Tina Lam and Michael Cheng snatched up Presidio Terrace — the block-long, private oval street lined by 35 megamillion-dollar mansions — for $90,000 and change in a city-run auction stemming from an unpaid tax bill. They outlasted several other bidders.
Now they’re looking to cash in — maybe by charging the residents of those mansions to park on their own private street.
— San Francisco Chronicle
When the annual $14 city tax bill for the street on Presidio Terrace went unpaid for a little over thirty years, the frustrated municipality held an auction to recoup its lost monies. A savvy couple who live in the decidedly less swanky South Bay snapped it up and now are causing all of the... View full entry
"Over the last 20 years, the [Nanjing] government has made real efforts to establish national laws, local laws and regulations so we can pursue this work," [architect Zhou Qi] said, of his optimism for the city's heritage preservation efforts. "It has just become common sense." — CNN
Amid the rapid urban development across China, Nanjing's government is making an effort to preserve and restore more of the city's historic buildings. Although some restorative projects expectedly attract some criticism, architect Zhou Qi — who has worked on restoring over 100 of the city's... View full entry
Instead of the usual snap of people lounging in the sun in Bryant Park, visual effects artist Rod Bogart has created a Voronoi diagram of the outing and posted it to his Twitter account. When asked how he had placed the center points of the diagram, Bogart tweeted that "I used Illustrator to drop... View full entry
A major Roman settlement discovered south of Lyon in France is the “most exceptional excavation of a Roman site in 40 or 50 years”, says the chief archaeologist working on the project. Benjamin Clément, who works for the Swiss conservation company Archeodunum, is leading a team of 15 archaeologists at the dig in Saint Colombe, a small town near the city of Vienne. — The Art Newspaper
The well-preserved ancient Roman neighborhood, dubbed "Little Pompeii" by the archaeologists, covers an area of almost 7,000 square meters (75,000 square feet) and was discovered during construction of a housing complex near the city of Vienne. View full entry
The point is, skaters made that area safe; in the old days it was cardboard city. That is what skating does: it fills the cracks in society left by capitalist development … that is where skating exists. It’s like a fungus, it’s like moss, it just grows in the corners where no one else wants to be. — The Guardian
Back in 2004, two-thirds of a popular skateboarding site at the Southbank Centre in London was destroyed. In 2014, the final third of the site was on its way to closure when the property management changed hands. Seeing the turnover as an opportunity, a campaign—Long Live Southbank—began that... View full entry
Each of the settings on display in the exhibit capture that promise of the future balanced with the starkness of reality. The settings also celebrate a disappearing craft—hand-drawn animation. The anime industry long resisted the shift to computer-generated art that took hold in the West starting in the 1990s, but as technology has advanced, fewer and fewer artists practice the craft traditionally, making the art on display especially striking. — The Smithsonian
London's House of Illustration is currently displaying “Anime Architecture: Backgrounds of Japan”, an exhibition that showcases over 100 of the intricate paintings and drawings used in the production of iconic dystopian anime films like “Ghost in the Shell” and “Akira”. View full entry
But as Canadian Catholic News reported, some individuals were far from impressed with the 65-foot-long spider, which rises 18 feet when at rest and over 42 feet when in motion. Critics expressed their outrage on the archbishop Terrence Prendergast’s Facebook wall, with one woman reportedly describing Kumo as “disturbing, disappointing, and even shameful.” Others apparently referred to it as “demonic” and “sacrilegious.” — Hyperallergic
Canada celebrated its 150th anniversary over the weekend of July 27th. Part of the celebration featured giant robots put on by La Machine, a street theatre company that constructs unusual objects for performances in public spaces. The company built two robots, a mechanical dragon-horse hybrid and... View full entry
Nipton, California has all the makings of a stoner heaven. There’s a general store, a hotel, a campground, an endless supply of delicious water, and—for those late-night giggles—a Castle Butt Road. Perhaps that’s why American Green Inc., an eight-year-old self-described marijuana “seed-to-sale innovator,” decided to purchase the 80-acre town (population six) and turn it into “the country’s first energy-independent, cannabis-friendly hospitality destination.” — Quartz
The Gold Rush was the largest mass migration in U.S history with over 300,000 people arriving in California hoping to reap its benefits. Well over a century and a half later, many of the towns along the coast, once vibrant, have been left as ghost towns as anyone taking a road trip along the 5 can... View full entry
Launched in 1999, the inaugural Pickathon Music Festival was not so much a festival, but rather a small fundraiser for KBOO—a non-profit community radio station. Held in the woods nearby Portland, Oregon, the now annual summer event has grown into a sellout affair with lineups including Beach... View full entry
This week we're joined with Anthony Morey, LA-based theorist, designer, educator, writer, and curator. Readers of Archinect will probably recognize his name from his curatorial work with the exciting annual architecture show "One Night Stand", and his relatively new series on Archinect... View full entry
Longtime DTLA developer and landowner Joseph Hellen has released a revised design for a proposed 40-story, 420-foot tall apartment tower at 525 South Spring Street. — Urbanize.LA
What would downtown Los Angeles' historic core look like with a 40-story apartment building with a wavy white exterior? Probably a great deal like the rendering above, which was created by TSK Architects working with Steinberg Architects (who are carrying through to produce the design in an... View full entry
While Tadao Ando has built religious structures before--famously, the Church of the Light--he has rarely worked with figurative icons of religion, preferring a more abstract approach. This has changed with his open-air prayer hall in the Makomanai Takinoreien Cemetery in Sapporo, Japan, where a... View full entry
Constructed by Swissrope/Lauber Seilbahnen AG, Frutigen, this suspension bridge in Switzerland is now the globe's longest (and arguably, most scenic, as it hovers above one of the deepest valleys in the country). The two-foot-wide bridge, which helps connect two mountain towns, has cut the time it... View full entry
The man known for his modern, white, geometrically intricate buildings spends his summers in a simple, cedar-shingled farmhouse built in 1907 that he bought from the family of the original owners in 1984. On a July afternoon, Mr. Meier was in his study there, painting watercolors. — The New York Times
After weeks of negotiations with the International Olympic Committee, Los Angeles officials have reached a deal to host the 2028 Summer Games under terms they hope will generate hundreds of millions in savings and additional revenues.
The agreement will bring the Olympics back to Southern California for a third time, after Los Angeles hosted in 1984 and 1932. It also opens the door for the 2024 Games to be held in Paris.
— latimes.com
Spiraling costs and notorious budget overruns have discouraged other cities from pushing towards being a host to the 2024/28 Summer Olympics, but Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti thinks otherwise and hopes to avoid unpredictable spending by reusing existing venues and infrastructure. As the Los... View full entry