In an order that sends a strong message against corruption, the Bombay High Court on Friday ordered the Union Environment Ministry to demolish 31-storey Adarsh Co-operative Housing Society. [...]

The society, originally meant to be a six-storey structure to house Kargil war heroes and war widows, was converted into a 100-metre-tall building with politicians, bureaucrats and army officers allegedly conspiring to get flats allotted to them in the cooperative society at below-market rates. — The Times of India

The uncertainty looming over the building’s future is serving as a call to action for preservation groups in Atlanta and around the world who are beginning to mobilize. [...]

Ironically, to gain the Breuer building, Atlanta lost its original Carnegie Library. [...]

As evidenced by the transformation of the former Whitney Museum into the Met Breuer, it is clear that with a careful restoration, Breuer’s works can be an iconic piece of the urban fabric in which they reside — artsatl.com

In 2008 the financial crisis was caused by the sub-prime property crash in the US. Today London is facing a super-prime crisis. [...]

the market in London and parts of the south-east does not respond to local demand, because it is fuelled by the demands of global capital flooding into London, much of it from highly dubious sources, as the Panama Papers reveal. If London has been shown to be a hub of global money laundering, the property market is its driving force. — theguardian.com

'Preservation is good, but it doesn’t allow any opposing force,' says Bench. 'If you save a few beautiful buildings, it’s not as if the stuff that really should go then gets demolished. Instead, we end up putting the pressure on the buildings that are quite good, but not quite good enough to be deemed historical.' — The Guardian

Final farewells were visible all over the 6th Street Viaduct on Wednesday. Spinning tire trails were burned onto the bridge's asphalt deck; declarations of love and poetry were scribbled onto its concrete railings and incomprehensible graffiti was blasted across its high metal arches...Demolition of the crumbling bridge is scheduled to begin this week and could take up to nine months to complete, as crews cart away more than 110,000 tons of concrete. — Los Angeles Times

The more period commentary on these spaces you read...the more you see the hotel's owners are falling into the very trap the interiors were engineered to escape: banality, anywhere-ness, the flimsiness of changing fashion...Are the current going to rip out the mirror and replace it with barn wood and mason jars? Just wait. Stop the unpermitted demolition. Landmark this interior and, in doing so, remind people of its undated and undateable wonder. — ny.curbed.com

The hotel plan by the Procaccianti Group Inc. [...] is being welcomed by construction-trades unions, city officials and surrounding business owners. But Ned Connors, an architect and historian of the Weybosset urban renewal project, says he will miss the Fogarty building.

It’s not ugly, he said, it’s just … different. At about 50 years old, he said the Fogarty building is in the most dangerous time in a structure's life: when it’s too old to be hip but too young to be venerated. — providencejournal.com

Brutalism lost the good fight in 2015. [...]

Demolition on another building by Johansen began late last year as well: Stage Theater, once known as the Mummers Theater, in Oklahoma City. The Oklahoman‘s Steve Lackmeyer called the 1970 project the number-one modernist building in the city that should have been spared. [....] Preservationists had hoped to turn it into a children’s museum. Models of the building show what a delightful museum it might have made [...]. — citylab.com

The company promised to “faithfully reproduce” several beloved artifacts in the lobby, including wall tapestries, paper lanterns and sliding doors, the lacquered furnishings and map of time zones...But those plans have done little to assuage the concerns of preservationists, many of whom contend that Tokyo is destroying its greatest postwar architectural assets to accommodate the 2020 Olympics and a recent surge in tourism. — The New York Times

China is reportedly planning to demolish three new high-rise [residential] buildings [in Tianjin, which] are up to 30 floors taller than originally planned...It’s the latest blow to the [city], which saw a devastating explosion at a warehouse in its port in August...state media pointed out that...the scale of illegal construction meant the building was unsafe, [deeming] the 'completely corrupt project' [as] unusable, and to be demolished was 'its destiny.' — International Business Times

For those former guests and architectural buffs who lamented the demolition of the iconic Hotel Okura Tokyo, they can soon preserve a piece of it in their homes.

Hotel officials plan to sell on the Internet some of the furniture and fixtures used in the guest rooms and restaurants during the main building's 53-year history, with the proceeds going to charity. [...]

The 11-story main building, which opened in May 1962 [...], was called “a masterpiece of Japan’s modernism architecture.” — ajw.asahi.com

Each year, Critical Halloween celebrates a feared ghost of art and architectural production. This year, we explore DEMO, which operates simultaneously as an abbreviation, a prefix, a verb, and a noun.
 
From acts of collective will (DEMOnstration) to institutional erasure (DEMOlition), DEMO invites guests to intellectually examine ideas, issues, and objects in art, architecture, and design with a focus on those that should get a dose of DEMO. — Storefront for Art and Architecture

Tokyo’s venerable Hotel Okura is getting a remake, starting next week.

Over the course of the past 53 years since its opening on May 20, 1962, the Okura, located in Toranomon, has earned an unsurpassed reputation both at home and abroad as a luxury hotel to represent Japan.

The hotel said in a statement that it will maintain the Japanese traditional aesthetics and the basics of the architecture style of Hotel Okura. — japantoday.com

the Pinnacle skyscraper grew to just nine floors before falling victim to financial wrangling. Often referred to as The Stump, its stunted lift core has stood as a concrete folly ever since work halted more than three years ago.

Its days are numbered. Scaffolding is now climbing up the core in preparation for demolition. The replacement building will have a very different design. The old core must be pummelled to rubble and a new one constructed. — londonist.com

The Hotel Okura, built in 1962 in time for the 1964 Olympics, is slated to be torn down in September to make way for a bigger, fancier Okura, in time for the 2020 Olympics. (The less-good, less-famous southern wing of the old Okura, added in 1973, will be allowed to stay.) [...]

There will never be this particular hush again in the middle of Tokyo. You will have to have been there to know what you will soon miss. — nytimes.com