Archinect - News

Are New Towns really the best new hope for ending the UK housing crisis?

2024-08-19T17:45:00-04:00

Last month, the [UK] government announced a task force to develop a strategy for new towns — settlements of more than 10,000 homes — and make recommendations for their locations within a year. The government has not set a target for the number of towns and acknowledges that they will take a long time to deliver.

Britain, short on more than four million homes, is mulling a revival of its post-war New Towns after a decisive Labour Party victory vaulted progressive leadership into power with a mandate to combat its ongoing housing crisis. Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently told the BBC that he is a self-identifying YIMBY who wants to "bulldoze" planning rules and overrule local-led resistance to get it done. The strategy, which preceded a new plan central to Kamala Harris’ Presidential campaign, could still regrettably wind up hemmed in by a notoriously parochial planning process which, nevertheless, gifted the world with Milton Keynes and other important architecture.

His deputy Angela Rayner says the list of sites to be developed won't be revealed until the end of this year. RIBA's President Muyiwa Oki has said at the outset that their plan "offers overarching solutions, but lacks critical detail on delivering social housing and futureproofing existing homes."

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...

Disney unveils further details for planned Cotino community in the Coachella Valley

2023-03-27T17:03:00-04:00

Disney’s planned “Storyliving” community is gaining traction after the company released an update featuring additional details about their new Cotino project located in Rancho Mirage, 11 miles east of Palm Springs, California.

As KTLA reported this weekend, the scheme will come with a host of amenities “thoughtfully inspired by Disney Imagineers.” A midcentury-influenced member's clubhouse named for the fictional Parr family from Disney’s “The Incredibles” franchise will now grace the development as a centerpiece to Cotino’s 1,700 homes, a town shopping center, and Grand Oasis manmade water feature.

Image courtesy Disney Parks

Disney says: “The main entertaining room will take inspiration from the movie and will feature a towering indoor/outdoor rockwork fireplace. Additional spaces will include five bedrooms, a kitchen, dining room, boardroom, and an art studio. Along Parr House's exterior, an elevated patio will present stunning views of the grand oasis and the surrounding mountain...

Elon Musk is planning a utopian Hoovertown outside of Austin

2023-03-10T11:36:00-05:00

In meetings with landowners and real-estate agents, Musk has reportedly described his idea for the estate — which he envisions building on thousands of acres of property he purchased on the Colorado River — as a utopia, so that his employees can live, work, and play without ever leaving.

The community, named “Snailbrook” after the Boring Company mascot, would be the first new town in Texas since Ellinger was incorporated in 2020. Pre-fab homes are the most likely housing option, with rents as low as $800 and a Montessori school campus to serve employees' children, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Musk, who owns some 3,500 acres in Bastrop County, reportedly gave disgraced antisemite Kanye West and his new architect beau a tour of the site last year as part of a ramp-up that included internal employee discussions as to who among them should be elected mayor. The entrepreneur had previously mentioned his desire to build a “starbase city” in the area.

If it ever gets up and running, it would join the new BIG-planned Telosa in an alarming trend of new billionaire-funded Utopian cities in the American west.

This is just the beginning. America's new oligarchs are focussing on "cities." And are actively seeking to create alternatives to cities which they provide ser...

Trailblazing French social housing pioneer Renée Gailhoustet passes away aged 93

2023-01-10T18:31:00-05:00

Noted French modernist and social housing pioneer Renée Gailhoustet passed away on January 4th at her home outside of Paris, the nation’s largest newspaper, Le Monde, reported earlier on Tuesday.

Known for creating the master plan for Ivry-sur-Seine; the 1972 Cité Spinoza housing complex in the same town; Le Liégat (where she also resided); and the La Maladrerie development in the suburb of Aubervilliers, Gailhoustet’s designs in the typology were critically important in their divergence from the Corbusian model of planning that predominated in the country in the decades following World War II.

After attending the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Paris, Gailhoustet began her own practice in the French capital in 1964. From there, she gained recognition for her innovative, socially-conscious contributions to urban renewal projects in Ivry-sur-Seine, Villejuif, and Saint-Denis that mirrored approaches later taken up by architects like Moshe Safdie in their insistence upon more humane...

Disney unveils updated plans for second 1,300-unit affordable housing development in Orlando

2022-11-17T12:03:00-05:00

The Walt Disney Company has announced detailed plans and a developer for its new 1,300-unit affordable housing development outside of Orlando.

The company says its latest housing project says will support the local Orange County Housing for All plan that will deliver 86,100 units of affordable housing to the growing community before the end of the decade.

