Archinect - News

Eric Owen Moss’ first LA home relists for $10.95 million

2024-04-25T18:39:00-04:00

Eric Owen Moss’ first residential design in Los Angeles, the 1991 Constellation 167 home in Brentwood, has hit the market courtesy of Sotheby’s International Realty for a listed price of $10.95 million. The home had previously been listed by Compass and Sotheby’s for $12 million last fall before being put up again for the lower price, held exclusively by the latter.

Photo: Wayne Ford, image courtesy Sotheby's International Realty

The 5,476-square-foot design includes four bedrooms and 5 full baths and sits on just a quarter-acre parcel. It has appeared several times in various television shows (R.I.P. Curb Your Enthusiasm) and is distinctive of Moss’ warped style, which was later repeated in 2022’s A+M House. A “comprehensive” series of upgrades and restorations has been performed since it was commissioned, according to Robb Report.

Photo: Wayne Ford, image courtesy Sotheby's International Realty

Moss, who turns 81 this year, recently completed his (W)RAPPER office tower in Culver Ci...

Flea's Michael Maltzan-designed hillside LA compound drops price from $10M to $7M

2024-04-23T12:41:00-04:00

[...] property in the unincorporated community near Glendale has once again resurfaced for sale, per TMZ, this time asking a speck under $7 million. That’s still a lot more than the $4.3 million Balzary paid contemporary artists Lari Pittman and Roy Dowell for the place in 2018, but it does include an 875-square-foot addition that was installed on the land in 2021, as well as a pool and cabin that were tacked on in 2020.

As we wrote in 2022, the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist listed the property asking $9.8 million, having purchased the property four years previous for $4.3 million. The Michael Maltzan-designed complex contains an outdoor movie pavilion, a redwood cabin, and a smaller two-bedroom house designed by Richard Neutra.

Engel Studios, Cameron Carothers; Associated Press

Artists Lari Pittman and Roy Dowell originally commissioned Maltzan for the single-bedroom addition in 2009, and it has since been featured in several design magazines, in addition to receiving an AIA Award in 2012.

Kanye West relists Tadao Ando-designed Malibu home for $14 million less

2024-04-12T12:04:00-04:00

Kanye 'Ye' West has reportedly reduced the price of his previously listed Tadao Ando-designed home in Malibu, California, to $39 million, according to Realtor.com. The new price is substantially lower than both the original $53 million listing and the $75 million price tag it carried in 2020 before he paid $57.3 million to purchase the home in September of 2021.

The 4,000-square-foot design from 2013 had been previously owned by Richard Sachs. The deprecation might stem from its reported current state, which was affected by a hasty “gut renovation” performed last year and leaving its interior without finishes and (possibly) electricity, light fixtures, or appliances — resulting in a recent lawsuit.

Marmol Radziner served as the executive architect and general contractor for its original construction. Ando is currently working on the design of a vacation home for West's ex-wife Kim Kardashian in the Palm Springs area after seeing his MPavilion10 commission extended by another full y...

Oliver Wainwright on Disney's 'dream or nightmare' Storyliving community

2024-04-09T11:58:00-04:00

With revenue from cinema and streaming falling in recent years, income from Disney’s “experience” division is soaring, and property development is the next logical step. Disney tried it before in Florida, first with utopian plans for Epcot (the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow), followed by the quaint town of Celebration, but Storyliving takes the branded living experience to the next level.

Writing for The Guardian, critic Oliver Wainwright reflects on plans for a major Disney-themed development at Rancho Mirage in the California desert.

As we reported initially in 2022 and in a follow-up last year, the 2,000-home Storyliving by Disney scheme will include a midcentury-influenced member's clubhouse named for the fictional Parr family from the company’s “The Incredibles” franchise, where users can engage with Disney-themed art lessons and experience dinners inspired by Disney stories.

Related on Archinect: Disney unveils further details for planned Cotino community in the Coachella Valley. Image courtesy Disney Parks

In his latest article, Wainwright views the development through the lens of the Architecture of Stage Realities exhibition taking place at Arc en Reve in Bordeaux. The exhibition "paints a portrait of Walt Disney as a natural-born developer, a cartoonist who understood not only how to lure people into his magical worlds but how to keep them coming back," Wai...

