Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
The construction of this and other so-called giga-mansions underscores a new gilded age in the United States and especially in LA. [...]
The splurge comes amid a housing shortage that has fuelled a homelessness crisis, with 57,000 people without permanent shelter in LA county [...]. The Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez compared the city’s hilltop mansions to giant tombstones marking the death of humility.
— The Guardian
The Guardian takes a peek into the world of ultra-luxury real estate developer Niles Niami whose latest endeavor—the sprawling Bel Air hilltop giga-mansion with its four swimming pools, 20 bedrooms, movie theater, and nightly club aptly called The One—frequently makes the news for... View full entry
After breaking ground on its first-ever real estate project last fall (the aptly named Aston Martin Residences in downtown Miami), British automaker Aston Martin has unveiled never-before-seen renderings of the building’s amenity spaces. — Robb Report
Aston Martin's first venture into branded luxury real estate broke ground in Downtown Miami last fall and is expected to welcome its deep-pocketed residents in 2021. Until then, check out these new renderings of some of the amenities at the Aston Martin Residences tower. Aston Martin... View full entry
To many longtime residents, the cookie-cutter constructions stripped Venice of its distinctive architectural character, turning parts of the neighborhood into uniform eyesores.
“Over the last year or two specifically, we’re seeing more chances being taken and more unique developments going up,” Lackey said. “This wave of architecture is great for Venice, which has always been a hub of individuality.”
— Los Angeles Times
Boring boxy developments have taken over Venice, California in the last 15 years, but in this LA Times piece, some architects think it's time for the coastal town to return to its eclectic architectural roots...currently in the form of multimillion-dollar luxury homes. View full entry
The condo venture is just one of the ways in which [Aston Martin] is diversifying into a general luxury brand, rather than just a car company...The 391 condos will sell for between $600,000 and $50 million, and include seven penthouses and a duplex penthouse with private pools. There will also be a spa, cinemas, and a virtual golf room, as well as direct access to a yacht marina. You get the picture. — Quartz
From $4 million submarines to $4,000 baby strollers, luxury automaker Aston Martin is expanding their brand. Their latest venture is the Aston Martin Residences, a sail-shaped, 66-story apartment tower that broke ground in downtown Miami last week. Completion of the tower is currently slated for... View full entry
What could be more fitting as a symbol of rebirth in the City of Light, than a golden sun streaming spiralling metal rays? That’s the resplendent installation that Louis Vuitton visual creative director Faye Mcleod conceived for the façade of the maison’s new Peter Marino-designed Paris flagship. — Wallpaper
Louis Vuitton moves back to Place Vendôme in the most expensive part of Paris. The store occupies two 18th centurary hôtel particuliers. On the building façade, shines a giant golden sun. Apart from this addition, the exterior has not been transformed. The interiors of the store are... View full entry
A property firm run by a business partner of US President Donald Trump has awarded a £250 million ($320 million) contract to developers for the construction of a "Versace-branded" skyscraper in London.
Nine Elms Property awarded the contract to developers Multiplex for the construction of AYKON London One, a fifty-story tower to be built in central London at Nine Elms on the South Bank.
— Business Insider
"The world's first Versace-branded tower", AYKON London One, valued at £590 million, will consist of fifty floors and 450 apartments from one to three bedrooms, interiors of which will be designed in partnership with luxury fashion house Versace and feature panoramic-view "winter gardens". In... View full entry
Forget about soft drinks and potato chips - a "vending machine" in Singapore is offering up luxury vehicles, including Bentleys, Ferraris and Lamborghinis.
Used car seller Autobahn Motors opened a futuristic 15-story showroom in December, with vehicles on display in 60 slots, billing it as the "world's largest luxury car vending machine".
— Reuters
Herzog & de Meuron, in collaboration with Robert Wennett, have designed a new, “smart” luxury residential complex in Miami Beach at 1111 Lincoln Residences. As seen in a new batch of almost-disturbingly hyperreal renderings, the residences are built around leafy, Raymond Jungles-designed... View full entry
“What does [the Porsche] brand have to do with real estate?” It’s a good question, poised by the Miami developer Gil Dezer, who helped create the brand-new, 60-story, Sieger Suarez Architects-designed Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles Beach, Miami.Their answer? An elevator for cars. You... View full entry
Trump is President, the climate is chaos, and the wealth gap is starting to qualify as its own national canyon. So if you've got vats of money and are afraid of all the people who don't, what do you do? Build doomsday architecture to survive the collapse of society! In this piece for The New... View full entry
The Wall Street Journal reports that the seven-year long boom in luxury apartment development is about to fizzle out. Since early 2010, U.S. apartment rents have risen more than 26%—a pace much faster than either inflation or income growth. This pattern began to slow last year, when rents rose... View full entry
San Francisco's Millennium Tower has been sinking at a rate of two inches per year since it was completed in 2008, which is about ten inches more than the builders had anticipated the building settling for its entire lifetime. Not to be boring, the tower is also tilting slightly to the northwest... View full entry
As luxury condominiums go, 152 Elizabeth Street displays an unusual rigor and finesse: this is not an exercise in overindulgence, but in refined balance. With its 32,000 square feet split between seven individual residences, Tadao Ando's floor-to-celling windowed, burnished... View full entry
Almost two-thirds of homes in the Tower, a 50-storey apartment complex in London, are in foreign ownership, with a quarter held through secretive offshore companies based in tax havens, a Guardian investigation has revealed.
The first residents of the landmark development arrived in October 2013, but many of the homes are barely occupied, with some residents saying they only use them for a fraction of the year.
— The Guardian
The kind of wealth that turns a home into a status symbol—and an underused status symbol at that, with occupancy rates of only a few weeks a year—is not easing London's housing crisis. As the city's housing rates push actual citizens to decamp to cheaper suburbs or simply leave the area... View full entry
Rem Koolhaas said Zaha Hadid Architects could survive the death of its founder if it feeds on her architectural DNA. [...]
“I think there is a model these days where fashion houses survive by working on the DNA of their founders,” he said.
“It is a model that is becoming more and more current and it could work in architecture too, I think.”
— building.co.uk
Related on Archinect:Impromptu Zaha Hadid retrospective planned for Venice BiennaleZHA after Zaha: Patrik Schumacher on Zaha and what's next for the firm, on Archinect Sessions #61Zaha Hadid Architects to continue under Patrik Schumacher's leadershipZaha Hadid Dies at Age 65 View full entry