The development will be led by the Michaels Organization and be made available to Disney and employees and members of the general public whose income qualifies within a certain range. In a press release, Michaels CEO John J. O’Donnell said: “Our goal is to create a repeatable model that we hope will inspire other companies and municipalities to create high quality, attainable housing in their own communities.”

Previously on Archinect: Disney plans to build 1,300 units of affordable housing in Orlando

Disney has been investing in the housing market and community planning with other developments planned for Orlando and Soouthern Cali...

Don't expect much from King Charles' reign architecturally, these two of his constituent critics say

2022-09-26T12:25:00-04:00

Poundbury, Paisley and Perspectives all ultimately failed to conquer the complex commercial and political challenges they faced. Their royal patron’s attempts to create human-centred townscapes have led to car-dominated suburbs. His efforts to uplift grand historic buildings have carved them into dreary flats. Our King is someone who sees the right problems but, ensconced in the very establishment that prevents meaningful solutions, he can only meddle around the edges of effecting real change.

The new British King is memorably the originator of the panned Poundbury estate that has failed to fall in line with its stated goals towards sustainability and car-free pedestrian orientation, according to Phineas Harper. He thinks the scion is hemmed in by a stolid commercial banking system and arcane land ownership laws and that class differences have otherwise made Charles' ability to gain perspective on the needs of his constituents otherwise impossible. As the Open City director sees it: “His view of society, as of architecture, is restricted to what can be seen from the tinted window of a chauffeured car.”

Previously on Archinect: Richard Rogers challenges Prince Charles to public debate over built environment

Meanwhile, in a different corner of the empire, new ArchitectureAU monthly critic Elizabeth Farrelly says she felt he “proved himself thoroughly unrepentant” during his time as Prince, citing his statements in support of traditionalism, and asking, “is he, as a constitut...

Disney plans to build 1,300 units of affordable housing in Orlando

2022-04-07T17:00:00-04:00

Now, more than 50 years later, a more urban part of Disney’s utopian idealism is taking shape. The company is announcing a new project to augment its vast theme park and resort development with 1,300 units of affordable housing, set on 80 acres of land right next to Disney World.

The Walt Disney Company is hoping to work with an unnamed third-party affordable housing developer to build the project. The units will be available to income-qualifying candidates from the general public and Disney employees. This initiative comes as Orlando-area rents are increasing, with the number of residents paying more than a third of their income on rent among the highest in the country. As noted by Fast Company, a 2019 National Low Income Housing Coalition report named Orlando the worst city in the country for affordable housing.

Previously on Archinect: 'Storytelling to storyliving': Disney unveils designs for a new master-planned community in the Coachella Valley

This is just one of several planned developments Disney has recently slated. Last year, the entertainment company announced plans to build a regional Orlando campus called Lake Nona for relocated employees from California. And, earlier this year, they unveiled designs for a master-planned community in the Coachel...

'Storytelling to storyliving': Disney unveils designs for a new master-planned community in the Coachella Valley

2022-02-16T17:04:00-05:00

Those looking to spend their lives in the wonderful world of Disney may soon see their high hopes fulfilled after the 99-year-old entertainment giant announced a slate of new master-planned communities that will begin to take shape in its namesake’s one-time Southern California home.

Each community association will be operated by a selection of Disney cast members brought in from its Phillip Johnson-designed Celebration, Florida training grounds. The company’s press announcement also mentioned a club membership program that offers residents “curated experiences” including wellness programs and cooking demonstrations.

Image courtesy Disney Parks

On the surface, the structures that make up the planned communities don’t appear to be in the style of European-inspired architecture that was synonymous with the Disney brand. Instead, renderings appear to show more mid-century modern elements influenced by the local topography and material culture of the Palm Springs area, bringing it in lin...

Beyond the Map: Spikescapes and Wild Strawberries

2018-04-10T15:30:00-04:00

Geography is getting stranger: the map is breaking up. Now we need to attend to the unnatural places, the escape zones and gap spaces, the places that are sites of surprise but also of bewilderment and unease.

Negotiating the hostile architectures of the modern city — from the anti-pedestrian cobbles of a median strip to the unloved landscape of a traffic island — geographer Alistair Bonnett reflects on the increasingly disciplinarian nature of public space, and by crossing roads and planting strawberries, experiments with modes of resistance.

For the sake of our cities, it's time to make town planning cool again

2014-11-10T14:33:00-05:00

While the cult of the star architect has soared over the decades and property developers have displaced bankers as the new super-rich, the figure of the local town planner has become comic shorthand for a certain kind of faceless, under-whelming dullard. [...] “Planning has become unpopular, disconnected from the public and increasingly beholden to the developer rather than the people it is meant to serve.”