Ray Kappe's Keeler House lists for $12 million in Los Angeles

2024-04-05T18:23:00-04:00

Late SCI-Arc founder Ray Kappe’s Keeler House design has hit the market in Pacific Palisades, California, for $12 million.

The split-level, 4,142-square-foot Post and Beam design was built over four and a half years using Kappe’s nearby personal residence as its model. A rich palette of redwood, teak, Douglas fir, concrete, and glass feature carefully throughout the home, which sits on a 7-acre hillside lot and is replete with a two-car garage, four bedrooms, three baths, a storeroom, and separate guest quarters.

Kappe designed the home in 1991 for a local jazz musician. Its interior layout is centered around its open-plan living/entertainment area that is cantilevered to extend over the hillside. A pleasing layered effect composes the interior, with glass inlay floor and ceiling blocks included to further incorporate the presence of natural light deeper into the structure via a vaulted skylight. Six concrete towers work to elevate the home above the tree line, allowing for a floati...

Developer behind SHoP-designed The Brooklyn Tower is facing foreclosure on $240 million loan

2024-04-04T12:20:00-04:00

Michael Stern, the developer of SHoP’s new The Brooklyn Tower (also known by its address at 9 Dekalb Avenue), is facing foreclosure over a failure to pay a $240 million loan that was extended by Silverstein Properties in 2019 to complete the 93-story project, according to reports from The Real Deal.

As TDR pointed out, Stern is also responsible for 111 West 57th Street, which has had issues with cost overruns and other legal setbacks.

Stern, a veteran of the city’s high-stakes recent luxury market, is known for making huge bets on his projects. Speaking for a 2020 Financial Times profile, FXCollaborative’s Daniel Kaplan said of his approach, “He’s commissioned some very good architecture. The thing that’s really interesting about him is that all the things people say you can’t do — or you can’t do for the money — he says, ‘Forget it!’”

The tower, which stands as Brookly...

Frank Lloyd Wright's early Prairie-style design lists for $779,000 in Illinois

2024-03-29T14:41:00-04:00

The home credited as one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s first Prairie School designs, the 1900 Warren Hickox House, has hit the market recently in Kankakee, Illinois, for a listing price of $779,000.

Realtor.com was early to report news of the home’s listing, which represents the first time the home has been available for purchase in 48 years. Sited adjacent to the R. Harley Bradley House from the same year, the 3,277-square-foot design features four bedrooms and 2.5 baths and is completed by a Japanese-inspired roofline the then 33-year-old Wright was drawn to even before his first visit to the country in 1905.

First floor plan. Image: Freiluft/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The Frank Lloyd Wright Trust describes: “Despite the relatively small scale of the residence, Wright created a sense of both interior and exterior expansiveness through his use of a modified cruciform plan and his manipulation of architectural space, form, and details.”

Second floor plan. Image: Freiluft/Wikimedia Co...

Leading Architects Become Harvard Alums with this Executive Development Program

2024-03-21T14:55:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by
Harvard Graduate School of Design Executive Education

Created for global leaders in the built environment, the Advanced Management Development Program in Real Estate (AMDP) at the Harvard Graduate School of Design leverages the school’s resources to help participants reach the absolute pinnacle of their profession. The intensive one-year program with five weeks spent on campus brings participants into contact with industry leaders from around the world via on-campus sessions, site visits, and project-based learning, culminating in graduates being granted Harvard alumni status.

This article features insights from three program alumni, Trusted Inc. Founder and CEO Michael Peters, Class of 2015, Unico Developers Principal and Co-founder Fernando Levy Hara, Class of 2010, and Raouf Advisory Founder and Chief Advisor Hussam Raouf, Class of 2017, to get an inside look at this unique educational and professional growth opportunity.

“The Most Exclusive Real E...

