Archinect - News

Lawsuit against contentious S-shaped towers designed by Natoma Architects in Los Angeles fails

2019-12-06T15:04:00-05:00

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has thrown out a lawsuit initiated against a series of high-rise developments slated for a stretch of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles's Hollywood neighborhood.

The projects in question, The Los Angeles Times reports, include the 905-unit SOM and RCH Studios-designed Crossroads Hollywood development as well as the 731-unit Natoma Architects-designed Palladium Towers project.

VIew of the multi-towered Crossroads Hollywood project designed by SOM and RCH Studios. Image courtesy of Crossroads Hollywood.

The lawsuits were filed by AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a nonprofit group that has come out against a series of dense development proposals in the city. The group, whose headquarters are located directly across the street from the Palladium project site, contends that the new developments will fuel displacement in the surrounding area, which is home to a historic concentration of naturally affordable multi-family housing and has seen a sharp increase in...

"Solar NIMBYism" is on the rise

2019-11-21T13:56:00-05:00

Renewable energy initiatives like building new wind and solar farms have multiplied as a global push to reinforce sustainability initiatives has taken off in recent years. However, despite the benefits for these necessary renewable energy plans, pushback from residents, as well as local governing agents, has grown in tandem.

Linda Poon of CityLab reports,"The U.S. now has a total of 2 million solar panels—half of which were installed in just the last three years—capable of generating nearly 70 gigawatts [...] But while the American public increasingly supports expanding green energy, they often don't want to see the actual facilities that would generate that power."

Image © Kristian Buus via/10 10 Flickr

Poon reports that in both the West and East Coast regions of the U.S, Americans remain aggressively opposed the construction of new solar farms. Maybe these "anti-solar" attitudes are focused on aesthetics? For some, yes, but also, these concerns, according to the report, also tap ...

Nonprofit group seeks to gut L.A.'s most successful affordable housing reforms

2019-09-04T13:15:00-04:00

The city’s [Transit-Oriented Communities] program has been touted as one of City Hall’s most successful initiatives for producing affordable housing. Since it was launched in late 2017, developers have proposed nearly 20,000 new homes, nearly 3,900 of which would be kept affordable for lower-income households, according to the latest data from the planning department.

The notorious Los Angeles NIMBY group Fix The City has filed a lawsuit targeting the city's Transit Oriented Communities (TOC) program, arguing that the program, widely approved by a 2016 voter referendum, violates city and state laws and was not properly vetted by the public.

Alex Comisar, a spokesperson for Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti's office, speaking with The Los Angeles Times, called the "lawful and essential" program "an incredible weapon" for bringing housing affordability to the city, adding, "The mayor believes this program is a critical tool for getting new affordable housing units built across the city."

72U’s Dear Neighbor campaign promotes permanent supportive housing to portray a different narrative to homelessness in LA

2019-05-30T10:41:00-04:00

The housing crisis in large cities, especially in Los Angeles, has been an ongoing issue. Currently, Los Angeles County is home to the second largest population of settled homelessness in the U.S. Local government and organizations aim to create solutions in order to combat the issue with a little over 53,000 people who are homeless and in need of housing. In order to address the homeless housing crisis, the Los Angeles based creative residency 72U promotes the importance of Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) through a different kind of narrative. Through art, design, and empathy, the project initiative Dear Neighbor aims to use murals, written letters, recorded interviews, and eye-catching infographics to bridge communities together through awareness.

Image courtesy of Dear Neighbor LA

According to the Dear Neighbor team, the project is based on "the belief that housing is a human right. We understand that despite their numbers, our homeless neighbo...

Owner of famed Oxford shark house has passed

2019-04-03T16:05:00-04:00

Bill Heine, who famously put a 25 foot fiberglass shark by the sculptor John Buckley on top his house, has passed away. A BBC radio broadcaster, Mr. Heine spent a good sum of his time protecting what he saw as a fight for creativity.

Placed without planning permission in 1986, the unusual home addition sparked a 6-years long battle with the Oxford City Council. The shark was finally saved in 1992 by the Secretary of State for the Environment, Michael Heseltine, whose inspector issued the final ruling in the shark's defense, arguing that "any system of control must make some small place for the dynamic, the unexpected, and the downright quirky."

Bill Heine in April 1987, next to his Oxford home.

During this time, Mr. Heine's shark had become an undeniable part of the local community, and as his daughter describes, "an irreplaceable (and legal) part of the Oxfordshire skyline." Today, the defiant attraction continues to draw thousands of visitors each year.

When diagnosed with terminal...

