Every once in a while a piece of architecture comes along that is emblematic of a moment in a city's architectural and urban development. One Santa Fe, a 438-unit apartment complex in the arts district by Michael Maltzan Architecture, is that kind of building.

It is a fractal of contemporary Los Angeles architecture, the fragment that both contains and helps explain the whole.

One Santa Fe is not a flashy or gymnastic piece of architecture. It doesn't suggest a new design vocabulary for the 55-year-old Maltzan, who founded his firm in 1995.

What gives the $165-million project its unusual symbolic power is that it takes the generic stuff of a typical L.A. apartment building a wood frame slathered in white stucco and lifted above a concrete parking deck and expands it dramatically to urban scale.

One Santa Fe is just six stories tall, around the same height as the vast majority of new apartment buildings in Los Angeles, since by code going any higher requires trading wood for a more expensive steel or concrete frame. But it is a quarter-mile long wider than the Empire State Building is high and holds 510,000 square feet of interior space.

It is this combination that makes One Santa Fe's significance impossible to miss. The design takes banality and stretches it like taffy in the direction of monumentality.

It uses those 438 apartments to fill a pair of long train-like wings, which is fitting given that along its eastern flank the complex backs up to a rail yard and the concrete banks of the L.A. River. It makes the famously linear campus of the Southern California Institute of Architecture, directly across the street to the west, look stubby.

As they say in Silicon Valley, it scales.

One Santa Fe, with 20% of its units earmarked as affordable housing, has been a controversial building in the arts district since its construction began. Some have criticized it as wildly oversized or seen it as a kind of gentrification ocean liner, slowly drifting toward dock as an unmistakable symbol of the money pouring into this corner of downtown, which used to feel busy only when somebody was shooting a car commercial.

In fact the meaning of the project and its appeal, if you're willing to look at it a certain way springs directly from its practically Seussian width.

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Maltzan's One Santa Fe apartment complex plays with notion of density

Developers looking for profitable apartment building sites are ranging out from Uptown and downtown Dallas.

One of the emerging construction markets is Dallas near east side, close to the central business district and Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas.

Trammell Crow Residential and Greystar Real Estate have two large apartment projects in the works on Ross Avenue and Live Oak Street.

Now another major apartment builder, Encore Multi-Family, has locked up a construction site in the same area.

Encore Multi-Family is working on plans for a five-story, 253-unit rental community at Swiss Avenue and North Peak Street.

The property is now occupied by a Bank of Texas building that will soon be replaced by one on Live Oak, said Brad Miller, president of Dallas Encore Multi-Family.

We like East Dallas, Miller said. I dont know if it will be the next Uptown, but it certainly has some promise.

Encore Multi-Family is just finishing construction on a 288-unit apartment community near UT Southwestern Medical Center on Maple Avenue.

The Maple Avenue corridor, like East Dallas, has been a growing market for apartment development.

We are really good in D-FW at expanding the definition of what is the core market and going into fringe areas, said Greg Willett, vice president with Carrollton-based apartment market analyst MPF Research. A much bigger share of the renters can actually afford the price point in these locations.

Original post:
Apartment developers head to East Dallas for new building sites

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Stephen Goddard from the Owners Corporation Network explains why the court ruling shows government intervention is desperately needed.

A High Court ruling over building defects in a multimillion-dollar apartment complex in Chatswood will make it harder for owners to seek legal redress for shoddy apartments, warn experts.

In the final chapter of a two-year court battle, the High Court ruled on Wednesday that the owners corporation of serviced apartments in a 22-storey building in Railway Street could not sue the builder, Brookfield Multiplex, to recover the cost of fixing alleged defects in common areas.

The ruling comes beforenew building laws are due to take effect in NSWon December 1 that will also limit the rights of apartment ownersto seek redress for faults.

Owners Corporation Network chairman Stephen Goddard: There is a "gaping hole in consumer protection" for residential apartment owners. Photo: Supplied

Owners Corporation Network chairman Stephen Goddard, a strata lawyer, said the State Parliament needed to step in to address a "gaping hole in consumer protection" for residential apartment owners.

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He said "about 85 per cent" of new buildings contained defects. The court's reasoning, while sound, "underlined in red" the need for additional statutory protections for consumers.

The High Court found that contracts relating to the construction and sale of the apartments set out the circumstances in which the builder or developer was liable for defects in building work.

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High Court decision bad news for apartment owners

Work started this week on The Hadley, a luxury apartment project on the site that used to be occupied by True Value Hardware and The Islander Restaurant. The average size of the 219 units is 729 square feet.

image credit: Contributed Rendering

Island-owned Legacy Partners Residential, Inc., in a joint venture with The Resmark Companies Resmark Apartment Living division, announced the start of construction of The Hadley Apartments, a new apartment building community located within Mercer Islands Town Center.

