I think it’s time to make it official: Brutalism is fashionable again. Okay, kind of. According to this WSJ article, the appreciation for this style of architecture remains nowhere near universal, but the renaissance is certainly continuing. Some Brutalist structures are and have been torn… Read More
For the same reasons that I liked the Interlock in London, I am a big fan of this storefront in Amsterdam by UNStudio. It is contextual, but it also something entirely new. To me, it resembles a triptych of curtains being pulled to the side,… Read More
Using data from Turner & Townsend, Curbed recently reported that the most expensive city in the world in which to build is now San Francisco. On average, it costs USD 417 per square foot. San Francisco is followed by New York ($368 psf), London, Zurich,… Read More
This is a terrific infill project by Bureau de Change (architect) for HGG London (developer). It’s a five-storey mixed-use development in London’s Fitzrovia neighborhood. The design ambition was to respect the area’s history, materiality, and proportions, but also create something entirely new. The result is… Read More
Foster + Partners has just completed its first residential high-rise in London. It’s a 50 storey building with 299 apartments, called Principal Tower. The tower forms part of a broader mixed-use project — that now houses Amazon UK — called Principal Place. The developers were… Read More
Since 2005, LSE Cities (London School of Economics) has been collecting comparative data on how global cities perform in terms of key spatial, socioeconomic, and environmental indicators. This is their latest data matrix: To be clear, it is not a ranking of cities. It is… Read More
Urban environments can be dense in many different ways. This is a topic that we have discussed on several occasions here on the blog. But this working paper by Solly Angel, Patrick Lamson-Hall, and Zeltia Gonzales Blanco — called The Anatomy of Density — is… Read More
The Standard recently opened up its first international outpost in London. It’s a 266-room hotel housed in a 1974 Brutalist office building overlooking King’s Cross. London-based Orms (architect) was the lead consultant and they did an incredible job both preserving and modernizing the existing building.… Read More
This week Bloomberg reported that Dubai is facing a “housing disaster” as a result of overbuilding. There’s simply too much supply coming onto the market. About 30,000 units are expected to be completed this year, which the industry believes is about 2x actual demand. As… Read More
This UN report (2018) on urbanization trends is a fascinating way to understand how our world is growing and changing. So today’s post is about some of my takeaways. If you have others, feel free to add them to the comment section below. But first,… Read More