Plans revealed for Hudson Yards Phase Two with several towers and a potential casino

2024-02-26T12:03:00-05:00

The next chapter in New York’s Hudson Yards has been revealed, with developers filing a bid for a potential mixed-use casino complex. Related Companies and Wynn Resorts submitted plans as part of an environmental impact process last week with the New York City Department of City Planning, which includes two scenarios for the plot directly west of The Vessel.

The proposed site is currently occupied by the West Side Yard and would see the Hudson Yards development expand west, separated from the Hudson River only by 12th Avenue. The plot would also be wrapped on three sides by the High Line, which already borders the south side of the existing Hudson Yards development.

In 2020, Related Companies offered an indicative insight into the architectural intent for the site when it published renderings to assuage concerns that a 700-foot wall would separate the development from The High Line.

Hudson Yards Phase Two proposed plan. Massing and plan credit: Related/NYC Planning

Both scenarios sub...

Adam Neumann is attempting to buy his way back into WeWork

2024-02-06T20:00:00-05:00

Five years after driving WeWork into the ground, co-founder and ousted CEO Adam Neumann has now hatched a plan to buy it out of bankruptcy. In a letter to WeWork’s advisers obtained by The New York Times, Neumann and his new real estate business, Flow Global, express interest in buying the co-working space solution — but claim WeWork has been ignoring attempts to get more information so they can come up with a bid.

WeWork, meanwhile, is beginning to walk away from even more properties under the direction of new CEO David Tolley after announcing an initial list of 40 that would be relinquished in November.

Neumann had cited outside scrutiny as his main reason for leaving the company in September 2019. His attempts since December to purchase the company through his new housing startup Flow Global constitutes the second such push since Bay Area financier Dan Loeb funded the project in August 2022. The return-to-office downturn is being cited as their principal motivation. In a letter to WeWork advisers, Neumann's attorney said it would be a "value-maximizing transaction for all stakeholders."

WeWork currently owes about $18.6 billion in debts, according to their Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing from November.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Tirranna home sells for $6 million in Connecticut

2024-01-30T14:58:00-05:00

A treasured Frank Lloyd Wright home once resided in by the architect himself has sold for a reported $6 million in suburban New Canaan, Connecticut. The house is one of Wright’s largest designs and was purchased for $2 million below the original $8 million asking price that was published with its first listing in June 2023.

Tirranna House was originally built for the local Rayward family in 1955 and features seven bedrooms with eight full bathrooms in a horseshoe plan covering some 7,861 square feet on 14 acres of land. It has had just four owners in the subsequent 70 years, according to Robb Report. Wright lived in the home during the construction of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York after 1956 and incorporated some of the same clerestory windows used in the museum’s design into the home’s greenhouse, which is joined by a guest residence, five-car garage, converted wine cellar, and barn.

Image courtesy Houlihan Lawrence

Featuring a lively palette of Philippine mahogany ...

UCLA buys into Westside Pavilion conversion space formerly reserved for Google campus

2023-12-29T12:15:00-05:00

UCLA has purchased the former Westside Pavilion shopping mall near its campus, reports The Real Deal. The 580,000-square-foot office known as One Westside was formerly been leased to Google for a 14-year term, but was left vacant as the company’s staff reductions began in January of this year ended the deal.

The Gensler project was partially completed in 2022 at a cost of $475 million. The other 240,000-square-foot half of the mall has been redone by a developer called GPI and includes a mixed-use residential component enacted at what used to be the mall’s parking lot. Google had invested in a spate of other office conversions highlighted by the $280 million Thompson Center project in Chicago, earning it praise as one of corporate America’s leading proponents of adaptive reuse strategies.

According to The Real Deal: “UCLA has not said what it wants to do with the three-story indoor mall, wh...

Manhattan’s office building spree is now ‘over,’ according to the New York Times

2023-12-29T11:49:00-05:00

Just three large office towers — of more than 500,000 square feet — are being built across New York City, with two expected to open in 2024 or 2025 and nothing else projected to go up for years. Normally, a handful of sites that size would be in various stages of construction, with at least one opening every year since 2018, according to JLL, a real estate services firm.

