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With a $630-million construction loan in hand, Related Cos. will begin site preparation this month for The Grand, a long-awaited Frank Gehry-designed tower complex in Downtown Los Angeles.
The approximately $1-billion development, slated to replace a parking structure across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall, was conceived more than a decade ago as a public-private partnership between Related and various city and county agencies.
— urbanize.LA
Image: Gehry Partners/Related Cos.About a decade delayed, the Frank Gehry-designed The Grand development (formerly known as Grand Avenue Project) will finally start coming to life atop Bunker Hill in Downtown Los Angeles. Pre-construction work is scheduled to commence this month on the plot... View full entry
The San Francisco County Transportation Authority voted unanimously Tuesday to freeze $9.7 million in sales tax funding for the next phase of the Transbay Transit Center, as members called for an evaluation of the beleaguered project and the agency that runs it.
The news came as Transbay officials again pushed back the date to complete testing of steel from two cracked beams that led to shutting down the building in September.
— San Francisco Chronicle
Facade detail. Image via Wikimedia Commons.San Francisco’s brand new Transbay Transit Center (also know as Salesforce Transit Center) can't catch a break: after the long anticipated $2.2 billion transportation hub at Mission and Fremont Streets had to close again when cracks in several steel... View full entry
A new report looking at New York City's estimated construction for 2018-2020 predicts strong growth across all sectors of development. According to its forecasts, "New York City is in the midst of its second and most robust building boom of the 21st century," the report says. Put out by the New... View full entry
American construction workers’ average wage has risen above $30 per hour for the first time, and the numbers employed have hit nearly 7.3 million, a level not seen since before the financial crisis, official statistics show. [...]
“However, the pool of unemployed workers with construction experience has nearly evaporated, pushing up contractors’ costs and adding to project completion times.”
— Global Construction Review
While positive economic indicators have had the U.S. construction sector thriving for a prolonged period now, AEC employers are increasingly feeling the pinch when it comes to finding qualified workers. "The tightening labour market poses a problem for companies looking to expand their... View full entry
In the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, architects Kagan Taylor and Justin Rice of knowhow shop have designed and built a new office for their design studio in their backyard. Named ‘Lighthouse’, the project is a micro-building that is a place for work and also a physical example of the studio’s thinking and practice — Wallpaper
Diverting from traditional construction processes, the founders of knowhow shop, focus on the possibility of constructing an office testing their skills as craftsmen while challenging their understanding of spatial perception. Image © Stephen SchauerThe office's unique shape and construction... View full entry
Construction will start November 1 and the tower is expected be delivered on May 30, 2022, the Moroccan BMCE Bank of Africa announced [...]
The Bank of Africa Tower will have 55 floors with a luxury hotel, offices, and apartments. An observatory will crown the tower. [...]
The O Tower company has started developing the 250-meter tower which could be titled the tallest building in Morocco and in Africa.
— Morocco World News
Once structurally topped out, the 820-ft Bank of Africa Tower will not only be Morocco's tallest building but also take the crown from Carlton Centre in Johannesburg, at 732 feet currently the tallest tower in Africa. Image: BESIXDesigned by Spanish architects Rafael de la-Hoz Arquitectos and... View full entry
David Adjaye’s Financial District condo at 130 William Street has made significant progress since construction started earlier this year. New construction site photos by Field Condition are giving us the first peak at the distinctive hand-cast concrete facade.
The photos also offer a peek at the bronze-accented frames of the windows—this bronze theme will continue in the apartments with Adjaye also designing many of the interior fixtures that will be done up in burnished bronze.
— Curbed NY
Curbed New York has some fresh construction photos of the David Adjaye-designed 800-foot, 66-story 130 William Street condo tower where workers are currently installing the building's most striking feature, the hand-cast concrete facade with its bronze-trimmed window frames. Find the full set... View full entry
Some of the world's most scenic locations for luxury homes — beachfronts, forests, mountains — are also prone to disaster: hurricanes and floods, wildfires and earthquakes. Architects and designers are increasingly tasked with creating gorgeous homes that are also able to stand up to nature's whims. — CNN
It shouldn't have to take another reminder from the United Nations that a lot more climate change-related extreme weather scenarios will be heading our way in the coming decades to finally take disaster preparedness into consideration when designing homes. View full entry
Billionaire mortgage mogul and real estate maven Dan Gilbert's skyscraper slated for downtown Detroit may grow by more than 100 feet to 912 feet tall, Crain's has learned.
