Archinect - News

Marijuana Real Estate: This isn't just another greenhouse

2017-05-21T23:57:00-04:00

Innovative Industrial Properties, Kalyx and other similar groups are following the same strategy: buy buildings, retrofit them and lease them to commercial or medical marijuana growers. But it can often cost millions to turn a vacant warehouse into a facility suitable for cannabis cultivation.

David Gelles reports that the spread of legalization means the weed business is booming and with it, demand for commercial, industrial space. The latest post-industrial trend in states like California, Colorado, Massachusetts or even New York is a retrofitted industrial-scale "cultivation center."

photo by Ryan Mungia

Related readings include; a 2005 look at how Pot Clinics (were) Grow(ing) Like Weed in SF and last year's photo essay of L.A.'s "Green Mile." Or back in February, the Marketplace Morning Report on how these new REITs could help grow the medical-marijuana business.

photo by Ryan Mungia

Finally, last year over at the Weed thread, gruen noted "Big gold rush here to convert disused industrial facilities to indoor grow in advance of legislation."

Having bazillions of dollars helps

2016-12-01T20:21:00-05:00

Even if the townhouses look alike and they’re next to each other, they don’t always have the same floor levels. So we’ll have to find a way to eliminate the party wall between them. It’s really taking apart both houses and rebuilding them as one. If the client wants these big open spaces, we have to dismantle the interior of these buildings and then rebuild them together as a 40-foot-wide building

S. Jhoanna Robledo reviews the latest trend in urban living for the wealthy, the Frankenmansion.

Win “Dingbat 2.0”, a critical study of L.A.'s most ubiquitous vernacular typology

2016-10-24T12:00:00-04:00

Dingbat 2.0: The Iconic Los Angeles Apartment as Projection of a Metropolis is the first full-length critical study of the dingbat apartment, the stucco-clad boxy “building code creature” that is the Southland's most ubiquitous and mundane vernacular typology. Co-edited by Radical Craft founder Joshua Stein and architect and educator Thurman Grant, the book is the latest initiative in the Dingbat 2.0 project, following the LA Forum's 2010 Dingbat 2.0 competition.

The nearly 300-page publication features essays by figures like Barbara Bestor, Aaron Betsky, Dana Cuff, John Kaliski, the editors themselves, and more. It also includes a Dingbat Field Guide, a fun-to-read section of critical responses and comments from both architects and non-architects, and winning entries of the Dingbat 2.0 competition.

Thanks to DoppelHouse Press, Archinect is giving away five copies to our readers!

Joshua Stein and Thurman Grant took a moment with Archinect to share more details about the book. Read on f...

How the design of a parliament building affects the politics that happen inside

2016-09-19T18:56:00-04:00

For the past five years van der Vegt and Max Cohen de Lara, his partner at XML, have studied the halls of parliament of all 193 United Nations member states. In a new book, Parliament, the duo elegantly connects architecture to the political process. All 193 assembly halls fall into one of five organizational layouts: “semicircle,” “horseshoe,” “opposing benches,” “circle,” and “classroom.” And these layouts make a difference.

If you can imagine how debating with someone seated beside you might feel different from arguing with someone standing at a pulpit, you can appreciate the impact.

For more on the intersections of the architectural and the political, follow these links:

Sex box - the newest architectural typology?

2013-08-19T11:59:00-04:00

They look like shelters for hikers in a national park, but these wooden sheds in Switzerland have a rather less innocent purpose – they provide a discreet location for men to have sex with prostitutes.

In an attempt to "regulate prostitution, combat pimping and improve security for sex workers", Zurich has opened nine "sex boxes" in the former industrial zone of Zurich. The boxes are accessed by drivers following signed routes, where customers will find up to 40 prostitutes waiting to offer their services.

The boxes prominently display posters advocating safe sex, and provide alarms for the prostitutes to trigger if they feel threatened.