Due to an obvious confluence of interest rates, office vacancy records, and construction costs, the Times says Manhattan is “entering its most significant office construction drought since after the savings and loan crisis in the late 1980s and early ’90s.” Recent superlatives like BIG’s 66-story The Spiral and the Foster + Partners-led 270 Park Avenue replacement may stand as the last major realized office designs before the early 2030s. Another three proposals totaling over 3 million square feet are stuck in the approvals pipeline as of right now.

The stasis has notably led to the cancellation of the much-maligned ten-block Penn Station revitalization plan, among other significant stall-outs. A “flight” to high-quality modernized office spaces of the kind featured in 425 Park Avenue and One Vanderbilt could spark a turnaround if not for their asking price. As the report stated, some industry experts believe $200 or $300 per square foot rents might be a reality for similar buildin...

Pierre Koenig’s last completed project, the Schwartz House, listed for over $4 million

2023-12-21T11:48:00-05:00

Pierre Koenig’s Schwartz House has been listed for sale in Rustic Canyon, Los Angeles. Built in 1994, the home is the last project Koenig completed, uniquely built on four structural steel beams.

Image credit: Cameron Carothers

Externally, the home takes the form of a steel cube held aloft by four 40-foot-tall structural steel columns. The cube is rotated 30 degrees on an axis to face the canyon and ocean and clad in bright steel with a blend of full-length and half-length windows. By contrast, the four columns and external staircase are finished in black paint.

Image credit: Cameron Carothers

Inside, the four-bedroom home features two main levels floating above a garage and sheltered courtyard. The upper and lower levels are connected by a yellow spiral staircase wrapping around one of the structural steel columns, offering a colorful departure from a pure material palette of hardwood and glass.

Image credit: Cameron Carot...

Kanye West lists gutted Tadao Ando home for $53 million in Malibu

2023-12-20T12:37:00-05:00

Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Tadao Ando, the house features a concrete exterior in keeping with the acclaimed architect’s streamlined brutalist ethos. In the couple of dozen months that Ye has owned the property, the music performer and designer removed the home’s interiors, leaving it essentially gutted. Now, instead of renovating the four-bedroom beachfront house on Malibu Road, Ye has decided to sell it, with a price tag of $53 million (he’s listing it at a loss).

Post-divorce Ye apparently contracted a gut renovation that left Ando’s original 2013 design looking more like “a bomb shelter from the 1910s” in the year leading up to its new listing. That endeavor ended in a $1 million lawsuit brought forth by its project manager over dangerous working conditions that remains unsettled.

The four-bed, 4.5-bathroom home had been purchased for $57.3 million in September of 2021. Jason Oppenheim, the agent in charge of its sale, said the new price “reflect[s] the need for the interior finishes to be replaced” and that he was confident in its ability to be “brought up to 2024 standards.”

Ando is meanwhile working on a brand new Palm Springs abode for its former co-inhabitant Kim.

Explore Harvard GSD's latest Executive Education course on Blockchain and Real Estate

2023-12-13T09:00:00-05:00

This post is brought to you by Harvard Graduate School of Design Executive Education

While the NFT bubble has burst, the tantalizing potential of blockchain, which is the foundation of NFT’s, bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies, endures. Some have even written that blockchain offers the “possibility of entirely reorganizing the profession” of architecture.

Harvard University Graduate School of Design Executive Education offers From Crypto to the Metaverse: Blockchain Applications in Real Estate to equip architects for this paradigm shift.

We asked Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo y Lopez, Lecturer in Architectural Technology at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, to introduce this January's program.

Video courtesy of Harvard GSD Executive Extension

We also asked him which applications of blockchain he is most excited about — he said (1) Tokenization (fractional asset ownership) and (2) Blockchain-enabled transfers of title and ownership claims.

Video courtesy of Harvard GS...

SCI-Arc founder Ray Kappe's final residential design hits the market for $4.2M in Los Angeles

2023-11-29T18:24:00-05:00

Late SCI-Arc founding director Ray Kappe’s final residential design has hit the market in Venice Beach, California, for a listed price of $4.2 million.

