360 DEGREES Weblog

L’Arc Paris, Restaurant-Bar & Club, has been open for four months and at least the Club has already become the place where you go if you want to be with the chic, the famous and the beautiful. Mostly, you go there to be seen.

Last month, one of the must-see occasions at the Club was the Chloé Van Paris’s Fashion Burlesque Ball, a masquerade where the dress code, according to the Club’s Facebook page. Party - Club Party was “13 cm heels, nylon, glamorous stockings, retro, pine-up, dandy, sexy, smart and glamorous.”

At the Restaurant, chef Antony Germani (of L’Atelier Joël Robuchon) presides over menus of seasonal everything-made-from-scratch delicacies.

L’Arc occupies the former premises of l’Etoile Nightclub at 12 rue de Presbourg, with views of Arc de Triomphe but it was completely redesigned by Cannes-based Prospect Design.

If stand-alone offices can be set up in people’s gardens, then why not at the local marina? That, in fact, is exactly the concept behind WaterSpace, a Welsh company that offers self-contained floating office units designed to fit into a standard marina berth.

The H2Office is a purpose-built floating office that can comfortably accommodate one or two workers. In addition to a sun deck above, the H2Office comes equipped with a work area featuring wood-like flooring and an L-shaped desk and shelving unit across the beam. A carpeted L-shaped “break-out” area includes a pull-out berth for occasional overnight stays, while an included kitchenette features over and under storage cupboards. Optional extras include teak-effect flooring, kitchen appliances and solar panels. Pricing for a standard unit is GBP 59,950 plus VAT.

Now that the Burj Khalifa is the world’s tallest building the battle to top it begins. Potential contenders include the Kingdom Tower and Miapolis. What’s Miapolis? It’s a 3,200-foot tower planned for Miami’s Watson Island. Given Miami’s epic condo meltdown and its skyline of half completed buildings can this city support a project like this? The 160-story tower would have an amusement park, observatory, shops, restaurants, condos, office space, a hotel and a marina.

The project has been around for a while but the Miami Herald reports that Guillermo Socarras has been in talks with the Federal Aviation Administration to secure approval for the height of the tower. The Herald article points out that Socarras doesn’t own the land. His tower would sit on the current site of Jungle Island, a tourist attraction featuring birds and other animals. The Miapolis website outlines his proposal which includes a plan to pay off Jungle Island’s $39 million loan and debts and then create a new 99-year master land lease on the 28-acre parcel to give the city $4 million a year. But the Herald article has a quote from Ronnie Krongold, co-owner of Jungle Island, who says that while he has met with Socarras a couple of times there hasn’t been any forward motion in a while. And city officials don’t know anything about the project.

The website promises a lot including a dondonation $30 million for college scholarships, $6.3 million for senior centers, new parks and a new light rail station. Is Miapolis yet another pipe dream with a fancy website? At this point getting funding for a multi-billion project in a city that has a surplus of condos seems unlikely. Still, it’s an appealing fantasy and one that could be built in stronger economic times.

Coldwell Banker has released their 2009 Coldwell Banker® Home Price Comparison Index (HPCI) and found that La Jolla, California is the most expensive market. In fact there is an over $2 million gap between what they deem the most expensive and most affordable U.S. housing markets. The comparison of similar 2,200-square foot homes in 310 U.S. housing markets found that the average home price in La Jolla, California is $2.125 million while at the other end of the spectrum, Grayling, Michigan was the most affordable market in America, where a similarly sized home costs $112,675. California fared badly, 13 other California markets are on the most expensive list while Grayling was one of 20 Midwest communities on the most affordable list (others include Akron, Canton, Detroit and Wichita).

Looking at four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath homes in the United States, thirty percent of the markets show this type of home to be below $200,000, while half of the markets surveyed showed an average price for this type of home to be less than $300,000 meaning there are deals out there. The cumulative average sales price of the four-bedroom homes surveyed in the 310 U.S. markets (including one in Puerto Rico) covered in the Coldwell Banker HPCI is $363,460.

Check in on one of my favorite estates which happens to be in the seaside town. The Razor was once listed at $39 million, it was $32 million when I covered it in April and is now down to $28 million.

Thanks Luxist

We’ve written about holiday rental houses that let consumers try out stargazing and farming; at the opposite end of the spectrum, perhaps, is a new UK-based project that aims to let them experience world-class architecture instead.