Beverly Hills schools want to convince Trump administration to cut funds for L.A. Metro Purple Line extension

2018-10-12T15:11:00-04:00

While the school district had tried repeatedly in court to stop Metro from building the subway underneath the high school’s campus, Korbatov’s “Stop the Purple Threat” campaign takes a different approach: Nab the attention of President Donald Trump and try to convince him to order the withdrawal of federal funding from the Purple Line extension.

School district administrators also helped BHHS students organize a districtwide “walkout” that took place today in protest of the Purple Line extension, whose second phase is already underway. Here are some interesting Twitter updates from LA Times transportation reporter Laura J. Nelson.

A case for Brooklyn YIMBYism

2018-09-12T17:09:00-04:00

At its current rate of growth, Brooklyn is about to be more populous than the entire city of Chicago. Saying “we need more housing” is a given, but no one agrees on where, how high, and for whom. And New York has been later to that discussion than San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles: While the city is building housing, technically, it is nowhere near enough to meet the needs of 144,000 new Kings County residents since 2010.

Alexandra Lange takes a closer look at Brooklyn's contested 80 Flatbush mixed-use development and argues why it's good for the borough.

Not NIMBY or YIMBY, but PHIMBY

2018-04-09T01:45:00-04:00

If we are to take the housing crisis in the United States seriously, after reviewing international models, we see only one conclusion—local governments, supported by the federal government, must build a very large amount of affordable, mixed income, publicly-owned housing, initially by developing existing publicly-owned land.

The People's Policy Project (3P) has put out a report making the case for Social Housing in the United States. The authors, Ryan Cooper and Peter Gowan, also published an adapted essay in Jacobin Magazine wherein they contrast their approach with previous programs like HOPE VI: "We support a massive expansion of the publicly owned housing stock for all income groups, not evicting poor people to make way for middle-class people."

Their colleague, Matt Bruenig, penned a related editorial in the Guardian summarizing why "expanding the housing supply through this social housing approach has many benefits over private, market-led development."

San Francisco nixes funding for affordable senior housing project in wealthy neighborhood after pushback from residents

2018-03-12T17:35:00-04:00

The City quietly told developers this week that it will no longer fund a 150-unit affordable senior housing project proposed in the wealthy Forest Hill neighborhood, citing rising costs and neighborhood pushback. [...] Neighbors have also railed against the project at community meetings since 2016 when the project was first funded, claiming impoverished tenants at the affordable housing project would endanger their neighborhood.

NIMBYs in Boise find success in establishing neighborhoods as conservation districts

2017-12-13T14:12:00-05:00

In the East End, a plan for a home on Mobley Drive off Warm Springs Avenue spurred a group of neighbors to start organizing what the city calls a conservation district. The house would have been two stories and narrow, while most nearby homes are single-level ranch-style structures built in the 1950s.

A 16-year-old ordinance in Boise that allows for the establishment of conservation districts is coming back in favor as neighborhood groups have figured out they can use it to quash projects they don't like. Conservation districts are similar to historic ones in that they define development through the regulation of architectural styles, height, massing, and uses of buildings. Through their establishment, property owners decide the district’s contours and which uses, building types or design features are allowed.

In Boise, such ordinances have been used to successfully restrict massive parking lots and prevent the demolition of homes. Now, in the East End neighborhood, community members are pushing for a conservation district in order to curb the building of a two-story, 30-foot-wide home that would clash with the street's dominating midcentury architecture. A hearing was scheduled with the Planning and Zoning Commission for Monday, but the developers withdrew their application befo...

Raising taxes was the easy part

2017-11-13T18:34:00-05:00

For homeless advocates who had been glowing after November, the unanimous vote in August blocking the project by a Los Angeles City Council land use committee, headed by Mr. Huizar, was a discouraging setback. It was also a reminder that some of the toughest battles lie ahead as Los Angeles moves from the task of persuading voters to raise money for the homeless to the logistics of getting the money spent.

Adam Nagourney reports in from L.A., where homeless advocates and neighborhood activists are fighting over implementation of HHH (a $1.2 billion effort to build housing for the homeless). NIMBYs or concerned citizens? Professor Tim Iglesias responded "it will require sustained political will to manage the inevitable local opposition to building supportive housing throughout L.A".

Meanwhile, there is a revival of Hotel Hipness in the city, as "elements of the once-lost glittering age are re-emerging".

A new NIMBY-ism in America's foremost mansion district

2016-12-05T16:46:00-05:00

This windswept outcropping, peering over the Atlantic, was a Gilded Age haven where the wealthy built mansions known by their names, not addresses: The Elms, Marble House and, most famous of all, The Breakers... Newport has cared deeply about appearances ever since. So when large steel beams rose high in the air between the city’s most storied thoroughfares, framing a mansion that will have an unusual, many-sided shape and a flat roof, neighborhood residents and observers were aghast.