While the final height has not yet been determined, Joe Guziewicz, vice president of construction for Gilbert's Bedrock LLC, confirmed that it will be taller than the 800 feet that was previously announced as the company looks to get "the most flexibility for how we use it and how we program it."
— Crain's Detroit Business
Designed by Hamilton Anderson Associates and SHoP Architects, the massive Hudson's Site mixed-use development broke ground in 2017 and occupies the long-vacant site of the iconic J.L. Hudson's department store in downtown Detroit—in its heydays, the world's tallest department store but... View full entry
San Francisco’s new Transbay Transit Center will remain closed at least through the end of next week, officials said Wednesday, after yet another cracked beam was discovered during an overnight safety inspection.
The $2.2 billion hub for buses and eventually trains, which opened just last month as the flashy centerpiece of city infrastructure, was closed abruptly Tuesday afternoon after a fissure was spotted in a beam that helps hold up the sprawling complex.
— San Francisco Chronicle
In a statement issued on September 26, Executive Director of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, Mark Zabaneh, said: "We apologize for this inconvenience to the public and commuters. I would like to assure the public, this is a localized issue within the transit center and there is no impact to... View full entry
Get a bird's eye view of the new Inglewood Stadium with this 360-degree image, courtesy of architectural photographer Hunter Kerhart.
The stadium, which is the centerpiece of a $5-billion redevelopment of the former Hollywood Park racetrack, will feature 70,000 seats when it opens in 2020. The HKS Architects-designed facility is expected to serve as the home of the Super Bowl in 2022, and will also play a prominent role in the 2028 Summer Olympic Games.
— urbanize.LA
urbanize.LA recently published new drone's-eye-view construction photos of the impressive $5 billion Hollywood Park site—soon to be home of the shiny new Los Angeles Rams and Chargers NFL stadium (designed by HKS Architects) and a sprawling mixed-use development with office buildings by... View full entry
The contractors who designed and built the disastrous Florida International University bridge have been cited by federal authorities for several “serious” worker-safety violations and face tens of thousands of dollars in fines. [...]
The FIU pedestrian bridge collapsed March 15 while it was still under construction over Southwest Eighth Street, killing five motorists below and a worker, Navaro Brown, who had been standing atop the span.
— Miami Herald
This round of OSHA citations is likely only the beginning of legal actions resulting from the deadly collapse of the new Florida International University pedestrian bridge in March 2018. Investigations of the National Transportation Safety Board are ongoing and, depending on its findings, could... View full entry
The culture of fear and intimidation on construction sites has led to basic safety precautions being overlooked. Nashville is currently the most dangerous city in the south for construction workers, according to a report released in May 2017 by the Partnership for Working Families, Workers Defense Project and the University of Illinois at Chicago professor Nik Theodore, titled Build a Better South: Construction Working Conditions in the US South. — The Guardian
The Build a Better South: Construction Working Conditions in the US South study examined construction industry labor conditions across six key cities in the southern United States: Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Miami, and Nashville. "Among workers who had been injured during the past year... View full entry
3D-printed construction seems a good fit for the military. The emerging technology is relatively portable and inexpensive, and could potentially even save lives if it means soldiers receive a safe barracks in a shorter time. With this in mind, the US Marine Corps Systems Command (MCSC) recently constructed a prototype concrete barracks in under two days with what it calls the world's largest 3D printer. — New Atlas
The US military 3D printed a basic barracks hut measuring 500 sq ft in just 40 hours at the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center in Champaign, Illinois. The MCSC reported this technology reduced construction time from what would typically take 10 Marines 5 days to build a similar... View full entry
In the second quarter of this year, investment spending by the federal government dropped below 1.4 percent of gross domestic product for the first time since the 1940s, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. OK, at 1.397 percent, it wasn’t much below, and federal government investment as a share of GDP isn’t exactly a closely watched economic indicator. But the decline through the decades is still pretty striking... — bloomberg.com
Justin Fox tracks the decline in U.S. government spending over the years, noting infrastructure investments have largely been replaced with spending on social insurance programs. With private investors taking the lead, Fox argues U.S. infrastructure suffers as there are many vital projects which... View full entry
