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What can be said of a world where one billionaire wants to build a giant tulip-shaped tower of little practical use and another wants to house thousands of students in windowless rooms in a block with all the charm of an Amazon distribution centre? — The Guardian
The Observer critic further continued his contrasting of Foster + Partner’s failed Tulip Tower with the Munger Hall development in California, claiming that each was the vanity project of a wayward billionaire. “Both projects seem driven by ego, but in the wide space between the brutal... View full entry
The AIA Los Angeles chapter has issued an open letter to the President of the University of California, voicing opposition to the proposed UCSB Munger Residence Hall. The project, which has gained an intense media spotlight both within and beyond architectural spheres, would see the... View full entry
More architects are speaking out in the controversy surrounding the planned Munger Hall development at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The Santa Barbara Independent is reporting that eight architects representing several different UC campuses sent administrators a letter dated... View full entry
The American Institute of Architects Santa Barbara (AIASB) has sent an open letter to the Chancellor of the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) in opposition to the controversial Munger Hall student residence. The letter, delivered in email format, was led by AIASB President Tai Yeh and... View full entry
The swirling controversy over the University of California, Santa Barbara’s proposed plan to add billionaire real estate investor Charles Munger’s massive self-designed dormitory building to its exhausted stock of student housing has been addressed by the university in a campus-wide Q&A... View full entry
A key architect has resigned his committee membership at the University of California, Santa Barbara following its proposal of a monolithic new dormitory building that purportedly fails to provide windows for some 94% of its single-occupancy residences. After fifteen years sitting on... View full entry
Hedge funder Ken Griffin has closed on a massive penthouse at 220 Central Park South, paying a record-shattering $238 million, according to sources familiar with the deal.
The Citadel founder has long been rumored as the buyer of the condominium’s most lavish spread — a 23,000-square-foot quadplex encompassing the 50th through 53rd floors of the limestone tower, developed by Vornado Realty Trust and designed by Robert A.M. Stern. The asking price was $250 million.
— The Real Deal
After Ken Griffin dropped a sweet quarter billion on his new NYC digs, he didn't appear entirely penniless and recently secured a few other neat places to crash when traveling to London, Chicago, or Miami. "Earlier this week, he reportedly scooped up a house in London for around $122 million,"... View full entry
A new report by real estate agency Knight Frank finds that 153 properties in six cities’ “ultra-prime” category sold for a combined total of $6.6 billion in the last year, or an average of $43 million per house.
Hong Kong led the world in sales over $25 million, followed by New York, then London.
— Bloomberg
Market slowdown? What market slowdown? While the real estate sector in the U.S. and certain global regions (looking at you, Brexit-y London) is seeing signs of cooling, including the upper-scale segment, there has been no significant impact on the uppest-scale cream slice of the industry with... View full entry
According to an insight study performed by the think tank New London Architecture, the dimensions of the London housing crisis are spectacularly bad: 80 percent of all new homes are only affordable to 20 percent of residents, while a near majority of all renting households are living in poverty... View full entry
[...] shadows even turn light into another medium of inequality. Light becomes a resource that can be bought by the wealthy, eclipsed for the poor.
[...] multimillion-dollar apartments in the sky will darken parts of the park a mile away. Enjoyment of the park in the park – a notably free activity in a high-cost city – will be dimmed a little to give billionaires views of it from above.
— theguardian.com
Related: Welcome to the permanent dusk: Sunlight in cities is an endangered species View full entry
With its spire the Nordstrom Tower will be just one foot shorter than One World Trade Center, but its elevation will make it the tallest point in New York, as its site is 100 feet above sea level, compared to One World Trade’s 12- foot elevation. — 6sqft
New renderings have been released for Extell Development's Nordstrom Tower at 217 West 57th Street. When completed, the 92-story, 1,775-foot supertall that will take the title of tallest residential building in the world, surpassing Mumbai’s World One Tower by 29 feet. The images show how the... View full entry
From the opening of the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in October to the construction of The Broad in Los Angeles now set to open this autumn, the model of the single-donor museum is thriving. [...] what will happen to these new institutions on the death of the founder or the decline in their collecting activity. [...]
To what extent have these museum founders made plans to ensure the vitality and flexibility of their prized institutions beyond their own lifetimes?
— theartnewspaper.com
"The pied-à-terre tax is seen by New York’s wealthiest 1 percent as a question of fairness" - James Parrott, the chief economist at the Fiscal Policy Institute — NYT
New data from the Census Bureau’s 2012 American Community Survey, confirms the high vacancy rate in certain "billionaire buildings" and neighborhoods of Manhattan. Some are making the case that an additional tax should be levied for these pieds-à-terres. View full entry