The project is located on the corner of S.E. 27th Street and 76th Avenue S.E. The Hadley will be the only significant apartment project to start construction on Mercer Island in either 2014 or 2015, the developer said.

The Hadley will feature four stories of wood frame construction over a two-story concrete podium. The project includes 209 luxury open one and two-bedroom apartments, averaging 729 square feet. Some units will feature dramatic views of the Cascade Mountains, nearby Lake Washington and the downtown Bellevue cityscape.

Underground parking for 244 cars will be provided in addition to four commercial spaces totaling 9,200 square feet at ground level.

Working with the city, the developer agreed to set aside 13 units that will be affordable to residents making 70 percent of King County area median income. For example, a single person making $40,140 would qualify under this program for an affordable unit. Rents for these units range from $1,081 for a studio to $1,389 for a two-bedroom. Fifty-six parking spaces were set aside for walk off parking which would allow drivers to park their car for a time while they shop or run errands at nearby businesses.

The site sat vacant and fenced for the past year after The Islander Restaurant and True Value Hardware moved into new locations within the Town Center.

But plans for the project have been underway for four years or more.

According to the King County Assessors office, the former Hudesman property, a 32,000-square-foot parcel, sold on Nov. 8, 2011 for $8 million, about 10 percent over its assessed value.

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Construction begins on Legacy apartment project

A five-year effort to build a hotel, apartment building and parking deck on the North Side got a boost Monday from a $3 million state grant.

The $20 million development at East Ohio Street and Madison Avenue also will convert the former site of the Arc House alcohol treatment facility into a restaurant and banquet hall. The adjacent hotel would be a 120-room Comfort Inn. The apartment would have 36 units and the parking deck 300 spaces .

Construction could begin by spring or summer of 2015 and finish by summer 2016, said John Elash III, co-owner of October Development.

A second phase could include a second apartment building with from 36 to 48 units, and a row of single-family townhomes, Elash said.

The Northside Community Development Fund is helping finance the project. The two-acre site has been vacant since the Arc House closed about eight years ago.

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Hotel, apartments planned for North Side

Twenty one cranes loom over the south bank of the River Thames from Battersea Power Station to the St. George Wharf tower. Here, in the biggest concentration of residential projects in London, developers are steaming ahead just as prices are starting to fall.

Homebuilding in central London doubled in two years as record-low interest rates and demand from overseas buyers drove up values at a pace not seen since 1987. Developers such as Chinas Dalian Wanda Group and U.K.-based Berkeley Group Holdings Plc were drawn to the Nine Elms district, where Malaysias Sime Darby Bhd. (SIME) is redeveloping the Battersea station as part of a plan to turn the neighborhood into a prime address.

As the apartment towers rise, the price increases that underpinned the construction boom have come to a halt. London home values fell month-on-month for the first time in two years in September, according to Hometrack, and developers such as Killian Hurley, chief executive officer of London-based Mount Anvil Group Ltd., dont see a return to red-hot growth soon.

Over the summer months, the champagne fizz went out of the market, said Hurley, whose company plans to develop London homes worth 1 billion pounds ($1.6 billion) by 2018. The madness has gone out of it, so its a lot more sustainable. People are becoming more discerning.

Expectations for home price growth in the capital are falling at the fastest pace since before the financial crisis, a survey by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors showed. Values rose in 1 percent of London postcodes in September, compared with 87 percent in February, Hometrack said Sept. 26. Further modest declines are likely, the research firm said.

Though prices climbed for most of this year, the pillars supporting the London market -- a cheap pound, record-low interest rates and the citys reputation as a haven for foreign buyers -- have been eroding for months.

U.K. financial officials damped domestic demand for homes by tightening affordability checks and restricting the number of high loan-to-income mortgages. Speculation about when the Bank of England will raise the benchmark interest rate from a record low of 0.5 percent is also causing uncertainty in the market. BOE policymakers, meeting this week, have been split over whether to keep the rate at that level.

Overseas buyers have seen prices rise because of a strengthening pound, as well as new levies such as a capital-gains tax on homes sold by people living abroad. Theyre also wary of the opposition Labour Partys plan to raise 1.2 billion pounds from a mansion tax if it gets into power after next years national election.

The Bloomberg U.K. Homebuilders Index is little changed this year, compared with a 37 percent gain in the same 10 months of 2013. Berkeley, which focuses on London and southeast England, was the worst performer in the 10-stock index, with a 15.7 percent decline. Sime Darby fell 4.6 percent this year in Kuala Lumpur, where its based.

