Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has created a growing following due to his stance on universal base income and approaching politics with "human-centered capitalism." In learning this, it is no wonder Yang has turned his efforts towards saving dying malls as a means to revive the economy of local communities.

Yang's goal is to implement the American Mall Act. According to a recent CityLab piece by Kriston Capps, the plan is to "devote $6 billion to find new purposes for these dying retail complexes." Yang made this announcement on July 4th weekend in a video as a response to Palmetto State voters and their experience of the retail apocalypse. In his video, Yang expresses the reality of mall upkeep and points out, "it's a massive challenge to try t...