Is London in danger of losing its soul? The question may sound melodramatic, but this is just what many of the British capital’s commentariat have been discussing over the past few days. [...]

Barely a day goes by without a local news story about the phenomenal rise of London property values. In just the past few weeks, we've learned that price levels are "approaching madness." [...]

London buyers start to bid consistently 25 percent above the asking price. — theatlanticcities.com

London’s 200 new towers are something different. Virtually every one contains “luxury” apartments. This new residential upsurge in London is echoed across the Atlantic in New York – as property in both cities becomes a global reserve currency. New York, once the city of the commercial skyscraper, has become the city of the condo tower and the penthouse. But where does that leave commercial architecture? — ft.com

Gensler recently began a research project focused on Los Angeles and D.C., “Hackable Buildings – Hackable Cities,” exploring how building owners can adapt their properties to meet changing demand.

“It really started with some research that we were doing on the evolution of office buildings,” said Raffael Scasserra, a Gensler principal. “What we were looking at is what is that evolution like? What is it transforming to and what are buildings going to be?” — washingtonpost.com

Contrary to what you may have read lately, the Museum of Modern Art is intent on carefully preserving the former American Folk Art Museum next door.

At least, the part of it that is most recognizable to the public: an 82-foot-high sculptural ensemble of 63 panels, cast in a gorgeous copper-bronze alloy [...]

“We will take the facade down, piece by piece, and we will store it,” Glenn D. Lowry, the director of the Museum of Modern Art, said in an interview last week. — nytimes.com

The low hipster homeownership rate of the past five years translates into a market of potentially millions of first-time homebuyers looking to find a home that matches their budget and fits into their hipster lifestyle. Real estate investors who want to tap into that trend should start with location: finding homes in communities with a heavy hipster demographic, and that are affordable for that demographic. — RealtyTrac

San Francisco is practically the reductio ad absurdum of gentrification: It’s already land limited on three sides by water, and the massive rise of the tech industry over the last few decades has dramatically increased both the population of the area and its wealth. [...]

But the blame shouldn’t go to the tech companies or their employees moving to San Francisco, however despicable some might be. Blame San Francisco for being pleasant, and its policymakers for being foolish — Quartz

[...] developer Ben Miller says, until now, it’s been impossible for local people to invest in development right across the street.

“Who owns your environment? You don’t know,” he says. “Who’s building your environment, who’s building your city? Not you.”

Miller is co-founder of the group Fundrise, which has started selling shares of private real estate projects to the public online. [...]

First they bought 1351 H Street with private capital, then crowdfunded about a third of it. — marketplace.org

“In New York, development is a three-dimensional chess game,” said Dan Kaplan, a senior partner at FXFowle Architects, “and the reason we’re seeing an increase in the use of cantilevers above neighboring buildings is linked to the complexity of finding a site that can utilize all available development rights.” — nytimes.com

The creaky staircase was covered in plastic, as was the living room furniture, but the bones were still there: pressed paper wainscoting in the hall, thickly painted moldings. We often got in trouble for walking too loudly in our clompy shoes up to the top floor at night. — Alexandra Lange

It’s a cellar’s market.

New Yorkers are spending more than the price of the average American home — on storage units.

Tribeca’s 56 Leonard just sold a 200-square-foot unit for $300,000. That’s $1,500 a square foot for a metal cage in the basement of the future luxury skyscraper. — nypost.com

An architectural rendering is a premonition of sorts, an illustration of what a park or a bridge, an apartment building or an office tower, might look like, even before the first splash of concrete licks the ground. But its most important mission is not to show the girth of a building’s footprint or the shape of the windows; it is to gin up enthusiasm for a project, or to incite resistance.

So the real purpose of these drawings is not to predict the future. Their real goal is to control it. — nytimes.com

Since the mid-1980s, Mr. Ackerman has been traveling to southeastern Minnesota from his home in the Twin Cities area to explore and acquire caves. He is the largest private cave owner in Minnesota and might be the largest in the country, but nobody is certain because not all of his caves have been fully explored to determine their extent. — nytimes.com

“An economic downturn is always a good thing for preservation,” says Regina O’Brien, chairperson of the Modern Committee of the Los Angeles Conservancy. “A lot fewer developers are making a lot less money, and therefore they have a lot less motivation to pursue these profit-oriented flips. But the problem is that the opposite is true when the market picks back up.” — thedailybeast.com

The Design Museum will remain in the building until the move in 2015.
Deyan Sudjic, the museum's director, said: "Whilst we are sad to be leaving Shad Thames we are leaving the building in the best possible hands..."
In a statement, Hadid said the building would be an opportunity "to consolidate our archive in a single location". It would also be used for architecture exhibitions where "the research and innovation of global collaborations in art, architecture and design" could be put on display. — guardian.co.uk

The houses aren't difficult to spot. They usually follow some variation of the following pattern: gray or greenish-gray paint, white or brick red trim, a colorful door -- mint green, orange, red -- and sometimes a colorful accent mailbox. Instantly recognizable horizontal wood-slat fencing is the final touch. — kcet.org