This month's issue of Monocle magazine is a special edition focused on property. And that's because this month was also the annual MIPIM festival in Cannes, which is apparently the largest real estate boondoggle, I mean conference, in the world.
One of the development projects that is featured in the special is Culdesac Tempe (which is located just east of Phoenix). This is a development that has received a lot of press over the years, including here on this blog, as it was developed as a car-free neighborhood in a city region known for the opposite.
But to be fair, it does have some parking.
There are 150 parking spaces (all surface) for 760 homes. So a parking ratio of just under 0.20 spaces per suite. This is still a remarkably low figure compared to what I would expect in Phoenix, which would be something closer to 1 to 1. I'd be curious to know how it's leasing/performing.
The entire development was also designed to be responsive to Arizona's climate. The buildings are close together so they shadow the circulation spaces, and no asphalt was used anywhere in the project in order to minimize heat retention. The architect for the project, Dan Parolek, refers to this as "desert responsive urbanism."
I'd love to visit one day, but until then, there's YouTube. Here's a full walkthrough by Kirsten Dirksen.
Earlier this week, Chinese architect Liu Jiakun was awarded the 2025 Pritzker Prize. For those of you who may not be familiar, the Pritzker Prize is generally considered to be the architect world's most prestigious prize. (The full list of laureates can be found, here.)
Jiakun is based in Chengdu, China and he has worked exclusively within the country. His largest project is a mixed-use complex known as the West Village, which is a truly enormous courtyard building that exists at the scale of a neighborhood.
It houses cultural, recreational, commercial, and office spaces, all of which are connected by an elaborate network of pedestrian and cyclist ramps. Here's what that looks like from above:
At first glance, it's the kind of large-scale development that looks as if it may not work. It looks like it could be the kind of project that sterilizes a fine-grained urban neighborhood. But get closer, and things start to look a little different.
The true test is seeing how it performs at the scale of a pedestrian. And I found this walking tour helpful in understanding what that might feel like. If you spend a few minutes watching it, or even just scanning through it, you'll see that the area looks active and busy, even at night.
Now, I've never visited this project, or Chengdu for that matter, but I suspect that the way to think about this project is not as one giant complex, but as a giant public space flanked by buildings. In other words, it's not that the complex is enormous, it's that the public spaces are enormous.
Jiakun is quoted as saying this:
“I always aspire to be like water,” says Liu, “to permeate through a place without carrying a fixed form of my own and to seep into the local environment and the site itself. Over time, the water gradually solidifies, transforming into architecture, and perhaps even into the highest form of human spiritual creation. Yet it still retains all the qualities of that place, both good and bad.”
The West Village seems to be a testament to this approach. He aspired to not interrupt the flows of the existing environment, and perhaps that's why it works so well. Or at least, that's what it looks like on YouTube.
Photos by Qian Shen Photography
In my recent post about "takeaways from Japan" I spoke about a willingness to experiment and be playful with the built environment. I said that quite often people design homes around what they want, as opposed to what they think might broadly appeal to the market. So today, let's look at an example. Below is a site on the outskirts of Tokyo, about an hour from the center of the city. The architect — Kamakura Studio — describes it as being situated in a "new town" where about 75% of the residents have moved in within the past decade. And like Japan as a whole, problems of aging and population decline are expected in the future.
Using Google Maps to get rough dimensions, the site looks to be somewhere around 8m wide by 11m deep. So this is not a huge site compared to what you might find in the suburbs of other cities, but it's certainly a very workable set of dimensions. Also noteworthy is the fact that the area has no sidewalks. This is common throughout Tokyo. Ordinarily, this would imply a suburban mental model. But in practice, Tokyo's streets actually feel very pedestrian-friendly. And that's because they tend to be narrow and the entire city is oriented mostly around rail.
What was ultimately developed on the site is this (House F):
Totalling 169 m2, the first floor of the house serves as an office for the architect and as an open space for the local community. The firm opens up the space to people who may want to stop in for coffee (or just hang out) and for movie nights. There's even a "plant-sharing network" on the terrace where dozens of households supposedly contribute and participate. On the second and third floor of the house are the domestic quarters. Here there are two generous bedrooms, study spaces, and multiple balconies, one of which provides access to a rooftop terrace.
It's a highly livable house, but it's also designed to meet a particular set of ambitions. I mean, look at the above coffee window. And this is one of the really cool things about domestic architecture in Japan. (If any of you are familiar with how the zoning would work for a site like this, I'd love to understand that.)
Project images via Kamakura Studio