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Two decades after civil war blew the Lebanese capital to rubble, the city centre boasts immaculately rebuilt streets lined with Gucci and Prada stores – but the whole place is strangely deserted
[...] the resulting place feels less souk than Duty Free airport lounge. It is a monotonous world of more swanky high street brands, from Burberry to Tag Heuer, staffed by idle shop assistants awaiting the promised customer footfall that has yet to arrive.
— theguardian.com
The subterranean settlement was discovered in the Nevşehir province of Turkey’s Central Anatolia region, in the historical area of Cappadocia. [...]
the site, located around the Nevşehir hill fort near the city of Kayseri, appears to dwarf all other finds to date. [...]
The agency has already spent 90 million Turkish liras (£25m) on the development project, but the organisation’s head said he did not see the money spent as a loss due to the magnitude of the historical discovery.
— independent.co.uk
With a golden patina to their aged brick, these former flour and seed mills provide a striking contrast to the shiny new condo towers of the adjacent Pearl District, and their proximity to this burgeoning area could also make for an ideal riverside destination. [...]
He has approached Frank Gehry to design a glass-ensconced event center and Lin to design a pedestrian bridge over busy Naito Parkway.
— citylab.com
Earlier this fall, we had the pleasure of Brian Libby joining us live to discuss the future of the controversial Michael Graves-designed Portland Building on Archinect's podcast, episode 3: Keep Portland Architecture Weird! View full entry
In light of the above, we are appealing to you in your roles as founder and lead architect of the firm, and as an educator and a public intellectual, to side by us in advocating to your client, but also to planning and urban authorities in Beirut the preservation of a site with unique characteristics, and withdraw services on this project. If such advocacy efforts falter, we urge you to dissociate yourself and your firm from this contentious project. — Jadaliyya
We have recently learned that the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) has been commissioned to develop a design for a projected development on a prime sea-front location in Beirut (Lebanon): the Dalieh of Raoucheh. Proposing a private development over such a prime social, national... View full entry
With a nod to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s affordable housing plans, New York City’s Department of City Planning is inventing a “new neighborhood” to take what it thinks is a promising section of the Bronx from parking lots to high-rises. While the city has promised to make community outreach a cornerstone of its plans, the idea of a “new neighborhood” has left many who live there seeing Brooklyn-infused foreshadowing. — nextcity.org
While the cult of the star architect has soared over the decades and property developers have displaced bankers as the new super-rich, the figure of the local town planner has become comic shorthand for a certain kind of faceless, under-whelming dullard. [...]
“Planning has become unpopular, disconnected from the public and increasingly beholden to the developer rather than the people it is meant to serve.”
— theguardian.com
190 Bowery is a mystery: a graffiti-covered Gilded Age relic, with a beat-up wooden door that looks like it hasn’t been opened since La Guardia was mayor. [...]
With the Bowery Hotel and the New Museum, the Rogan and John Varvatos boutiques, 190 is now an anomaly, not the norm. Why isn’t some developer turning it into luxury condos?
Because Jay Maisel, the photographer who bought it 42 years ago for $102,000, still lives there, with his wife, Linda Adam Maisel, and daughter, Amanda.
— New York Magazine
This 2008 piece on 190 Bowery is being published for historical context, on the recent occasion of the property being sold to NYC developer, RFR Holdings. View full entry
Conditions that have been agreed are relentlessly renegotiated at reserved matters stage. Good architects are employed to win outline planning, then ditched for a cheaper alternative; high-quality materials are substituted for flimsy plastic panels – all in the name of viability. — the guardian
The song remains the same, and you know your favorite Pritzker Prize'rs are involved in them.It is usually the floodgate scheme; “Once an outline permission is granted, it makes it very difficult for us to refuse a scheme further down the line,” says one officer. In Stratford... View full entry
Work remains halted at the site of the modular residential tower next to the Barclays Center arena in Brooklyn. The building is part of the 22-acre, mixed-use development formerly known as Atlantic Yards and now branded Pacific Park. [...]
The dispute ... centers on the design and construction of the pre-fabricated units that make up the modular tower. The 34-story residential high-rise was supposed to be completed in July 2014. So far only 10 of the proposed 34 stories are finished
— wnyc.org
The facades of his 515 Highline, a 12-unit condo at 515 West 29th Street in West Chelsea that will almost touch the elevated park, will be rippled like the surface of a sea.
And Soori High Line, a 27-unit condo across the street at 522 West 29th, will have not only rooftop pools [...]. More than a dozen lower-floor apartments will also come with private pools to allow residents to float above it all while contemplating the brash buildings that increasingly populate the surrounding blocks.
— nytimes.com
Today the Pruitt-Igoe site is once again in the spotlight, but this time because of a new bid to “get the economic flywheel going in the right direction again,” in the words of private developer Paul McKee, the force behind the proposed NorthSide Regeneration project. [...] The lynchpin of it all would be to get the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency—the high-tech eyes and ears of the Defense Department—to relocate to where the towers of Pruitt-Igoe once stood. — citylab.com
"Of course these so-called 'poor doors' are shocking, but they are a symptom, not the problem," says Michael Edwards, senior lecturer at the Bartlett school of planning at UCL. "We've simply stopped building proper social housing, and until that's addressed then fiddling around with front-door arrangements is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic." — theguardian.com
Previously: Tale of Two Cities: NYC approves ‘poor door’ for luxury high-rise View full entry
...In the 1970s, the streets east of Little Tokyo and west of the L.A. River made up a dingy district of hollowed-out warehouses that landlords rented to artists who needed a lot of space for little money [...] Then a decade ago, what started with a new restaurant on this block and then another up that street, turned into an avalanche of development [...] — LA Times
Throughout his neighborhood of Lanier Heights, developers are buying up two-story townhouses and building an extra floor or two, additions that are known as pop-ups. They’re also extending the structures as far back as allowed, to within 15 feet of the property line, obliterating backyards in the process. [...]
A few doors down the other way is a deafening construction site, where a single-family home is being turned into eight units, taking full advantage of what was once the backyard.
— washingtoncitypaper.com
Homeowners who "pretend" to care about architecture are "nimbies in disguise" who in reality want to block any development in their local area, Boris Johnson has said.
In a scathing assessment, the Mayor of London said homeowners are dishonestly claiming they care about new homes being affordable or well-designed, in fact they simply oppose new developments entirely.
Mr Johnson has promised to increase house-building in the capital, and wants to see 45,000 new homes by 2018.
— telegraph.co.uk
Related: Boris Johnson's abuse of planning power is an assault on democracy View full entry