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Los Angeles city prosecutors are calling for an unfinished mega-mansion in Bel-Air to be torn down to its foundation, the latest twist in the saga over a colossal building at the center of criminal charges, court battles and an FBI investigation.
[...] last week, City Atty. Mike Feuer and his prosecutors stepped up their demands, saying that a structural engineer had found that key structures supporting the building were deficient.
— Los Angeles Times
"Hadid pleaded no contest two years ago to criminal charges tied to the mammoth, unfinished building, which prosecutors said was much bigger than city rules allowed and included bedrooms, decks and even an IMAX theater that the city said were never approved," reports the Los Angeles Times. Calls... View full entry
The mammoth, unfinished mansion on Strada Vecchia Road in Bel-Air has long been at the center of controversy, investigations and legal battles.
Its developer, Mohamed Hadid, pleaded no contest to criminal charges after prosecutors accused him of building a house far bigger than allowed. [...]
And investigators have looked into possible wrongdoing by a city building inspector scrutinizing the house.
— Los Angeles Times
Looks like the legal drama over the gargantuan on-again/off-again under-construction Bel Air megamansion by celebrity developer Mohamed Hadid is entering a new act: Russell Linch, the contested project's former construction manager, has come forward this week and accused a Los Angeles Department... View full entry
She told reporters that the council had finally managed to "resolve a historical anomaly in the city -- that an emblematic monument like the Sagrada Familia... didn't have a building permit, that it was being constructed illegally," Agence France-Presse reported. — CNN
Despite being under construction for 137 years, Antoni Gaudi's Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona, Spain has never had proper building permits. That is, until now. CNN reports that Barcelona's chief urban planner announced last week that the city council had finally awarded the committee... View full entry
Bill Heine, who famously put a 25 foot fiberglass shark by the sculptor John Buckley on top his house, has passed away. A BBC radio broadcaster, Mr. Heine spent a good sum of his time protecting what he saw as a fight for creativity. Placed without planning permission in 1986, the unusual home... View full entry
Despite having been under construction for more than 130 years, Gaudí's Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona has lacked the proper paper work. Turns out, the Unesco world heritage site, attracting more than 20 million visitors a year, has never been granted a building permit, the BBC... View full entry
Trulia isolated the markets in which building permits for residential construction are being issued at rates above historical averages, which have been calculated by looking at the number of permits issued each year between 1980 and 2016. The study also shows that Austin, Dallas and Houston, issued over 10% of all permits in the nation in 2017.These cities are projected to add about 130,000 new homes by the end of the year, their growth driven by abundant jobs and rising incomes and home prices. — The New York Times
According to the real estate website Trulia, the number of homes available for sale decreased 8.9 percent in the second quarter of 2017 compared to a year earlier, which follows decreases every quarter for the two past years. The projected number of new building permits in 2017 grew the most in... View full entry
The Frank Gehry-designed project has taken a smaller, but important step forward this summer, by filing for building permits with the City of Los Angeles...The latest iteration of the Grand Avenue Project, which has been proposed for well over a decade, calls for the construction of two high-rise buildings at 100 S. Grand Avenue, replacing an infamous "tinker-toy" parking structure...Related has set a 2018 groundbreaking date for the project, with completion targeted in 2022. — urbanize.la
Today is day two in court for architect Louis Cherry and his wife, Marsha Gordon, for the hearing that will decide the fate of their new home in the historic Oakwood neighborhood of Raleigh, North Carolina. Back in March, a neighbor complained that the "modernist" style of Cherry's home didn't... View full entry
Hanoi has faced the same population pressures as other Asian cities. But thanks to vague and informal conventions, the state has been able to avoid extreme levels of disservice, even to the most impoverished new urban areas. And the construction of homes themselves has remained at least loosely connected to the regulations of the more formal suburbs. Together these factors have prevented the formation of slums as they are typically defined. But how has this come about? — theguardian.com
“Words like ‘holocaust’ have been used in reference to the idea that our house could inspire a rash of tear-downs which could then be replaced with modern homes. I designed my house specifically within the design guidelines of this historic district and to be compatible, a good neighbor. But the term ‘modernism’ just clicks a switch in people’s brain and they can’t see the house for what it is.” — nytimes.com
Previously: Architect Fights for His Home View full entry
Longtime partners Bohlin Cywinsky Jackson and Eckersley O'Callaghan have been brought in to revamp the 93-year-old former United States Mortgage and Trust Company building at the corner of East 74th Street and Madison Avenue, according to New York City building permits. — appleinsider.com
A German pensioner has been ordered to demolish her own home - because the house, built at the start of World War II, did not have planning permission. — thelocal.de
Lewis Mumford wrote that, in a city, “time becomes visible.” Not, it would appear, in Raleigh, North Carolina, where a city board has just decided that a rather discreet and understated modern house might need to be torn down because it damages the ambience of a historic district, which is to say it destroys the illusion that the neighborhood is a place in which time has stopped. — Vanity Fair
A battle of bureaucracy and "historic preservation" is playing out in a Raleigh, NC neighborhood. Louis Cherry, FAIA, is building his own home in the Oakwood neighborhood of Raleigh. After having received approval for his design by relevant city agencies, including the Raleigh Historic Development... View full entry
Pallets are omnipresent. (We) have found pallets not only in the small architectures of informal settlements in Buenos Aires, Istanbul, and Panama City, but in the blogs of self-builders throughout North America and Europe...Urban pioneers in Detroit, Camden and other failing Rust Belt cities reclaim pallets...But none of these builders have negotiated the gap between informal and formal economies with a permanent pallet building authorized by a building permit. - Wes Janz, Cabin(s) in the Woods — The Speakeasy: A Curatorial Research Blog