The 2,482-square-foot home has three bedrooms and was originally built in 1947. Kappe began the commission in 2019 (the same year he passed away), designing for the owner a two-story addition that added a garage and small recreation room to the property at 938 Amoroso Place. The renovation was completed earlier this year at an undisclosed cost. Tracey Becker of COMPASS is the listing’s agent.

Image courtesy Realtor.com

“When he came to look at the property, he was impressed with the concept of the tree fern garden and how to incorporate the house within that context,” the anonymous seller told Realtor.com. “Ray was also interested in designing a home that went beyond the normal postage-stamp-sized lot home, by continuing his signature style of getting lost in a space — where everywhere you looked, an importan...

This startup is hiring an architect to ‘lower the entry barrier to overseas real estate investment’

2023-11-29T12:57:00-05:00

Following last week’s look at an opening for an Emerging Scholar in Design at the University of Texas at Austin, we are using this week’s edition of our Job Highlights series to explore an open role on Archinect Jobs for an Architect/Designer at Build Block.

The role, based in Los Angeles, calls for an individual who can “prepare architectural drawings for new construction and remodeling,” and “assist in tasks related to land, use, and other building permits.” The role also demands expertise in modern architectural software such as AutoCAD or Revit, and a strong background in sustainable design principles is preferred. The ideal candidate would be fully proficient in Korean, due to the company's increasing collaborations with Korean investors and businesses, with up to five years of experience in the profession.

Why the role interests us

The open role at Build Block offers us the opport...

WeWork seeks to vacate 40 New York properties following bankruptcy filing

2023-11-15T14:32:00-05:00

After officially filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week, WeWork has released a subsequent list of 40 “underperforming locations” across New York City that the company hopes to walk away from over the coming months pending court approvals.

The news was first made public via the Commercial Observer, which also reported WeWork as identifying another 29 properties in the U.S. and Canada it plans to relinquish. The news adds to concerns over the performance of the commercial real estate market in New York and other cities. WeWork had been, until very recently, one of the biggest tenants in Manhattan.

The company has retained Hilco Real Estate to re-negotiate terms on its more than 400 outstanding leases and will allow some members to re-negotiate with landlords directly in certain cases. Current members will be transferred to better-performing locations still operated by WeWork. (The company has a total of 779 properties worldwide.)

Related on Archinect: WeWork is cutting ...

Google scraps $15 billion Silicon Valley development deal with Lendlease

2023-11-06T12:28:00-05:00

Google has scrapped a $15 billion development deal that would have benefitted California’s Silicon Valley with new modern office parks, affordable housing, and mixed-use districts, according to reports published by CNN and Reuters late Friday.

The deals struck with Australian multinational Lendlease cover planned developments in and around Santa Clara County, California, including Sunnyvale and three others in San Jose and Mountain View. Google had previously announced its plans to reduce its company size by about 6% at the beginning of the year.

Both Lendlease and Google had released statements expressing their continued pursuit of the projects in April when the San Jose Downtown West development’s start of construction was put on hold indefinitely. Lendlease now says the four-year-old deal is no longer “mutually beneficial given current market conditions.”

The news strikes a major blow to the faltering...

The City of London skyline is expected to add these eleven towers by 2030

2023-11-01T18:58:00-04:00

The City of London Corporation has revealed new images depicting the 2030 skyline of the Square Mile ahead of the completion of a planned cluster of tall buildings that are expected by the end of the decade.

The plans depicted include the 11-building ‘City Cluster’, which strategically closes an existing gap between Rafael Viñoly’s 20 Fenchurch Street (aka the “Walkie-Talkie" tower) and adjacent plots in the body's local plan. Other key areas of change included in the City Plan 2040 call for the construction of new pedestrian routes and public green space, added ground-level accommodations for retail, and a mix of education and cultural spaces.

“These new CGI images clearly illustrate the ever-changing nature of London's incredible skyline. It demonstrates that the City office is here to stay, and that the Square Mile's real estate sector is robust and thriving, despite wider economic concerns,” Chair of the Planning and Transportation Committee at the City of London Corporation, S...

