Archinect - News

New York developer receives $92 million loan to complete project believed to be the largest speculative office building in Brooklyn's Midwood neighborhood

2022-05-10T18:23:00-04:00

A New York developer has scored a $92 million loan to finish a project which is billed as the largest speculative office building in Brooklyn’s Midwood neighborhood.

The construction loan was granted to Baruch Singer, whose Triangle 613, LLC will use the funding to develop a 10-story, 215,379-square-foot Class A office and retail building located at 1497-1538 Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. The loan from private lender Parkview Financial came mid-construction. The development is approximately 35 percent underway, with completion expected in October 2023. As detailed by Parkview Financial Founder and CEO Paul Rahimian, the financing will be used to pay off two existing loans on the project with the remainder going towards completing construction.

According to the lenders, more than 30% of pre-leasing commitments are already in place, with the project garnering a variety of tenant prospects including a co-working office, medical office, health and wellness spaces, a restaurant, and supporting ancillary commercial retail uses.

Atelier RZLBD proposes 35-mile-long, hovering megastructure above Toronto's Yonge Street in love letter

2021-06-25T18:03:00-04:00

Through a series of postcards and a love letter, Toronto-based practice Atelier RZLBD has proposed a conceptual project that would add a 35-mile long tower above Toronto’s Yonge Street, the longest street in the world.

Titled #YongeCity, the megastructure would be composed of space frame and shipping containers. But most importantly, it would accommodate 134,000 inhabitants, aiming to reduce the housing market gap in Toronto. According to the firm, this elevated “line” above Yonge Street symbolizes equality and diversity as it is accessible and occupiable to everyone regardless of financial standing or cultural background.

Illustrating the concept is a collection of postcards, concept diagrams, and a love letter to Toronto, which can be viewed below.

Dear Toronto,

Toronto, you are one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world, proudly referred to as “Canadian Mosaic.” However, despite all the optimism, you have also become one of the least affordable cities in the world,...

Send your ideas to the 2016 Chicago Prize “On the Edge” competition

2016-12-05T19:45:00-05:00

Visionary plans, policy, and infrastructure have all played crucial roles in the development of the city and consequently in the definition of its edge. Today, conflicting interests regarding ownership, use, and value of the Lakefront have produced a stalemate of what this civic treasure could become.

A hotspot for land-use disputes, the urban development of Chicago's Lakefront is the subject of the 2016 Chicago Prize competition, "On the Edge”. Launched on November 29 by the Chicago Architectural Club and the Chicago Architecture Foundation, the competition seeks speculative architectural interventions for the Lakefront “in consideration of the stated issues that imagine and speculate its scape” — as exemplified in recent situations like the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, the Barack H. Obama Presidential Library, or the impacts of Lake Shore Drive.

The Chicago Lakefront. Photo: Payton Chung/Flickr.

The CAC asks: “Would new strategies of zoning recharge this long strip of stand-alone city-land? Can architectural interventions function as a framework for the excitation of the edge? How will the collision of the metropolis and the lake create a radical emergence of the unimaginable?”

There is no set program for this competition. A Question-and-Answer period is open now until December ...

Alissa Walker imagines a "utopian" Los Angeles in 2056

2016-07-06T15:12:00-04:00

Sorry, I’m not able to send this directly through SnapFace since your iPhone 6 doesn’t support neural chat. Old-fashioned text pixels will have to do. Remember the movie “Her”? That’s what Los Angeles is like in 2056. L.A. is the densest city in the U.S., with a population that’s about a third larger than it was in 2016. Taller buildings are everywhere, including New DTLA — a corridor of super-talls that runs the length of Wilshire all the way to Santa Monica.

The speculative fiction details a "utopian" city primarily characterized by efficient, far-reaching public transport and fewer cars. There's no longer a drought, and buildings are wrapped in "solar skins" designed by Elon Musk.

For more speculative visions of a future California, check out these links from last summer's Dry Futures competition:

Editor's Picks #448

2016-06-20T09:50:00-04:00

Robert Urquhart visited BIG's 2016 Serpentine Pavilion and the new Summer Houses. Olaf Design Ninja_ approved "Adeyemi's is very architectural and tectonic. still modern while taking on that neo classical stuff. and Leibingers is nice too...."

Plus, Nicholas Korody published 'The Permanent Temporality of Refugee Camps: The Syrian Chapter' a Masters thesis project of Nikita Gyawali, a student at the Aarhus School of Architecture.

