Archinect - News

A millionaire's scheme to build a home for his art collection inside a public park is drawing ire

2022-01-20T13:37:00-05:00

A Mexican multi-millionaire is building a replica of his northern Mexico mansion to serve as a museum for his art collection, an endeavor criticized because it is funded in large part with public money.

The millionaire in question, Mauricio Fernández Garza made his fortune selling beer and petrochemicals, which facilitated the collection of art and ancient fossils now valued at around $120 million. Garza was the three-time mayor of the tony Monterrey suburb where the house is located when plans to use public funding to fund up to 60% of what is essentially a vanity project. Garza’s original plan cost around $18 million before being reduced in scope to around $9.7 by new mayor Miguel Treviño, who defeated him in his latest bid for the position.

The mansion is named after a character in literature and was itself the apparent subject of a 2008 book about its owner’s transformative effort to mold a private residence to his liking. The result of that process is now being dismantled and reinstalled in a large public park nearby — including four 14th and 16th-century ceilings totaling $50 million acquired in a deal with his successor.

The de Blasio administration failed to live up to some of its monumental promises

2021-12-31T09:04:00-05:00

Early into his second term, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a $10 million initiative, led by his wife, that would break the bronze ceiling by introducing seven new statues of historical women to New York City’s commemorative landscape of mostly men. It was to be one of Mr. de Blasio’s signature marks on the landscape. Days from the end of his administration, with only $1 million dedicated, none of those sculptures has yet materialized.

The failure mirrors de Blasio’s much-hyped but ultimately fruitless promise to remove some $1 billion from the police budget, which critics say was an insincere attempt to assuage the Black Lives Matter movement at a time when activists were taking to the streets nationwide to protest the killings of unarmed Black men.

The monuments were another area of unfulfilled administrative posturing about groups of people and neighborhoods that are not the benefactors of effective public spending. This came at a time when state officials were dedicating successive monuments in areas more often associated with financial services such as Battery Park City. The issue comes down to funding priorities, according to Stony Brook University historian Michelle H. Bogart.

“The problem is that maintenance and conservation are not sexy,” she told the New York Times. “Works in those communities don’t necessarily have ready constituencies who will raise money for the upkeep of older monuments.”

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The Brooklyn Museum will receive much-needed upgrades thanks to a $50 million gift from the mayor's office

2021-11-24T09:00:00-05:00

The Brooklyn Museum in New York City has received a massive capital investment from the Department of Cultural Affairs — $50 million, the largest single gift in the institution’s history. The funding, announced yesterday by Mayor Bill de Blasio, will support gallery renovations and energy-efficient updates.

The original McKim, Mead & White-designed structure underwent an extensive renovation at the hands of Ennead in the early 1990s and more recent renovations to the 2nd and 5th-floor galleries that were completed in 2019.

The museum has been in a precarious position financially for quite some time, authoring multiple rounds of layoffs and staff reductions amidst sustained losses that it attempted to mitigate by selling off some of its collection in addition to applying for federal coronavirus relief aid throughout the last year.

“We hope to be able to significantly expand our contemporary art galleries and design spaces,” director Anne Pasternak told The New York Times. “We have one of the great American design collections, and absolutely inadequate spaces in which to show it.”

Will the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics truly be low-impact?

2018-07-12T16:04:00-04:00

The only profitable games in modern Olympic history, LA 1984 was a case study in public–private partnerships, corporate sponsorship, and municipal storytelling [...] It’s proof, say LA 2028 organizers, that the city can do it again: re-use the city’s wealth of existing and under-construction stadiums and athletic facilities, house athletes and the media at local universities, and host an Olympics that won’t require new publicly-funded infrastructure...

The Olympics have been promoted to cities as a vehicle for ushering in investment, attention, and urban growth. The reality, however, is often contradicting with failed developments and infrastructure left in the aftermath. As Los Angeles prepares to host the 2028 games, large questions remain on how this will impact the city with an affordable housing and a homelessness crisis.

The risky business of city aquariums

2018-06-06T15:05:00-04:00

To some boosters, your city is only one world-class visitor attraction away from economic prosperity. That pitch has been used to sell and endless series of public subsidies for baseball parks, football stadiums, basketball and hockey arenas, convention centers (and their appurtenant “headquarters hotels”) and starchitect-designed museum buildings. To that long list, we might add aquariums.

Joe Cortright CityCommentary piece on the promise and perils of city aquariums.

