Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
[...] a demolition application was filed for 270 Park Avenue, the current, but not for long headquarters of JPMorgan Chase. The filing is a pivotal step for the bank, which plans to replace the 1.5 million-square-foot Modernist tower with a 2.5 million square foot supertall skyscraper designed by Lord Norman Foster. — CityRealty
The clock is ticking for the midcentury modernist HQ of banking giant JPMorgan Chase: despite preservationist and environmental concerns, the fate of 270 Park Avenue appears sealed, and the 50-story structure is likely to become the world's tallest building ever to be intentionally demolished... View full entry
Zoo workers withdrew the birds from Berthold Lubetkin’s 1934 Penguin Pool after it was claimed the concrete was causing them a bacterial infection known as “bumblefoot”. His daughter Sasha said it was “terribly sad” to see her father’s design sitting unused in the zoo. “Perhaps it’s time to blow it to smithereens.” — Evening Standard
As a truly rare example of architecture at a non-human scale, Berthold Lubetkin’s 1934 Penguin Pool at London Zoo is a Modernist classic. But it has been disused for several years, given the fact that its concrete ramps were giving the penguins a bacterial infection known as... View full entry
On Monday, the giant claw of a large piece of machinery tore away at one of the walls of Parker Center, the former headquarters of the Los Angeles Police Department. Vacant since 2013, [Parker Center Tower] will be cleared out and a 27-story high-rise will take its place, holding offices for city employees and services that are now spread across multiple buildings. — LA Curbed
Los Angeles has an unfortunate history of erasing its not too-distant past, and it continues to show no mercy to the era of hard-edged modernism. Parker Center Tower, one such building the Downtown Los Angeles, is the most recent to suffer from the city's need to tear itself down and reimagine its... View full entry
[...] the second supertall to result from the Midtown East rezoning is moving forward, with JPMorgan Chase filing a text amendment with City Planning for a 1,400-foot tower on the site of 270 Park Avenue. Designed by Foster + Partners Architects, the plans also come with the first renderings of the 2.4 million square foot supertall, and massing diagrams that offer a look at what’s in store for New York City’s most central business district. — New York YIMBY
After announcing Foster + Partners as design architect for its new 270 Park Avenue HQ tower a few days ago, JPMorgan Chase has now filed a zoning text amendment with NYC's City Planning department. The document shows two options for a massive supertall tower to replace the current building from... View full entry
JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon has said he wants to build a new world-class headquarters for the 21st century. Now he’s hiring the architect behind Apple Inc.’s futuristic offices to design the new Park Avenue tower.
Foster + Partners will serve as the lead architect on the project[...]. It also designed 425 Park Ave., under construction a few blocks to the north. The bank didn’t disclose details of the design.
— Bloomberg
Banking giant JPMorgan Chase initially floated plans to demolish its current New York City home at 270 Park Avenue back in February, and this week's selection of Norman Foster as the design architect of the replacement building appears to seal the fate of the old tower. Completed in 1961 and... View full entry
The city will eventually demolish the building to put a 27-story office tower on the site, [costing over] $700 million. Last month, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and the Coalition to Preserve LA teamed up to file a petition...that could have forced the city to halt demolition while the case was being decided...But Garcetti has said the building is contaminated with asbestos and unsound seismically. It is also tarnished by its association with dark LAPD history. — Curbed LA
Hundreds of Muslims in north-western China are engaged in a standoff with authorities to prevent their mosque from being demolished.
Officials said the newly built Weizhou Grand Mosque in the Ningxia region had not been given proper building permits.
But worshippers refused to back down. One resident said they would not "let the government touch the mosque".
— BBC
The new mosque was completed only last year, and city authorities initially wanted it torn down by Friday, citing a lack of proper planning and construction permits. Amid public outrage, authorities softened their demolition order to a "rectification plan" that demanded a less 'Arab' and more... View full entry
Chinese authorities are razing one of the Beijing studios of dissident artist Ai Weiwei. He said that demolition crews showed up without advance warning, and have begun the process of tearing down the studio.
