Archinect - News

Faced with looming condo safety reforms, Florida frets a new real estate 'crisis'

2024-08-19T18:28:00-04:00

Post-Champlain Towers South tragedy condo building crackdowns are coming and now Florida could be facing its biggest real estate “crisis” in decades, NBC reports. Prices have dipped nearly 40% in some areas after a rash of new laws offloaded proactive maintenance costs onto the HOAs, triggering a simultaneous gold rush for redevelopments and subsequent preservation fight statewide.

One concerned Floridian told the network it added to her personal cost of living concerns (“Every penny I make goes towards that concrete restoration.”) In some cases, the cost of repairs has been reported at northwards of $100,000 per unit. Three-quarters of all condo dwellers in the state now inhabit structures that are more than 30 years old. As NBC says, these are the “last bastions of relatively affordable housing along Florida’s coastline.“

Meet New York City's window-washing robot

2023-08-18T13:47:00-04:00

Skyline Robotics is disrupting the century-old practice of window washing with new technology that the startup hopes will redefine a risky industry. Its window-washing robot, Ozmo, is now operational in Tel Aviv and New York, and has worked on major Manhattan buildings such as 10 Hudson Yards, 383 Madison, 825 3rd Avenue and 7 World Trade Center [...]

Automation has entered the building maintenance field with AI-powered window-washing robots appearing on Manhattan's high-rise facades.

The technology could signal a shift in the workforce traditionally assigned to this task, from human teams to lone robots controlled remotely, potentially from anywhere in the world.

One of Manhattan’s art deco gems is slowly breaking down its tenants with persistent elevator malfunctions

2022-03-29T12:34:00-04:00

At 20 Exchange Place, the sheer height of the building has made the persistent outages particularly infuriating for residents, who can pay as much as $5,000 a month for a market-rate one-bedroom unit. Since November, the skyscraper has been plagued by long elevator outages that have turned daily life upside down and trapped residents with mobility issues inside their apartments. Elevator service is unpredictable and often nonexistent, for hours at a time, above the 15th floor.

The building’s owner DTH Capital says Con Edison is the culprit, but a spokesperson for the company told the Times there was “no indication” that the malfunction has nothing to do with its service or equipment. The problems are so bad that the building had to hire an elevator mechanic to be on call 24 hours in order to replace the system's operating boards, which DTH attempted unsuccessfully to buy in bulk.

Tenants in the 57-story tower at 20 Exchange Place are getting by buying two weeks of groceries at a time. Some have been given new apartments elsewhere in the area or have signed non-disclosure agreements with the owners. Others are afraid to talk on the record, while still more either broke their leases or else wound up climbing a mountain of lament — including a 28-year-old nurse who thought she scored a deal during the Covid boom (“I’m a young, in-shape person, so I can do it. But it’s miserable.”)

“It’s a privilege that we are able to afford to live here, but we did not sign...

A new infrastructure approach could save millions per year, say researchers

2021-04-21T11:19:00-04:00

With infrastructure negotiations currently taking center stage in the United States’ political discourse, researchers at the University of Georgia (UGA) have published their findings on how a new approach to infrastructure maintenance would save federal and state governments millions of dollars per year. A study produced by the UGA’s College of Engineering proposes a new model for bridge infrastructure which prioritizes the incremental maintenance of key components, in contrast to current national strategies that favor replacement and rebuilding.

When determining the long-term health of a bridge in the United States, current strategies rely on a basic broad depreciation formula. The researchers believe such a method generates overly conservative assessments of how long infrastructure could last before full replacement. The UGA’s “bridge coactive model” instead considers the interaction of 60 to 80 bridge components in predicting long-term bridge performance, and assesses how regular...

Billions could flow toward addressing National Park Service maintenance backlog

2020-07-14T15:18:00-04:00

Progress is being made toward enacting the Great American Outdoors Act, a legislative effort recently passed by the United States Senate and due to be taken up by the US House of Representatives next week that could begin to address the $11 billion backlog of road, building, and facilities maintenance that has plagued the National Park Service (NPS) for years.

President Donald Trump has indicated that he would sign the rare bipartisan bill once it reaches his desk, The Los Angeles Times reports.

The bill aims to bring $1.9 billion in funding per year for the next five years to the NPS to help meet these deferred maintenance needs, which include building improvements, bathroom facilities, accessibility upgrades, and other infrastructural building programs.

Private funding for repairs and improvements could come to America's senior housing for the first time under new HUD rule

2019-08-01T19:09:00-04:00

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is close to finalizing a major reform of its extensive senior housing portfolio, allowing nonprofit owners of 125,000 apartments to tap private sources of financing for the first time. HUD built nearly 2,900 of these properties over the past three decades. Though owned by nonprofits, the federal government funded their construction and subsidized tenant rents.

The nation's recent crop of senior housing projects could see much-needed improvements come to reality as the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) loosens rules dictating where nonprofit building owners can draw funds from to make building repairs.

Tom Davis, director of the Office of Recapitalization at HUD told The Wall Street Journal, “Fundamentally what we’re trying to do is avoid the kind of capital backlog problem that other parts of the affordable housing portfolio have, like public housing."

National Museum in Rio De Janeiro suffers massive fire after reported neglect

2018-09-05T13:50:00-04:00

Hours after an immense fire consumed the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, a crowd of protestors gathered in front of the wrecked institution on last night (3 September) to protest the financial neglect that led to its demise. The 200-year-old historical building lacked an efficient sprinkler system—a result of years of incremental budget cuts by the Brazilian government—and was quickly gutted when the blaze erupted shortly after the museum closed to visitors on Sunday (2 September).

Current Brazilian president Michel Temer and former president Rousseff are being blamed for a failure to properly maintain the National Museum in Rio De Janeiro after a consuming fire broke out 3 days ago. In the aftermath of the flames the museum's facade has mostly survived, yet aerial shots reveal most of the roof has collapsed with interiors full of rubble.

Only 40 days prior to the fire, an architect wrote to federal authorities reporting the buildings neglect such as exposed wires and other structural issues asking for immediate measures to be taken.

Is it time for maintenance to be valued over innovation?

2017-07-24T18:46:00-04:00

To shift our focus from innovation to maintenance would also create an opportunity for greater political consensus. Maintenance is an area of public policy where conservatives and progressives should see eye to eye.

As Andrew Russell and Lee Vinseljuly of NY Times point out, officials in federal, state and local government do not allocate the resources necessary for preventive maintenance. The authors argue that American conception of technology is narrow and immature—obsessing over gadgets and fetishizing innovation.

All varieties of American infrastructure — roads, bridges, airports, sewers — are in decrepit condition. Lead poisons the water systems of Flint, Mich., and hundreds of other cities and towns across the nation. The American Society of Civil Engineers considers 17 percent of American dams to be “high hazard potential,” including the one outside Oroville, Calif., that nearly collapsed in February.

It’s not just maintenance that our society fails to appreciate; it’s also the maintainers themselves. We do not grant them high social status or high salaries. Typically, maintenance is a blue-collar occupation: mechanic, plumber, janitor, electrician. There are white-collar maintainers (l...