A tool to digitally analyze Frank Lloyd Wright’s floorplans among the recipients from $12.8M in NEH grants

2017-12-15T20:45:00-05:00

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) recently awarded several grants in support of preservation of collections at small institutions, innovative digital projects for the public, and advanced humanities research. Among the many awarded projects was a new tool which uses digital analysis of architectural floor plans to show change over time in works by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Here are all the awarded architecture related grants:

"A two-year faculty and curricular development project at Tuskegee University to integrate humanities study and architectural training."

"The purchase and installation of environmental monitoring equipment to aid in the preservation of collections housed at Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona - modern historic homes designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright."

"A program to involve 32 teens from minority and low-income groups in the study of the architectural history of Chicago's neighborhoods."

"The continue...

Stalled out: Thomas Heatherwick's "New Bus for London" nixed by Mayor Sadiq Khan

2017-01-03T19:42:00-05:00

Partly in order to help pay for a transit fare freeze, Sadiq Khan has halted the order for the double-decker, triple-doored Thomas Heatherwick-designed "New Bus for London," which would have replaced the old fleet of Routemaster buses. Much like Heatherwick's troubled Garden Bridge proposal, the costly New Bus for London was backed by former mayor Boris Johnson, whose funding policies have largely attracted more public ire than praise.

For more on Thomas Heatherwick:

Finnish government pulls funding for the Guggenheim Helsinki

2016-09-08T13:16:00-04:00

The Guggenheim Foundation's Helsinki museum, the design of which was chosen after a hotly anticipated competition last year, is now missing a major financial backer, namely, the government of Finland. Prior to its withdrawal, Finland was going to pick up construction costs and a portion of the operating fees in exchange for top-tier artworks and exhibitions from the Guggenheim.

However, this pull-out isn't entirely unexpected. Before the winning design by Moreau Kusunoki Architectes was even chosen, there were rumblings of dissent: many in Finland felt that the Guggenheim was becoming a bland franchise, to the point that an alternative competition, "The Next Helsinki," was launched to solicit other designs. As Sampo Terho, parliamentary head of the Finns Party, said, “This is the end of the matter, we have ruled out state funding (for Guggenheim) once and for all, for this government.”

Listen to our interview with Moreau Kusunoki Architectes about their winning design for the Guggen...

Why are Heatherwick's proposals succeeding in New York but tanking in London?

2016-05-26T18:25:00-04:00

“The Garden Bridge is a land grab,” says Michael Ball of Thames Central Open Spaces. “That is, a major piece of public space and amenity – the South Bank, the River Thames, and the views across central London – would be sequestered for private interests, albeit cloaked in some appearance of charity and beneficence. When I saw Pier 55 I realised it was an even more blatant example of the same idea.”

In this piece design critic par excellence Alexandra Lange analyzes two similar Thomas Heatherwick designed-projects, London's Garden Bridge and New York's Pier 55, in the hopes of discovering why one seems to be resonating with the public while the other has inspired satiric contests to replace it. Murky funding issues, misleading renderings, Absolutely Fabulous tie-ins: it's all here.

For more on the saga of the Garden Bridge:

London Garden Bridge wins new supporters with revised funding deal

2015-11-02T19:34:00-05:00

The controversial and seemingly doomed plan for a garden bridge over the Thames in London could be resurrected after the group behind the project reached an agreement with council officials over the level of public funding. On Monday...a joint announcement by Lambeth...and the Garden Bridge Trust said negotiations would resume after a deal to limit the money Transport for London (TfL) would have to pay towards construction to £10m, from an original £30m.

Previously on Archinect:

London's Garden Bridge endangered by public funding shortfall

As Garden Bridge procurement process is headed for review, London group claims that 30 new parks could be funded instead

Satirical “Folly for London” competition mocks Garden Bridge project

Zaha Hadid, Piers Gough, other leading cultural figures criticize Heatherwick's London Garden Bridge

You can find more previous news on the Garden Bridge here.

London's Garden Bridge endangered by public funding shortfall

2015-09-25T04:34:00-04:00

The London garden bridge project has been placed in jeopardy after a London council withdrew its support because of public costs and the Labour mayoral candidate, Sadiq Khan, said he would ditch the proposed horticultural Thames river crossing if he took office.

Thomas Heatherwick's proposed Garden Bridge, which recently inspired a satirical contest of unpalatable entries, may be doomed to remain a hotly contested rendering. The £30 million of public funds needed to fund the bridge has temporarily been withdrawn because Lambeth council leader Lib Peck said the cost is "unjustified." Both current Mayor Boris Johnson and chancellor George Osborne have pledged £30 million of his own to the project, but it will still need additional funding to bridge the gap.