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An important part of New York’s rich cultural fabric is coming into closer view after the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) revealed renderings for its new Maya Lin-designed permanent headquarters at 215 Centre Street in Manhattan. The project will entail the expansion of its existing... View full entry
“It’s just another way that we can’t own our neighborhood and feel safe and quiet here because literally you have something flying over your house all day long, forever, I guess.” said Tany Ling, a singer who offers private lessons at the home she and her sister bought in 2012.
McCourt entities are buying up properties in the neighborhood, but the Lings don’t want to move. They started StoptheGondola.org to fight the project.
— The Los Angeles Times
Frank McCourt, who owned the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2004 to 2011, began proposing the $125 million project back in 2018. The initiative has come up against stiff resistance, especially from those associated with the Los Angeles National Historic Park, which abuts Chinatown. Previously on... View full entry
A former shopping center near downtown Los Angeles is getting a makeover thanks to an innovative new design that promises to take CLT building to brand new levels. LEVER Architecture is bringing mass timber construction to LA's Chinatown with a sizeable new office building that will add four new... View full entry
A group of contested supertall residential towers designed a collection of architecture firms, including SHoP Architects, Handel, and Perkins Eastman for sites in the Two Bridges neighborhood of Manhattan will be allowed to proceed as initially approved following a legal victory... View full entry
A facility used by the Museum of Chinese in America in New York City (MOCA) was engulfed by a devastating fire last week that likely destroyed the entirety of the museum's collection. The impacted facility, at 70 Mulberry Street, is owned by the City of New York and consists of a... View full entry
Development is in the works for another park-adjacent parcel near the Metro’s Gold Line station in Chinatown. An LLC submitted plans on Thursday to the city to build 243 live/work units on a property on North Main and Sotello streets, a block away from Los Angeles State Historic Park. — Curbed LA
According to Curbed, the site is currently in use as a produce distribution center. View full entry
The specter of unwanted change has loomed over a quiet corner of Seattle’s Chinatown-International District for nearly the past four years. [...] Displacement is a genuine concern in Network cities, which, in addition to Seattle, include Boston, Los Angeles, Montreal, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Toronto. — Crosscut
Several city staples like Chinatowns are facing the effects of gentrification and urban displacement. "White populations in Chinatowns grew faster, for example, than the overall white populations in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, according to a study by the Asian American Legal Defense and... View full entry
Chicago-based architecture firm Studio Gang has signed on to design an eye-catching 26-story apartment and hotel tower in Chinatown.
The widely-respected firm has designed numerous projects in Chicago, San Francisco, and New York, including the expansion of the American Museum of Natural History. This would be its first in Los Angeles.
— la.curbed.com
Studio Gang has released plans to design a high-rise in Los Angeles' Chinatown, a space near the rapidly evolving Arts District downtown. The developer Compagnie de Phalsbourg, a French real estate investment company, brought on the firm to design the mixed-use building. The new project will... View full entry
Only a dream can kill a dream. — Egg Shen
Developed with some of the minds behind One Night Stand LA, DOPIUM.LA aimed to preserve the original beauty of Chinatown, while showing its inspirational influence on an emerging community of creatives in Los Angeles. For one night, a group of artist, architects and atmospheric maestros turned... View full entry
“Gateways to Chinatown” is a newly launched initiative seeking design proposals for a new neighborhood landmark at New York City's Canal Street Triangle, between bustling Chinatown and the southern entrance to Little Italy’s Mott Street. The NYC Department of Transportation, the Chinatown... View full entry
Preliminary plans have been revealed for two more residential projects that together “would add more than 2,100 residential units and 1.7 million square feet” to Two Bridges, the area along the East River where the Lower East Side meets Chinatown. A building at 271-283 South Street may rise 60 stories, while another at 260 South Street could reach 66 stories. See how this planned and under-construction new development will alter the LES skyline through CityRealty.com's Google Earth rendering. — 6sqft.com
Most modern Chinatowns are serving less as a singular manifestation of Chinese-American life than as a central gathering place for people to experience Chinese culture...And indeed, Chinatowns themselves were often built on the ground of former ethnic enclaves that had organically dissolved...But as Chicago’s Chinatown demonstrates, this is not a predictable story. More than a hundred years after its founding, the neighborhood has a dynamism that can’t be neatly scripted. — Next City
As Chinatowns across the U.S. succumb to gentrification and shifting cultural preferences, writer Anna Clark spotlights the particular booming growth and expansion taking place in Chicago's Chinatown. More in relation to urban growth: Shocker: New York tops list of most expensive cities for... View full entry
“Is there a line between architecture and art?” Sylvia Lavin, the influential architecture critic and scholar, asked Jimenez Lai, the architect-cum-artist, during a “Pillowtalk” reopening of his ongoing exhibit at Jai & Jai Gallery in Los Angeles. It’s a question that hovers over the... View full entry
To stay relevant, Chinatowns must transition to places that attract second and third generation Chinese Americans, people like Frank Wong. Wong grew up in the Sunset District, an outlying neighborhood of San Francisco. The Sunset District is also heavily Chinese, but Wong says newer Chinese communities in outlying districts can never replace the original downtown Chinatowns.
“I would like to keep it the way it is, it’s a symbol of who I am, and my culture.”
— theworld.org
Previously on Archinect: U.S. Chinatowns lose residents to suburbs View full entry
Today's the day the Chinese welcome the Year of the Dragon, which you'll probably notice if you live anywhere near a Chinatown. Those Chinatowns remain symbolically important to Chinese-Americans.
But not as many are calling them home.
— marketplace.org