Reportedly the brainchild of writer and architectural critic Alain de Botton—and with the Swiss ambassador to the UK on its board of advisors—Living Architecture hopes to offer holiday renters the experience of living, eating and sleeping in a space designed using outstanding architectural practices. Toward that end, it has commissioned established and emerging world-class architects to build houses around the UK. Peter Zumthor, for example, is currently working on a hilltop retreat designed for periods of sustained work and reflection. That house will be on the edge of Dartmoor, according to Building Design, while the “Balancing Barn” in Suffolk—now in the works from Dutch architectural firm MVRDV—will reportedly be the first to be built. Filling out the roster of five are The Long House, Shingle House and In-Between House—designed by Hopkins Architects, NORD Architecture and Jarmund/Vigsnæs Architects, respectively. All will be available for holiday rentals beginning in the spring of 2010.

www.living-architecture.co.uk

The Dutch have been fighting the rising and falling tides for centuries, building dikes and pumping water out of areas that are below sea level. Now, rather than fight the water infiltrating their land, the Dutch will use it as part of a new development called ‘New Water‘, which will feature the world’s first floating apartment complex, The Citadel. This “water-breaking” new project was designed by Koen Olthuis of Waterstudio in the Netherlands, and will use 25% less energy than a conventional building on land thanks to the use of water cooling techniques.

Olthuis is responsible for a number of floating residences around the world and he thinks that we should stop trying to contain water and learn to live with it. The New Water and the Citadel projects are an attempt to embrace water in the Netherlands, which is almost completely composed of wetlands. The project will be built on a polder, a recessed area below sea level where flood waters settle from heavy rains. There are almost 3500 polders in the Netherlands, and almost all of them are continually pumped dry to keep flood waters from destroying nearby homes and buildings. The New Water Project will purposely allow the polder to flood with water and all the buildings will be perfectly suited to float on top of the rising and falling water.

The Citadel will be the first floating apartment complex, although there are plenty of floating homes out there. Built on top of of a floating foundation of heavy concrete caisson, the Citadel will house 60 luxury apartments, a car park, a floating road to access the complex as well as boat docks. With so many units built into such a small area, the housing complex will achieve a density of 30 units per acre of water, leaving more open water surrounding the structure. Each unit will have its own garden terrace as well as a view of the lake.

A high focus will be placed on energy efficiency inside the Citadel. Greenhouses are placed around the complex, and the water will act as a cooling source as it is pumped through submerged pipes. As the unit is surrounded by water, corrosion and maintenance are important issues to consider. As a result, aluminum will be used for the building facade, due to its long lifespan and ease of maintenance. The individual apartments are built from prefabricated modules. The Citadel will be situated on a shallow body of water, and in the future numerous buildings, complexes and residences will float on the water alongside it.

Patrick Tighe, principal of Santa Monica’s Tighe Architecture, may hate space-age references. But, here we go: Tighe’s work for Moving Picture Company’s (MPC) Los Angeles office IS space-agey. With its pod-like central spaces, curving ledges and white drywall expanses, it evokes memories of retro space movies.

But it all fits. The U.K-based MPC is in the business of computer animation, color-grading and digital effects, so you wouldn’t want color, hard edges or natural light to mess with that. MPC is known for its work on the past six James Bond films, Slumdog Millionaire and commercials.

It is fitting that the 70-year-old Frank Gehry ended up re-envisioning the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) for his native city of Toronto. As a boy, Gehry visited the AGO often, and the effect of those visits on him and his future career was important. Gehry has lived most of his life in the U.S., but the AGO remake allows Toronto to reap some of the benefits of his massive talent before it’s all too late.
One of Gehry’s early sources of career inspiration was the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto (1898-1976), known as the father of Scandinavian modernism. The influence of Aalto’s love of gently curving light-color wood, and his clean and airy architectural lines, can be sensed at the newly refurbished AGO. Whether or not Gehry thought of Aalto when he designed the spiraling plywood-faced staircase for the main entry hall is irrelevant, but the feel of the space is decidedly Aalto-esque.

Thanks Coolhunter

One of the perks of being an architecture firm such as Spain’s Selgascano is that you get to design yourself an awesome place to work. Check out Selgascano’s “office in the woods,” designed by the company’s Jose Selgas and Lucia Cano. It’s one long, tunnel-like office covered by a curved transparent acrylic window that’s 20 millimeters thick and lets in plenty of natural light. The 110-millimeter-thick opaque wall is made from layers of insulated fiberglass and polyester, and shades the office.

To keep things inside cool, one of the ends of the office is attached to a pulley system and the slab can be raised or lowered, letting in some fresh air.

Mecanoo Architects is designing the city hall and central train station for its home town of Delft, in the Netherlands. The top level will be glass-ceilinged, and even the underground levels will have a feel of transparency and light. Vaulted ceilings, archways and a strong use of white and blue will lighten the visual weight of the complex that will include a 30,000 square-meter public hall. The four-year construction will begin next year.

The Dutch-born and educated architect Francine Houben established Mecanoo Architects in the mid-80s. Mecanoo has since completed an incredible variety of public and private projects, including retail stores, theaters, hotels, libraries, museums, chapels, residential neighborhoods and parks. Houben’s focus on “sensory beauty,” color and light has produced many spectacular buildings in Europe and around the world. Most recently, Mecanoo won the competition to design the new master plan for a central business district in Shenzhen, China. The district will include 8,000 houses and 400,000 square-meters of commercial and cultural facilities.