Two-for-one special: Pair of Usonian Frank Lloyd Wright homes hits the market in Michigan

2023-09-29T18:37:00-04:00

A pair of Usonian-period Frank Lloyd Wright homes have hit the market in Galesburg, Michigan, for an asking price of $4.5 million, according to a combined listing posted last week by Christie’s International Real Estate.

Located in The Acres, a Wright-designed subdivision that remained unfinished after the architect began work on the more successful Parkwyn Village nearby, both the Samuel & Dorothy Eppstein House and Eric & Pat Pratt House offer approximately 2,000 square feet of premium living space inside of Wright’s signature concrete block and mahogany detailed exteriors.

Image courtesy Victoria Krause Schutte/@properties Christie’s International Real Estate

Christie’s says the original built-ins of the houses have been well preserved by their owners, along with Wright’s floorplans. The sale represents the first time Wright homes have been offered in a bundle, and follows a spate of other rare homes in Arizona, Northern California, Texas, and Oklahoma to have been listed in the ...

NEOM previews satellite developments at Riyadh real estate conference

2023-09-19T14:10:00-04:00

More details have emerged regarding Saudi Arabia’s plans for the TROJENA and OXAGON segments of their $500 billion NEOM megaproject after the country participated in a regional real estate trade conference in Riyadh last week.

As part of the inaugural Cityscape Global meeting, promoters of NEOM were on hand to present their accelerated plans for each development, which are alternatively a ski resort/wildlife reserve and a manmade industrial island with residential tracts that can accommodate up to 90,000 residents. Details about Sindalah, a massive yacht club and terraced beach resort island, were presented as well.

Image courtesy NEOM via Facebook

The event was meant to lure potential investors and property buyers through a high-tech sales pitch with immersive exhibitions and panel discussions featuring members of NEOM’s leadership team. Models of each site were included along with VR headset tours, architectural drawings, and other media relating to the development, which is being...

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.”

Arizona to limit construction in the Phoenix area as groundwater supply shrinks

2023-06-03T09:17:00-04:00

Arizona has determined that there is not enough groundwater for all of the housing construction that has already been approved in the Phoenix area, and will stop developers from building some new subdivisions, a sign of looming trouble in the West and other places where overuse, drought and climate change are straining water supplies.

This decision, announced last Thursday, means that Arizona will no longer provide developers in some areas of the Phoenix region new permits to construct homes that rely on groundwater. Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, sources half of its water supply from groundwater. The announcement will not impact developments that have already been approved. However, the state will be looking towards new water conservation measures and alternative sources to provide the water needed for these projects. The decision will likely have a significant effect on Arizona’s real estate market, especially in Phoenix, which has become the fastest growing metropolitan region in the country, due to the impact on housing affordability.

Now, developers looking to build will have to prove that they can ensure water supply for 100 years using water from a source that is not local groundwater. This move is another example of how the impacts of climate change continue to grow in prominence. In addition t...

Sotheby's purchases Marcel Breuer's Brutalist Whitney for a rumored $100 million

2023-06-01T17:56:00-04:00

Sotheby’s said Thursday that it has purchased the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 1966 Brutalist building by Marcel Breuer on Madison Avenue and will move its headquarters there from York Avenue in 2025. The deal — which Sotheby’s and the Whitney refused to confirm in response to queries from The Times in April — finally resolves the fate of the Breuer building, which has hung in the balance since the Whitney moved down to the meatpacking district in 2015.

The auction house will operate a rotating exhibition space out of the building — in addition to hosting live auctions — beginning in September 2024. There are no plans for the subterranean level restaurant at this time. The Frick Collection, which has been leasing the building since the Met walked away in March of 2020, will officially move back into its $160 million Selldorf Architects-renovated original East 70th Street location in the months prior.

The New York Times reported a source mentioning the deal, which was brokered between the current landlords Whitney Museum and Sotheby's, was worth approximately $100 million. Sotheby's CEO Charles F. Stewart explained to the paper that it was simply a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that we couldn’t pass up."

