A new neighborhood is coming to San Francisco's southern edge, where developers Tishman Speyer, the San Francisco Giants baseball team, and the Port of San Francisco are collaborating with a team of architects on a new 28-acre master plan for an existing surface parking lot and an underutilized... View full entry
After an incredible publicity blitz and well over a year on the market, Frank Lloyd Wright’s world-renowned Ennis House — tucked into the foothills of Los Feliz [...] — has sold for $18 million to an as-yet-unidentified buyer. That number, while significantly below the $23 million ask, ranks it as the priciest Wright-designed home ever sold, easily eclipsing the previous high-water mark set by the Storer House in nearby Hollywood Hills, which was purchased in 2013 for $6.8 million [...] — Variety
More than one Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home has changed owners this week: after learning about the successful auction of his mid-century modern Norman Lykes House in Phoenix on Wednesday, Variety now reports that the spectacular Mayan Revival-style Ennis House in LA's Los Feliz hills just sold... View full entry
On Thursday, the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services will unveil an app created by UC Berkeley that will give all Californians who download it on iOS and Android phones the chance to get earthquake early warnings from any corner of the state.
Authorities will also begin issuing quake early warnings through the Wireless Emergency Alerts system, offering text message alerts even for people who have not downloaded the app.
— The Los Angeles Times
The new warning system will alert Californians who have the app when an earthquake registering at level 3 on the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale strikes nearby. The state will send out text message alerts over its Wireless Emergency Alerts system to anyone within range of a level... View full entry
The Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris has unveiled plans to expand to a suburban site by creating a new "art factory" that will both display and conserve the museum's expansive art collections. An architect for the proposal has not been named. The scheme is slated for an existing parking lot in the... View full entry
An Arizona house that was the last home designed by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright before his death sold on Wednesday for nearly $1.7m.
Out of nearly 20 bids at a public auction for the Norman Lykes House, the winning bid came from a man who lives out of state, Heritage Auctions told the Associated Press.
— The Guardian
Commissioned by Norman and Aimee Lykes, this Phoenix home known as the "Circular Sun House," was Frank Lloyd Wright's last residential design before his death in April 1959. The structure was completed nearly ten years later by Taliesin architect John Rattenbury. Image: Heritage Auctions In case... View full entry
Last week, Macy’s West Stores, Inc. filed suit against Stockdale, a Los Angeles-based real estate investment firm that took over the downtown property from Westfield in August 2018. The department store is asking a San Diego Superior Court judge to block the developer’s plan on grounds that it violates Macy’s lease agreement and an even more substantial contract, known as a reciprocal easement agreement. The latter document gives the retailer veto power over major property improvements. — The San Diego Union Tribune
A new lawsuit brought by Macy’s, a tenant at Horton Plaza, the spectacular postmodern shopping mall in San Diego designed by Jon Jerde in 1985, has cast doubt on plans for a significant re-do of the property. Horton Plaza in San Diego, Image By Sandy Huffaker, Jr. Photography - The Jerde... View full entry
This week Consultatio Real Estate and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) released renderings for Catalinas Rio, a waterfront office building designed to become the center of activity in Buenos Aires' Catalinas Norte business district expansion. As two adjacent towers, one rising 29 floors... View full entry
Making a building is such a big thing. They impact people for generations and act as massive transfers of information. It’s very profound. You can’t think enough about what the responsibility is. — The Guardian
Writing in The Guardian, architect David Adjaye of Adjaye Associates shares his personal thoughts on architecture as it relates to the creation, maintenance, and longevity of memory by highlighting his firm's recently completed Linda Pace Foundation building in San Antonio, Texas. View... View full entry
Here again were bare untiled floors and the constant presence of wind and earth. There was a stillness, a permanent air of afternoon and an interior that was magically cooler and airier than the exterior it felt so much at peace with. The site sloped downward, so the house had been set on many levels. — T Magazine
A profile of Bijoy Jain and the work of Studio Mumbai, wherein we learn Bijoy is a fan of Masanobu Fukuoka and the idea of subtraction. View full entry
A collection of new images have been unveiled by the architects at Olson Kundig highlighting the firm's recent restoration and renovations of the Seattle Space Needle. The $100 million revamp made its debut in 2018 and was overseen by Olson Kundig Design Principal Alan Maskin. This... View full entry
“This moment, the beginning of the 21st century, is a big moment to change the direction — toward sustainability and disaster relief,” he said. “This will continue as the main theme of this century.” Times had changed since the Modernist era: “Those times, people believed that they would have utopia some day. But we know that it’s not true. There’s no utopia.” — T Magazine
Nikil Saval, writing in T Magazine profiles architect Shigeru Ban in a wide-ranging article, shedding light on Ban's American education at the Southern California Institute of Architecture and The Cooper Union, highlighting the architect's ideological disagreements with Peter Eisenman... View full entry
The priority remained on stabilizing the building, two days after the top floors collapsed on one another, sending debris to the street below and killing two people. One worker remained missing, and authorities have said they also want to find him before moving onto an investigation into what happened. — 4WWL
According to 4WWL the cause of the collapse isn't clear. Jean Mattei, former president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that it is currently too difficult to know what caused the failure, reports 4WWL. "From the videos and from what I've seen, it was something that started at the... View full entry
With WeWork's corporate fortunes up in the air, the entity's umbrella organization, WeCompany, has begun to shake up its various elements and initiatives around the country. In Seattle, for example, a planned development with Martin Selig Real Estate for a 36-story co-working and co-living... View full entry
Brooks + Scarpa gave a first glimpse of their commissioned design to expand Orlando's Mennello Museum of American Art. Collaborating with locally based KMF Architects, Brooks + Scarpa will add 40,000 square feet to transform the current 12,000 square-foot building into a more inclusive... View full entry
Editor's Note: This story has been updated to include clarifying comments from Matthew Howland. ---- Cork House designer Matthew Barnett Howland recently had some thoughts concerning this year's Stirling Prize winner. According to BD, the finalist "was speaking at the Stirling Prize... View full entry