News
Orhan Ayyüce recommended reading Nick Currie in Art-agenda, in which the Scottish artist tears into the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale, "vis a vis its older cousin, the art biennale." Currie also writes (about 'Fundamentals', Rem Koolhaas’s 2014 Biennale of Architecture) "Depending on your perspective the results were either Brechtian or resembled a severe case of Asperger syndrome" and makes reference to Max Weber’s Verstehen.

Oliver Wainwright reviews the 2016 Serpentine Pavilion (and new Summer Houses) offering(s). Will Galloway placed this year’s ...

"Lagoonous Assemblage : Antifragile Urbanism for a dry Los Angeles," an honorable mention in Dry Futures Speculative category

2015-10-02T11:30:00-04:00

Among the many writers of disasters and crisis – from Barthes to Blanchot to Ballard – there is a strain of thinking that rejects the normative and reductive assumption that a disaster must be met with an austere temper or melancholic pragmatism. Rather, disasters can breed their own wild creativity. The Lagoonous Assemblage: Antifragile Urbanism for a dry Los Angeles Honorable Mention proposal seems to take this direction, asking how the drought can be conceived of as an opportunity.

Lagoonous Assemblage : Antifragile Urbanism for a dry Los Angeles by Tanzil Shafique

The central question this project explores is how to turn crisis into an opportunity and the notion of antifragility gives a philsophical background to such design exploration agenda. It is defined as a quality of a system to benefit from exposure to disorder/stress/disaster, as opposed to resiliency which merely adapts to the stress. Can a re-invented urbanism be envisoned for Los Angeles that uses the drought as a pre...

"The Ocean Above Us," an honorable mention in Dry Futures Speculative category

2015-10-01T11:30:00-04:00

In the face of events that exceed our capacity for comprehension, humans tend to invent myths and stories that render things palatable. The passage of the sun across the firmament, the surge of the oceans in a storm, the crash of thunder that follows the flash of lightning – these all have been attributed to the actions of gods, demons, etc. Even when a more precise or scientific answer is available, humans tend to rely on these stories to help explain complex phenomena to children. What stories will humans of the future invent to understand our time of ecological crises? The Ocean Above Us Honorary Mention proposal takes the form of such a fable, sited in a speculative future in which humans reach to the skies to quench their thirst.

The Ocean Above Us, by Jake Boswell

“The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical r...

"The Continental Compact," an honorable mention in Dry Futures Speculative category

2015-09-30T11:30:00-04:00

While the current drought is likely linked to larger issues like climate change, California has always had cycles of dry and wet seasons, as well as regular drought periods. But, for thousands of years, the inhabitants of the region were (for the most part) able to survive times of water scarcity – in part because there was, frankly, less of them. As anyone whose seen Chinatown knows, Los Angeles as we know it today is only possible because of the massive projects that pipe water in from out of state. While this was undoubtedly an infrastructural feat, it was also a policy one. The Continental Compact Honorable Mention considers historical hydro-policies in order to imagine radically different futures.

The Continental Compact by Ian Caine, Co-Designer, Derek Hoeferlin, AIA, Co-Designer, Emily Chen, Illustrator and Researcher, Tiffin Thompson, Illustrator and Researcher, Pablo Chavez, Illustrator.

The drought crisis in California is first and foremost a political crisis. Decades of pub...

"Freshly Squeezed- Survival on the Fringes," an honorable mention in Dry Futures Speculative category

2015-09-29T09:00:00-04:00

Part and parcel to the image of Orange County in the popular imagination, the suburban tract home is a ubiquitous, popular, and oft-derided element of the Southern California architecture vernacular. The Freshly Squeezed: Survival on the Fringes Honorable Mention proposal crafts an extended timeline for this housing typology, revisiting its history and imagining its position in a speculative future marked by natural disasters and resource scarcity.

Freshly Squeezed: Survival on the Fringes, by Robert Alexander

For 60 years, the Orange County suburban tract house has been a model real estate product for living and consumption in Southern California. Thousands of homes were built following this model of development: large single family houses (2000 to 4000 square feet), built of wood frames with stucco and generally occupying the center 50 to 60 percent of their lots. These houses demonstrated efficiency in their construction and in their ability to sell quickly, but were usually design...

"APART, WE ARE TOGETHER," an honorable mention in Dry Futures Speculative category

2015-09-28T10:09:00-04:00

Coping with California's drought and ensuing water restrictions have been stressful for everyone in the state, but some bear that stress more heavily than others. In Apart, We Are Together, the state's most affluent members will manage to detach the water infrastructure from everyone else to continue buying water at whatever cost, while the lesser-haves must get by with whatever's left, resulting in a drastically divided California.

APART, WE ARE TOGETHER, by El Hadi Jazairy and Rania Ghosn

California will not be homogeneously dry. Its main geographic challenge is economic and political.

