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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
The Manhattan skyline is one of the world’s most iconic, but it wouldn’t be complete without the city’s famed residential supertalls. Luxury buildings like 432 Park Ave and One57 have set a high bar in the era of tower living, but the past decade has seen the vertical lifestyle catching on across the globe—from Boston to Monaco to New Orleans. — quartzy.qz.com
Check out these luxury residential skyscrapers outside of NYC: Boston, MA Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, Echelon Seaport is Boston's latest project located in the Seaport District. This new luxury condo and apartment development is currently under construction with a completion date of 2020. ... 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
Named after the 18th century Italian painter whose most famous works depict lavish celebrations on the canals of his native Venice, Canaletto—the 31-story tower designed by Amsterdam's UNStudio—offers luxury, waterside living next to City Road canal basin in central London. ©... 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
As the brand-new rendering above shows, the luxury condo tower designed by Jean Nouvel will boast an unusual amenity: floors 2, 4 and 5 of 53W53 will serve as new gallery levels for the Museum of Modern Art when construction is completed. Additionally, according to a fact sheet, "benefactor W... 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
One of the new luxury apartment buildings constructed in 1910 was the Belmont Court, on the city’s growing East Side. Plans called for a modern 24 unit-apartment building with a range of conveniences. More than a century later, the Belmont Court building still stands...According to Zillow, average apartment rents in Portland are about $1,600 per month. With studio apartments renting at just under $1,100 they’re not exactly cheap, but they cost less per square foot than newly built units. — CityObservatory
Drawing on research from housing blogger, Iain MacKenzie who runs Next Portland, Joe Cortright at CityObservatory shares some examples of affordable housing in Portland that had been considered luxury when originally constructed. The author argues that affordable housing has always been generated... View full entry
The best things in life are free, but construction cranes still cost money, which has prompted an investor to sue the developers behind SHoP's 111 West 57th Street for failing to budget appropriately for the cost of cranes (among other things) for the super skinny tower, which is already way over... View full entry
Capable of holding more than 20,000 residents, Prora was meant to comfort the weary German worker who toiled away in a factory without respite. According to historian and tour guide Roger Moorhouse, it was also meant to serve as the carrot to the stick of the Gestapo — a pacifying gesture to get the German people on Hitler's side. But then World War II began, and Prora's construction stalled — until now. — Business Insider
Named Prora and located on a beachfront of Rügen island, the structure was commissioned by Adolf Hitler as the world's largest tourist resort three years before Germany invaded Poland in 1939. In those three years over 9,000 workers were involved in the construction of the 2.7-mile-long... View full entry
The dark, quasi-Victorian corridors of ODA's 31-unit apartment building on New York City's Renwick Street are a purposeful nod toward British-born James Renwick, 19th century scientist and engineer, after which the street is named. The contrast between the portrait-clad hallways and the light... View full entry
With a series of jutting balconies and abrupt offsets, the Herzog + De Meuron-designed 56 Leonard, described by the architects as "houses stacked in the sky," is one of the more aesthetically adventuresome luxury condo towers to rise in New York City. This time-lapse video, replete with what... View full entry
Good walls make good neighbours – but not, it seems, when they are made entirely of glass. Five residents of the multi-million-pound Neo Bankside towers, which loom behind Tate Modern like a crystalline bar chart of inflated land values, have filed a legal claim against the museum to have part of its viewing platform shut down. They claim that its 10th-floor public terrace has put their homes into a state of “near constant surveillance”. — The Guardian
In an apparent case of art interfering with life, the owners of the apartments next to the Tate Modern's viewing platform are trying to legally erect some kind of visual barrier between them and the visitors of the museum (although the exotic technology of curtains has apparently not yet made it... View full entry
Fifty-two stories, four visually distinct sections, and one playful, gaping hole constitute the major components of Gensler's proposed new 300+ unit residential building for downtown Los Angeles, which would rise from the ashes of a (soon-to-be) former auto dealership on 1600 South Figueroa... 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