More on the architecture of the mega-rich:

Obama calls for zoning overhaul, blames existing laws for rising inequality and unaffordable rents

2016-09-27T18:35:00-04:00

The Obama administration Monday is calling on cities and counties to rethink their zoning laws, saying that antiquated rules on construction, housing and land use are contributing to high rents and income inequality, and dragging down the U.S. economy as a whole [...] The White House published a “toolkit” of economic evidence and policy fixes to help local political leaders fight back against the NIMBYs that tend to hold sway over municipal zoning meetings.

In related news:

Anti-growth zoning codes exacerbate economic disparity, racial segregation

2016-07-07T13:15:00-04:00

To most people, zoning and land-use regulations might conjure up little more than images of late-night City Council meetings full of gadflies and minutiae. But these laws go a long way toward determining some fundamental aspects of life: what American neighborhoods look like, who gets to live where and what schools their children attend. And when zoning laws get out of hand, economists say, the damage to the American economy and society can be profound.

"Studies have shown that laws aimed at things like “maintaining neighborhood character” or limiting how many unrelated people can live together in the same house contribute to racial segregation and deeper class disparities. They also exacerbate inequality by restricting the housing supply in places where demand is greatest."

In related news:

Plans for West 8-designed Houston Botanic Garden met with resistance

2016-02-22T13:42:00-05:00

By the year 2020, however, America’s fourth largest city will be able to claim a “premier” botanic garden all its own in the form of Houston Botanic Garden (HBG). [...] And, as it turns out, some folks living in the neighborhoods abutting the golf course would rather not see a stunning botanic garden designed by the same Dutch landscape architecture firm behind the redevelopment of New York City's Governors Island take its place. And it’s not because they're necessarily gaga over golf.

To learn more about the Houston Botanic Garden master plan, which recently won mayoral approval, click here.

Homeowners fight to block access to the Hollywood sign

2015-07-08T14:07:00-04:00

The pull of the Hollywood sign has...generated anger along the winding roads in those hills as homeowners have complained of a crush of motorists clogging roads, hikers in the middle of narrow streets and smokers flicking cigarettes into flammable brush... Now some homeowners are taking their battle to court, demanding that the city close a popular path into Griffith Park used to view the famed sign until the effects on the neighborhood have been fully evaluated.

The residents of Beachwood Canyon, a very affluent neighborhood, argue that traffic to one of the only public trails leading to the iconic Hollywood sign is a public safety issue. Claiming that the city has failed to properly address environmental concerns, they've formed a group, Homeowners on Beachwood Drive United, and sued the city.

As reported by CurbedLA, this isn't the first time that the neighborhood has raged against the public access point. And, in the past, the city has gone to pretty great lengths to address their concerns, such as putting up permit-only parking and allocating a personal police patrol.

While the LA Times takes a more-neutral stance, both Curbed and LAist seem pretty confident it's a case of NIMBYism.

Paris approves its first skyscraper of the 21st century

2015-07-01T12:52:00-04:00

[Paris] has not built a modern skyscraper since the 1970s, when the 231-metre tall Tour Montparnasse sprung up – much to the horror of the locals, many of whom still consider it an eyesore.

In a narrow vote, the city of lights approved Herzog & de Meuron's Tour Triangle, a 42-story skyscraper that will be the tallest building to be built in Paris since the 1970s. In 2010, the city voted to remove its multi-decade-long height restrictions of 36 meters on new buildings, which were put in place after the erection of the widely unpopular Tour Montparnasse. With a proposed height of 180 meters, Tour Triangle is Paris' first official skyscraper of the 21st century, although it required two voting sessions to win approval. In November of 2014, the city council voted down the plan, but mayor Anne Hidalgo called for another vote, dismissing the first round due to what she believed was political inter-party fighting.

The Tour Triangle will supply 70,000 square feet of office space, a four star hotel with 120 rooms, and what has been described as a "Shard-esque Sky Bar." These amenities do not seem wildly out of place for a metropolitan area with a population of 12 million, des...

Further legal setbacks for London Garden Bridge

2015-04-22T17:37:00-04:00

Campaigners opposed to the planned Garden Bridge over the River Thames in London have won the right to challenge a council's approval for it. The judicial review of Lambeth Council's decision to give planning permission for the £175m bridge will be heard in June. Questions were raised about bridge's funding and its impact on views across the river of St Paul's Cathedral.

