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It has been a month since the deadly space heater-induced apartment fire at the Twins Parks housing complex claimed the lives of 17 people and displaced more than 200 families from a largely Gambian immigrant community in the South Bronx. The incident has turned into a bellwether for the state of... View full entry
What would the news be without controversy? You could say it’s way too much of a focus in the overall media landscape, and our small corner of the business certainly is not immune to its pull either. Coming out of the pandemic-dominated 2020 has provided us with quite a bit of contentious... View full entry
A new development in the 2019 accidental death of architect Erica Tishman as criminal charges have been filed against property owners 729 Acquisitions LLC. NBC4 New York is reporting that the administrative code charges were brought by the NYC Department of Buildings. The architect’s family had... View full entry
The developer behind 432 Park Avenue on New York’s Billionaire’s Row has hit back at a lawsuit alleging design defects. As reported by The Guardian, LA-based CIM Group calls the claims within the lawsuit “vastly exaggerated” in their response filed this week to the New York state supreme... View full entry
A new lawsuit filed on behalf of victims and family members of the Champlain Towers South collapse alleges that the incident was caused by construction work on an adjacent property. 98 people were killed when the condominium tower in Surfside, Florida collapsed suddenly in the early morning of... View full entry
Alleging that vaccine mandates for contractors are unconstitutional, the Colorado Contractors Association is suing the city of Denver for requiring workers on public contracts to get inoculated against COVID-19. — Construction Dive
The Colorado Contractors Association, along with six other construction associations, believe the mandate violates the U.S. Constitution’s contracts clause because it substantially impairs their existing contract rights with the city. As reported by Construction Dive, the associations expect the... View full entry
Princeton and former School of Architecture Dean Alejandro Zaera-Polo are officially cutting ties as the 57-year-old has been formally dismissed from his faculty position following a unanimous vote by an Ad-Hoc committee of the university’s board of trustees this summer. Zaera-Polo served... View full entry
A zoning battle over the height of a planned residential tower in Manhattan’s Upper West Side has been resolved in the New York Supreme Court, ending a yearslong legal dispute that was seen by some as a potential harbinger for luxury development schemes in the nation’s largest city. ... View full entry
Construction of the Obama Presidential Center is set to continue at Chicago’s Jackson Park following a ruling by Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The project, designed by Tod Williams & Billie Tsien Architects in collaboration with Interactive Design Architects (IDEA), was subjected to a... View full entry
The widower of a beloved architect who died tragically in an accident is now taking aim at the property developers in his ongoing quest for justice. A judge in New York is now allowing a suit to be brought against Himmel + Meringoff Properties, which manages the Seventh Avenue building through an... View full entry
A settlement has been reached in the strange case of a homeowner who fought her California town to keep a famous Flintstones motif installed. The curious legal dispute has kept the Bay Area suburb in the headlines for the past two and a half years. Florence Fang will receive $125,000 from the... View full entry
Residents of a luxury development on London’s South Bank who lost a legal battle to close part of the tenth-floor viewing platform at Tate Modern are now taking their case to the UK Supreme Court.
Owners of four flats in the Neo Bankside block located alongside the gallery, previously claimed in court that “hundreds of thousands of visitors” to Tate Modern were looking into their homes from the viewing space located in its Blavatnik building.
— The Art Newspaper
After losing their legal case to close parts of the public viewing terrace at the neighboring Tate Modern extension, some residents of the luxurious Neo Bankside glass condo development in London are now taking their fight to the UK's Supreme Court, reports The Art Newspaper. Previously on... View full entry
On Friday, the Make It Right Foundation sued its former executive director, Tom Darden III, along with the former treasurer and other officials, accusing them of mismanaging the $65 million project between 2007 and 2016. The suit, filed in in Civil District Court, also alleges that Darden and the others misled fellow Make It Right officials, including Pitt. — nola.com
The legal saga around the Make It Right Foundation continues: after facing a lawsuit of their own for delivering improperly constructed homes as part of the initiative's high-profile post-Hurricane Katrina housing initiative in New Orleans and then suing the architect responsible for the flawed... View full entry
In the four years since the celebrated Iraqi-born architect died suddenly in March 2016, a “toxic dispute” has been taking place between the executors of her estate [...]. The long-running feud has finally been settled in an explosive court hearing involving contested allegations of financial mismanagement, disregard for corporate governance and “clandestine relationships” between the current practice principal and junior members of staff. — The Guardian
The Guardian's architecture critic Oliver Wainwright provides an update on the four-year legal feud over the sizable estate of the late Zaha Hadid — now valued at around $133 million. "The agreement will see the bulk of Hadid’s assets go to the Zaha Hadid Foundation," Wainwright... View full entry
Family members of two of the four people killed in the April crane collapse site have filed wrongful death suits against companies involved in crane operations at the South Lake Union construction site.
Gusting winds knocked the crane over the afternoon of April 27, after workers prematurely removed pins holding 20-foot sections together, leading to a tragedy that state regulators called “totally avoidable.”
— The Seattle Times
The collapse in April killed two iron workers, Andrew Yoder, 31, and Travis Corbet, 33; Alan Justad, 71, a former city planning official; and Sarah Wong, a 19-year-old Seattle Pacific University student, The Seattle Times reports. The families have filed suites against Morrow Equipment... View full entry