HGTV lists renovated Brady Bunch house for $5.5 million

2023-05-26T17:29:00-04:00

The Brady Bunch house is back on the market — and, this time, it comes with the interiors of your 1970s TV dreams. HGTV is selling the Studio City home pictured in hundreds of establishing shots on the famous sitcom not five years after purchasing it for $3.5 million.

The iconic home, located at 11222 Dilling Street in LA's Studio City neighborhood, was purchased by the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned HGTV in 2018. The network renovated the façade and gutted the interiors. They added a story to recreate the show’s living room, kitchen, bedrooms, and yard, which had all only existed on Stage 5 of Paramount Studios. The midcentury home’s makeover was documented in a 2019 series titled A Very Brady Renovation.

HGTV invested approximately $1.9 million into the renovations, which included the addition of 2,000 square feet to the home.

Previously on Archinect: The Brady Bunch home gets its own HGTV makeover show

When the property hit the market in 2018, it was for the first time in 45 years, with an original asking price of $1.85 million. There had been speculation that it might be knocked down and redeveloped. Now, HGTV is asking for $5.5 million for the home, with the network reportedly planning to donate a portion of the proceeds toward an initiative ...

Jay-Z and Beyoncé buy $200 million Tadao Ando-designed seaside mansion in Malibu

2023-05-24T15:12:00-04:00

In a colossal real estate move, Jay-Z and Beyoncé have purchased an extravagant vacation home in Malibu for a record-breaking $200 million, as reported by Dirt.

The sale price ranks as the most ever paid for a California home and the second-most paid for a U.S. residence, behind the Ken Griffin-owned penthouse at 220 Central Park South in Manhattan.

Image courtesy Google Maps

The 8-acre Brutalist-style estate, designed by celebrated Japanese architect Tadao Ando in collaboration with L.A-based WHY Architects, flaunts unobstructed ocean and coastline views, direct access to a scenic beach, two outdoor pools, and a 40,000-square-foot mansion.

The Carter family's latest acquisition, initially commissioned by soap opera scions Bill and Maria Bell, was completed in 2014, taking 15 years to plan and build.

Courtesy of WHY; Photo by Florian Holzherr

The original listing had the residence at $295 million, representing an insane 1934.48% increase of the original $14.5 million its previous o...

Frank Lloyd Wright’s stately Westhope home lists for $8 million in Oklahoma

2023-04-21T12:56:00-04:00

Frank Lloyd Wright's historic 1929 Westhope home has just hit the market in Oklahoma.

Sage Sotheby’s has the property listed for $8 million in Tulsa, with local real estate investor Stuart Price as the seller.

According to the listing, the 5-bed, 4.5-bath home is 10,405 square feet, making it one of the largest residential projects designed by the architect. It joins two other in Carmel, California and the Phoenix area as Wright designs to have come on the market since the new year. The home is one of only three Wright commissions in Oklahoma between 1929 and the Price Tower in 1956 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 following a 1965 renovation.

Image: Sarah Strunk Photography/Sage Sotheby’s International Realty

Local publishing magnate Richard Lloyd Jones envisioned the home as a “symbol of Tulsa’s future.” The structure features the same “textile blocks” system seen earlier in the Enni...

The Flatiron Building is still up for grabs after auction winner fails to make deposit

2023-03-28T17:20:00-04:00

Ownership of Manhattan’s iconic Flatiron Building is still up in the air after the surprise winning bidder at last week’s auction failed to follow through on a $19 million deposit that would have guaranteed his sole ownership of the building, which has been vacant for years.

Last week, the private equity firm known as Abraham Trust came out on top of a whirlwind auction that was initiated as part of a lawsuit brought against the building’s minority owner, Nathan Silverstein, by his partners to determine who takes over the sole controlling stake and can therefore decide its future.

As reported by the Commercial Observer, the firm subsequently missed the deadline to make its required 10% deposit on the property it bought for $190 million by Friday. This will set off a ripple effect, as the partnership that originally brought the suit and placed second in the auction is apparently declining its option to make the purchase at their final bid of $189.5 million. The result of their decisi...