Previously: Let the fighting begin: London Garden Bridge faces legal challenge

Let the fighting begin: London Garden Bridge faces legal challenge

2015-02-17T13:57:00-05:00

A legal challenge is being launched in the High Court against plans to build a garden bridge over the River Thames in central London. A south London resident claims Lambeth Council unlawfully granted planning permission for the £175m bridge. Michael Ball, from Tulse Hill in Lambeth, fears its impact will be "devastating". Lambeth Council said the bridge would potentially benefit "both the local and wider London economy".

Previously

Tom Kundig loses lawsuit against his Washington valley cabin

2014-10-21T13:48:00-04:00

The steel structure looms large from Midge Cross and Scott Johnston's back porch. And from the beginning they say Architect Tom Kundig and his partners ignored land covenants meant to prevent any ridgeline buildings that would be visible from below. "To me it was the extended third finger," said Cross. "Like, 'Up yours, Mazama, we can put this here and the heck with you guys.'"

In the fall of 2012, Tom Kundig of Olson Kundig Architects built a private cabin on the picturesque ridge of the Methow Valley in Washington. Prior residents of the valley's Mazama community were miffed by the ruined view, and claimed that the cabin violated "protective covenants for visual consideration", established in 1987. They were joined by current property owners and sued Kundig last year. Kundig has now been ordered by the court to move the hut away from the ridgeline.

Kundig is no stranger to Washington, or off-grid cabin architecture – a native of Spokane, Kundig was educated and practices as an architect in Washington with Olson Kundig Architects, and his "Rolling Huts" offer modest camping lodges near Mazama. While Kundig hasn't offered any official comments on the case, his office did state that "Tom Kundig designed this cabin with the valley's natural elements and history as a priority. His aim has been to create a building that embodies the Pacific Northwest spirit of ...

How Majora Carter Plans to Transform a Building of Injustice in New York

2014-09-29T14:35:00-04:00

The Spofford Juvenile Center was a particularly painful landmark in the Hunts Point community in the Bronx when it was built in 1957... [Majora Carter] envisions the Spofford site combining mixed-income housing, open space and economic development that would appeal to the neighborhood’s existing demographics. Carter is a supporter of affordable housing, but thinks that if it’s built in isolation, you still haven’t solved the problems of employment and a lack of amenities.

NIMBYs go to court over "modern" home; Zaha gets an apology; global warming rages on: News Round-Up for August 25, 2014

2014-09-02T20:07:00-04:00

Friday, August 29:

MIT's MindRider helmet draws mental maps as you bike: The prototype is currently being used to create a mental-map and guidebook for NYC, and an upcoming Kickstarter campaign will attempt to fund the project for commercial sale.
In Beirut, a grassroots push for more grass: Lebanon's fifteen-year civil war made much of Beirut's green space inaccessible or dysfunctional. The Beirut Green Project is trying to bring at least a modicum of green space back to the city's residents.

Thursday, August 28:

Norwegian artists plan to open art academy in North Korea: Nothing's final yet, but the school is committed to its disbelief in sanctions or boycotts on art.
Alvar Aalto gets a close look from Google's Cultural Institute: Google's cameras go inside the famous Finnish architects studio, as well as a selection of his works, for a curated photo-exhibition.

Wednesday, August 27:

China considering drastic ban on coal: Chinese news outlets claim that work is underway to ban coal in Bei...

Hearing begins for "modernist" North Carolina home threatened with demolition

2014-08-26T14:38:00-04:00

Today is day two in court for architect Louis Cherry and his wife, Marsha Gordon, for the hearing that will decide the fate of their new home in the historic Oakwood neighborhood of Raleigh, North Carolina. Back in March, a neighbor complained that the "modernist" style of Cherry's home didn't jive with the neighborhood's tone, and successfully appealed to have the building's permits revoked. Construction was halted, and now the decision of whether the house can be finished, demolished, or forcibly modified to local design standards has been brought to court.

We first covered this issue back in May and July, and the preservationist-NIMBYism that it's raised. Opening statements for the case were held yesterday, although it could take months for the judge to issue a final decision.

UPDATE: The hearing has been adjourned, according to @RaleighReporter, Colin Campbell (reporter for The News & Observer, North Raleigh News and Midtown Raleigh News).

@NCMHTweets reported from inside the court...

Aesthetic Energy Autobahns: Can Designer Power Masts Win Over the Public?

2011-05-20T11:40:39-04:00

Europe is undergoing a revolution in energy production that requires massive new infrastructure to support the shift to renewables. But do new power lines always have to result in blight? Some utility companies are hoping that designer power masts can help overcome local opposition.