Other homebuilders with projects in London include Taylor Wimpey Plc, which gained 3.7 percent this year. Barratt Developments Plc, the U.K.s second-largest homebuilder by market value, leads the homebuilders index with a 14 percent increase in 2014.

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Champagne Fizz Goes Flat for London Homes: Real Estate

Kim Stephens

Detective Senior Sergeant Armitt briefs the media.

Police reportedly discovered a woman's dismembered body parts boiling in chemicals when they were called to a Queensland apartment on Saturday night.

A murder-suicide is believed to be behind the woman's grisly death, as well as that of a man whose body was found in a wheelie bin in nearby Dath Street, in the Brisbane suburb of Teneriffe.

Detectives were yet to confirm details revealed in a Channel Nine news report on Sunday night that alleged the woman's severed body parts were found in garbage bags and boiling in chemicals at the recently-constructed Commercial Road apartment complex.

Kim Stephens

Police at the murder scene.

Police made the grim discovery when they responded to requests for a welfare check about 9pm on Saturday.

A man who lived in the apartment with the woman fled the scene when they arrived.

Officers gave chase but discovered his bloodied body in a wheelie bin in a laneway beside the apartment complex a short time later.

See the original post:
Brisbane boiled body parts horror

Once declared the worlds tallest reinforced concrete building, the century-old Arcade is under rehab as downtown St. Louis largest apartment development in decades.

When reopened late next year, the Arcade Building will have 282 apartments, plus classrooms, offices, a street-level art gallery and an auditorium for Webster University, which is expanding its downtown campus.

The $118 million project represents a turnaround for the historic building, which had been vacant for years and targeted for demolition by some previous owners whose redevelopment plans fizzled. At a groundbreaking event Tuesday, Mayor Francis Slay and other officials said they hope the Arcades revival will lead to more downtown redevelopment.

Dominium Development, of Minneapolis, bought the building in August from the citys Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority for about $9.5 million. Almost immediately, heavy work began to renovate and restore the 500,000-square-foot building at Eighth and Olive streets.

The Arcade is really two buildings the 18-story Wright completed in 1906 and the Arcade, built around the Wright more than a decade later then joined to the older structure. Combined as the Arcade, the complex is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Architect Paul Hohmann, whose ebersoldt + associates architecture has a piece of the rehab project, noted that the Arcade was designed during World War I, when much of the nations steel production was diverted to military use.

As a result, engineers and architect Tom P. Barnett turned to reinforced concrete. Contemporary press accounts said the 16-story Arcade was the worlds tallest for such structures.

After years of neglect, the Arcades interior is a mess, but the reinforced concrete frame remains solid, Hohmann said.

Structurally, its very sound, he added.

Dominiums plan calls for 202 affordable artist lofts and 80 market-rate apartments. Marble hallways and other original flourishes will be refurbished. Surviving shop windows on the eight floors of former retail space will be retained.

Read the original post:
Arcade Building's rehab going full speed

A man's body covered with a blanket in Dath St, Teneriffe. Photo: Supplied

Police reportedly discovered a woman's dismembered body parts boiling in chemicals when they were called to a Teneriffe apartment on Saturday night.

A murder-suicide is believed to be behind the woman's grisly death, as well as that of a man whose body was found in a wheelie bin in nearby Dath Street.

Detectives are yet to confirm details revealed in a Channel Nine news report on Sunday night that alleged the woman's severed body parts were found in garbage bags and boiling in chemicals at the recently-constructed Commercial Road apartment complex.

Police made the grim discovery when they responded to requests for a welfare check about 9pm on Saturday.

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A man who lived in the apartment with the woman fled the scene when they arrived.

Officers gave chase but discovered his bloodied body in a wheelie bin in a laneway beside the apartment complex a short time later.

Police say he took his own life.

Detective Senior Sergeant Tom Armitt, officer-in-charge of the Fortitude Valley Criminal Investigation Bureau, told reporters on Sunday he could not say how long the woman had been dead.

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Body parts boiled in Teneriffe horror

We produce high-quality custom made prefabricated timber frame elements for the construction of apartment buildings.

We manufacture the prefabricated elements needed for the construction of an apartment building based on the clients design and based on the Norwegian (TEK10), Swedish (EUROCODE-5), Finnish (RYL, RT catalogues, EUROCODE-5) and UK construction rules and regulations.

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Cost-effective construction details if needed, our engineers will offer cost-effective constructions for the existing apartment building design.

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Construction of apartment buildings - Timbeco Woodhouse