With 21 spots on the list of 30 neighborhoods with the highest percentage of million dollar homes, the taxpayers in these zip codes will pay for desalted water, a cost nearly twice as expensive as the rate for imported water was. They will ramp up their infrastructure to convert salty ocean water into drinking water to quench their long-term thirst. (Don’t worry about the intensive energy needs of such...

"Grassroots Cactivism," 1st place winner in Dry Futures Speculative category

2015-09-16T14:00:00-04:00

Grassroots Cactivism, by Ali Chen

California is entering the fourth year of an epic drought. Urban households have reduced water usage by 25%. However, legislation does not apply to farmers, while 80% of the state's water usage goes towards agricultural production. A large percentage of that water goes towards crops that feed livestock. Efforts to conserve water need to target these water-intensive aspects of the farming industry.

California's unique arid and mediterranean climate plays host to a variety of indigenous species. Among these is the drought-tolerant nopales cactus, otherwise known as the prickly pear. It has existed as a food source in local culinary traditions for many centuries, and is also commonly used as fodder for livestock in times of drought.

There is another lesser-known use of the nopales: its pulp acts as a cleaning agent for water. Locals in Mexico have often dumped the water used to cook cactus into polluted rivers and streams. The 'mucilage' or inner cactus ...

Challenging the space-age Manifest Destiny narrative, as Elon Musk vies to move humans to Mars

2015-05-08T12:26:00-04:00

It’s a myth almost universally believed, that sits at the core of liberal technocratic thought, and has been embedded in practically every other work of speculative fiction for the last half century. You can sum it up like this: 'When we go into space, we will all magically become nice.'...It’s early days, but if we really want to create a progressive new world then issues like these should be at the hearts of our efforts from the very start.

The longtime space-age Manifest Destiny of humans inhabiting Mars and the prominently white, European male perspective that narrative perpetually emphasizes has become a bubbling multi-faceted discussion among science bloggers as Elon Musk's staunch ambitions to ultimately turn humans into a "multiplanet species" continue to develop. Stemming from that discussion, writer Martin Robbins of The Guardian contemplates whether or not humanity's eventual future on Mars can exist without the earthly issues of sexism and racism.

CALL FOR ENTRIES: What do you think the Obama Presidential Library should look like?

2014-11-17T21:51:00-05:00

The Chicago Architectural Club launched its 2014 edition of the Chicago Prize ideas competition this past weekend: design the Barack Obama Presidential Library! From the lively discussion (if not frenzy) surrounding a Barack Obama Presidential Library possibly being built, the Chicago Prize invites architects and designers to send ideas of how the U.S. Presidential Library building typology should be reinvented.

The Chicago Prize 2014 competition aims to spark debate on the typology of the presidential library. Speculative proposals will fulfill functions like housing a collection of artifacts and documents relating to the president’s life while also providing educational infrastructure and framework for outreach and community programs.

Entries are due by January 10, 2015. The winner will be announced and exhibited at an opening event at the Chicago Architectural Foundation in February 2015.

Now's the time to bring the best of your clever ideas to the table.

MAS Context LEGACY is now accepting entries until December 1

2014-10-27T19:39:00-04:00

MAS Studio is back with their latest competition, MAS CONTEXT: LEGACY. The open competition explores how the most influential people, places, buildings, ideas, films, etc. have affected -- and continue to affect -- the way we experience the urban environment. And LEGACY not only looks to the past, it also theorizes what legacies may define the future.

Submissions can be in the form of critical essays, photo essays, analytical studies, data visualizations, visual explorations, films, or interviews.

So get started on those entries. The deadline to submit is Monday, December 1, 2014.

Learn more important competition details on Bustler.

"Never Built: Los Angeles" dares the City of Angels to dream big

2013-07-24T14:31:00-04:00

When driving through the streets of Los Angeles, one would expect the urban structures of a dynamic city to be as unique as its inhabitants. But that's not entirely the case, and why is that? The Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles poses that question--and what could have been--with their upcoming exhibit "Never Built: Los Angeles", which opens this Saturday.

Co-curators Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin worked with Clive Wilkinson Architects to bring to life an intriguing, alternate vision of Los Angeles. The highly anticipated exhibit will delve into the most ambitious proposed projects through various media like drawings, models, videos, and their accompanying writings.

After two years of digging through archives, Lubell and Goldin discovered rare images and untold narratives that have remained unseen by the public eye--even by native Angelenos. Imagine the city having more green space and parks if Olmsted and Bartholomew's 1930 "Plan for the Los Angeles Region" were not...