Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman is a pretty wealthy guy and so it is fairly safe to assume that he could choose to live almost anywhere. For some people the ideal might be a low-rise house with a backyard in the suburbs.

But since 2018, Ackman has chosen a kind of penthouse apartment on the roof of a 1920's co-op building in Manhattan's Upper West Side. It was formerly the home of author Nancy Friday and Ackman supposedly purchased it for $22.5 million.

He is now looking to demolish the penthouse and build a new two-storey residence designed by architect Norman Foster. The design looks like this, which kind of reminds me of Philip Johnson's The Glass House:

Today it was in the news that Ackman has been having a fun time trying to convince his co-op board that a new set of glass boxes on the roof their building is a good idea. FT reported that the project has created "an atmosphere of fear and distrust among residents in the building."

I'm not exactly sure what it is about this proposal that is causing fear and distrust but Ackman is on record saying that he thinks this isn't about heritage preservation or architectural integrity; it's about people not wanting the disruption that comes along with construction. Fair.

One way to test this, I suppose, is to propose something more traditional or similar to what's already there. But I suspect that the other dynamic at play here is simply that he is a rich guy with a starchitect trying to build something cool.

Building things is tough.

Dezeen, the architecture and design magazine, has a documentary out called Elevation - How Drones Will Change Cities. It premiered in Hong Kong in March and is supposed to be widely available this month. I’m not exactly sure when that is happening, but below is a trailer. If you can’t see it below click here.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSlep5XCpaw&w=560&h=315]

Included in the trailer is footage of a delivery drone concept by design consultancy PriestmanGoode called Dragonfly. Norman Foster also talks about the development of “aerial highways.” It’s 2018 and we were promised flying cars by this point. But flying drones, similar to what’s in the above trailer, seem more probable right now.

Hunter Oatman-Stanford just published a longish read over on Collectors Weekly that talks about the history of suburban office complexes in America. That part alone makes it an interesting read.

But he also makes the argument that innovative companies like Apple and Google are still stuck in a midcentury suburban mindset with their new mega headquarters:

“I look at Apple’s Norman Foster building, and it’s 1952 all over again,” Mozingo says. “There’s nothing innovative about it. It’s a classic corporate estate from the 1950s, with a big block of parking. Meanwhile, Google is building another version of the office park with a swoopy roof and cool details—but it does nothing innovative.”

Others have made this same argument. Back in 2013, Wired published an article talking about why Apple’s new Norman Foster spaceship could result in them losing the war for tech talent. 

And if you read the piece in Collectors Weekly, you’ll see just how little, in some cases, the office environment has changed since the middle of the 20th century.

Back then, we also had big name starchitects designing suburban head offices for innovative companies. Below is a photo from the GM Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. It was designed by Eero Saarinen and it opened in 1956.

There’s lots of research that suggests that, today, both entrepreneurs and capital are flocking to urban centers, instead of the suburbs. And I certainly don’t need to repeat that to this audience.

But given this shift, I think we will increasingly view the suburban sprawl of places like Silicon Valley as a serious competitive disadvantage. I mean, I am sure these new buildings will be lovely, but I certainly wouldn’t want to work there. 

Would you?