Ai has been a longtime critic of the government, and on Saturday, he began posting videos to his Instagram feed of the studio's destruction. "Farewell," Ai wrote. "They started to demolish my studio 'Zuoyuo' in Beijing with no precaution."
— NPR
Ai, who has been living in self-imposed exile in Berlin since Chinese authorities returned his confiscated passport in 2015, responded to NPR about the sudden demolition of his Zuoyou studio in Beijing: We didn't receive any advance warning or announcement of the demolition. We were required to... View full entry
A 12-story building collapsed in Miami Beach on Monday morning, leaving at least one person injured, police there said. [...]
The building that collapsed at 5775 Collins Ave. was the 12-story Marlborough House, which was scheduled to be demolished to make way for a new condo building [...]
Police said there was a demolition permit on file for the site, but not an implosion permit.
— CNN
Miami's WSVN 7 News reports: "As the building was falling, and we’re seeing all this smoke come towards us, a boulder the size of the front-end of a car flew across the street, hit a man that was standing... View full entry
Despite being recognized as an important architectural movement, many iconic examples of modernist architecture have been knocked down in the UK, and many more are threatened by alteration or demolition. From The Tricorn Centre in Portsmouth to Gilbey's Gin complex in Harlow, these illustrations... View full entry
Despite the 90-day hold on demolition permits for buildings determined to be historic by the city, Miller says that some city council members have used aldermanic prerogative to fast-track the eventual destruction of significant structures. But more often than not, Miller says that communities and preservation advocates simply do not have enough time to line up a buyer or produce a plan for adaptive reuse when demolition threats surface. — Chicago Magazine
With all its rich architectural history, is Chicago facing a preservation crisis? In recent years, many of the city's most historic buildings — despite being flagged by preservationists for their architectural or cultural significance — are being abruptly demolished. According to Ward... View full entry
While some were delighted that at least a small part of the architectural heritage of Robin Hood Gardens was being preserved for posterity, others were furious that the V&A – a so-called ‘arms-length’ body, governed by a Board of Trustees appointed by the Prime Minister – considered the estate valuable enough to collect, but not valuable enough to help save from demolition in the first instance. — frieze.com
The story behind London's brutalist Robin Hood Gardens reveals issues pertinent to our current housing crisis. Crystal Bennes unpacks the V&A's decision to preserve and display a section of demolished housing in this year's Venice Architecture Biennale, revealing condemnation of the building... View full entry
Last week, a piece by the anonymous graffiti artist was stenciled onto a building at the northwest corner of 14th street and sixth avenue in New York City. The structure—a former bank building—was tagged with one of Banksy's trademark rats running around a clock that is native to the... View full entry
The V&A will transport a recently demolished concrete section from Robin Hood Gardens in Poplar, east London, to the Venice Architecture Biennale.
It will be delivered by barge to the biennale’s Arsenale site, where it will be reassembled on an outdoors scaffold, allowing visitors to stand on an original “street in the sky” – the elevated deck that was optimistically meant to foster healthy interaction between neighbours.
— The Guardian
The demolition of east London's Robin Hood Gardens has been ongoing since last year, which is why the V&A moved to acquire a three-story section of the brutalist icon. The museum's section will now be displayed in this year's Venice Architecture Biennale in order to revisit its original... View full entry
[...] historians were dumbstruck last week when Chase announced plans to demolish the 52-story glass-curtain-wall skyscraper, which opened in 1961, and replace it with an even bigger structure.
The news prompted two immediate responses. The first was an outcry by preservationists. That part was predictable; what is surprising this time around was their wistful sense of resignation.
News of the Union Carbide building's demolition a little over a week ago has incited commotion, yet there is a level of resignation to many of the outcries. Jeffrey Lieber takes a deeper look into why this relinquishment may exist around the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill skyscraper. The... View full entry