It was explained to me this week that Paris has two principal towers: The Eiffel Tower and the awful tower. The awful tower is, of course, the Tour Montparnasse. Completed in 1973, the Tour Montparnasse is tall, brown, monolithic, and seemingly out of place with… Read More
The OMA-designed Greenpoint Landing Towers in northern Brooklyn recently topped out. Photos and announcement over here. If you aren’t familiar with the project, it’s very OMA. What I mean by that is that there’s a kind of simple rationality to it. (I just made up… Read More
The San Francisco Chronicle recently published an article called, “SF residential projects languish as rising costs force developers to cash out.” It talks about the impact that rising costs (both construction and other) are having on new housing supply. Some developers aren’t building even though may… Read More
This morning I came across this drone photo of Hong Kong by @vnthota: I immediately thought it was a good example of the typical Hong Kong tower plan that I have been writing about on this blog. You can see the cruciform plan, the light/air cutouts,… Read More
My friends at the architecture practice Valente Rodgers told me something fascinating about the Hong Kong real estate market last night. Both partners worked as architects in Hong Kong for a number of years. In Hong Kong, you’re allowed to deduct certain projecting windows from… Read More
Earlier this week the Seattle Times published the following graphic showing the US cities with the most (construction) cranes up in the air at the end of 2016: At the top of the list is Seattle with 62. And in second place is Chicago with… Read More
My friend Randy Gladman, who is Vice President of Development at Triovest Realty Advisors, recently sat down for an interview with Alex Josephson, who is a founding partner of the Toronto-based architecture practice PARTISANS. The topic of discussion was the book that PARTISANS published last… Read More
At the end of 2015, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat awarded Bosco Verticale in Milan the “2015 Best Tall Building Europe” and the “2015 Best Tall Building Worldwide.” It was the 14th Annual of these awards. What makes Bosco Verticale (or Vertical Forest) special… Read More
When I was a kid growing up in the suburbs of Toronto, I never played in the backyard. I played in the streets. That’s where all the kids came together. We would play baseball in somebody’s driveway, using one of the garage door “squares” as… Read More
Back in February of this year (2015), Philip Oldfield, who is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Nottingham, gave the following talk at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Click here if you can’t see it below. If you’re interested in cities and how… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 