“For 10 or so of these important properties to come on the market at the same time, that matters a lot,” - Gregory J. Heym, an executive vice president and the chief economist for Halstead Property and Brown Harris Stevens — NYT

RFR plans to spend $250 million on Manhattan land purchases, up to $500 million on office building deals and $100 million to $150 million more on retailing properties — all before the end of the year. [...]

Perhaps the most under-the-radar purchase was 190 Bowery... Developers have been trying for years to buy the six-story Renaissance Revival structure, which appears abandoned, with blocked-off doorways, boarded-up windows and graffiti covering nearly all of the lower facade. — nytimes.com

190 Bowery is a mystery: a graffiti-covered Gilded Age relic, with a beat-up wooden door that looks like it hasn’t been opened since La Guardia was mayor. [...]

With the Bowery Hotel and the New Museum, the Rogan and John Varvatos boutiques, 190 is now an anomaly, not the norm. Why isn’t some developer turning it into luxury condos?

Because Jay Maisel, the photographer who bought it 42 years ago for $102,000, still lives there, with his wife, Linda Adam Maisel, and daughter, Amanda. — New York Magazine

Charles Chawalko, a recent graduate of Parsons’ Design & Urban Ecologies program, is a resident of Southbridge Towers, a 1,651-unit development that remains in the program. But as he explains below, his cooperative is in the midst of a decision over whether it will join the majority of Mitchell-Lama buildings and leave. To residents of Southbridge Towers, the vote over whether to opt out of Mitchell-Lama transcends the citywide conversation on affordable housing [...]. — urbanomnibus.net

Grassroots, place-based arts initiatives got a boost yesterday when the artist Rick Lowe was named a 2014 MacArthur Fellow. Earlier this week, I profiled Lowe’s dynamic approach to arts-driven revitalization in “Street Makeover: Artists Bring Visibility to a Low-Lit Alley.” Lowe is currently working as a multi-year resident of the Pearl Street Project, an alleyway transformation launched by Philadelphia’s Asian Arts Initiative. — nextcity.org

Conditions that have been agreed are relentlessly renegotiated at reserved matters stage. Good architects are employed to win outline planning, then ditched for a cheaper alternative; high-quality materials are substituted for flimsy plastic panels – all in the name of viability. — the guardian

"In the late 1920s, Le Corbusier created a plan for Paris," Ford says. "Its most celebrated portion was called 'Towers in the Park.' [...]

Think unremarkable, high-rise apartment buildings. Think low-income housing projects. [...]

"Many of hip-hop's most prominent artists were born, raised, and perfected their crafts in those very same housing projects. Hip-hop was a result of the economical, political, and sociological deprivations instituted by the housing projects across America." — metrotimes.com

For Scottish architects, a decision to go it alone could create longer-term opportunities for Scotland to enshrine its own architectural education and regulation system based on the protection of function. It could also boost the development of a strong, distinctively Scottish architectural culture […] Independence could well dissuade practices and architects from relocating south. — Architects' Journal

[...] colleges in China are copying America’s copycat approach. There’s a university in Shanghai where faux English manor houses sit side-by-side with dorms modeled on Britain’s half-timbered homes. To the north, Hebei province boasts a university inspired by Harry Potter’s Hogwarts—itself fashioned on the traditional collegiate Gothic. Even specific colleges have been cloned. — theatlantic.com

The gilded opulence of a Buenos Aires ballroom, the hidden tunnels beneath Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall, and the cavernous innards of the biggest gasometers in Europe are some of the off-limits sites that can be glimpsed around the world this autumn, thanks to the growing phenomenon of the Open House weekend.

The initiative, which began in London in 1992 and celebrates its 22nd edition this week, has since spawned a global network of over 20 cities [...]. — theguardian.com

9 x 18. In square feet, that’s 162, smaller than the most micro micro-apartment.

It is the size of a typical parking space. That lowly slice of asphalt has prompted three young architects — Miriam Peterson, Sagi Golan and Nathan Rich, fellows at the Institute for Public Architecture — to come up with what could be an innovative way to ease the housing crisis. — nytimes.com