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Amazon selects New York & Arlington, VA for HQ2 ・people, mass transit, sustainability

Amazon has selected New York City (the Long Island City neighborhood of the borough of Queens) and Arlington,Virginia (the Crystal City neighborhood, across the Potomac from Washington, DC) for its HQ2.

In agreements with the local and state governments, Amazon stipulates that the two locations will house at least 25,000 employees each. The new sites will require $5 billion in construction and other investments.

Direct access to rail, train, subway/metro, bus routes (mass transit) at site has been a core preference of Amazon, stipulated in the Amazon HQ2 RFP.

Significantly, Amazon’s HQ2 RFP stipulates that it will develop HQ2 with a dedication to sustainability:

Sustainability: Amazon is committed to sustainability efforts. Amazon’s buildings in its current Seattle campus are sustainable and energy efficient. The buildings’ interiors feature salvaged and locally sourced woods, energy efficient lighting, composting and recycling alternatives as well as public plazas and pockets of green space. Twenty of the buildings in our Seattle campus were built using LEED standards. Additionally, Amazon’s newest buildings use a ‘District Energy’ system that utilizes recycled heat from a nearby non-Amazon data center to heat millions of square feet of office space – a system that is about 4x more efficient than traditional heating. This system is designed to allow Amazon to warm just over 4 million square feet of office space on Amazon’s four-block campus, saving 80 million kilowatt hours over 20 years, or about 4 million kilowatt-hours a year. We also invest in large solar and wind operations and were the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the U.S. in 2016.

Amazon will develop HQ2 with a dedication to sustainability.

Of the cities selected, Emily Badger of The New York Times observes:

“Tech companies feed on highly educated and specialized workers, specifically dense clusters of them where workers and companies interacting with one another are more likely to produce new ideas. Washington and New York, as it turns out, are two of the most highly educated regions in the country, with already large pools of tech workers.

“Drop a big Amazon headquarters into Washington or New York, and economists expect the 50,000 workers there to be more productive than if the same 50,000 jobs were dropped into Indianapolis. Simply putting them in New York, near so many other tech workers, increases the likelihood that Amazon invents more services, connects to more markets, makes more money.

“Those added benefits are so strong, economists say, that it’s worth it to companies like Amazon to pay more — a lot more — for office space and employee salaries in New York City.

“‘If you are in the business of making new things — whether it’s a new product, or a new way of delivering things, or a new service — and it’s something that is unique, and it keeps changing and it needs updating, the most important factor of all is human capital,” said Enrico Moretti, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s not like making soap, or like making textiles.’”

See:

Amazon HQ2 RFP

“Amazon Announces New York and Virginia as HQ2 Picks,” Karen Weise, Technology | The New York Times, 13 November 2018

“In Superstar Cities, the Rich Get Richer, and They Get Amazon,” Emily Badger, The New York Times, 7 November 2018

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It’s your money ・ Hurricanes, flooding, fires. Buying a home?

It’s your money. ・ Hurricanes, flooding, wildfires. Buying a home? Approach your investment with care and due diligence.

“Buying a home involves an enormous amount of money, and few people do it often enough to be experts. Given the realities of climate change, the process is now set against a backdrop of radical uncertainty about the very ground you will live on and the air you will breathe.

“Given all that, you owe it to yourself to call on every dispassionate expert you can find and grab all available data on any risk you are taking on.”

“There is a case for optimism here, where the world comes together and manages to turn the (rising) tides. So if you are a positive thinker or can afford a big loss, by all means bet one of your biggest assets on that possibility.

“Otherwise, ask yourself this: Just how much more science and weather will it take before ever larger numbers of people decide to settle in or retire to places that pose less risk? And once they do, do you want to be trying to unload your property in a danger zone so you can afford to join them?

“You’re Buying a Home? Have You Considered Climate Change?”, Ron Lieber, The New York Times, 2 December 2016

Research and understand highly pertinent issues such as those that follow below. Examine flood zones, flood insurance, fire zones, and the term Wildland Urban Interface (WUI, indexes the conversion of wildland to developed territory).

In the context of wildfires, a cornerstone of risk evaluation is a metric called the Wildland Urban Interface, or WUI. WUI indexes the conversion of wildland to developed territory. WUI indicates an explosion in wildland development over recent years.

According to the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) measurement framework, the conversion rate from wildlands to urban development has grown to 4,000 acres per day or close to 2 million acres per year.

The explosion in WUI development increasingly puts homeowners, firefighters and communities at risk of wildfire – a risk that is only growing across the United States as the globe warms and aridification worsens. Since the 1980s, large fires in Northern California have increased by 60 percent. Some forests in the Pacific Northwest have seen a 5,000 percent increase in annual burned land. 

According to the  2017 Verisk Wildfire Risk Analysis, more than 2 million of the 4.5 million homes at high or extreme risk of wildfire are in California.

We should start by learning which regions are most at risk. Many people assume that most WUI lands fall in the western states. The large eastern and southern states have the most land in the WUI. In 2016, Kansas and Oklahome saw over a million acres burn – that’s an area bigger than the state of Rhode Island. 

The so-called “fire season” has continued to lengthen over the past several decades, and that, since 2000, climate change has been attributed to adding 9 additional days of high fire season. The environmental context facing designers and developers is thus increasingly risky.

“We Should Plan Homes to Minimize the Threat of Wildfires,” Jesse M. Keenan and Alice Hill, Newsweek, 21 October 2017

Services & infrastructure

Sources & uses of municipal services such as flood- and fire-prevention, -recovery, and related maintenance services.

How much does the locality (village, town, county, parish, state) pay for public services such as roads, pumps, fire services, drinking water, sewage, etc. Where does the money come from. 

Sources & uses of flood- and fire-prevention and -recovery service funds

How are flood- and fire-prevention and -recovery services financed and funded. How long will flood- and fire-prevention and -recovery services be affordable. How is “affordable” defined.

Home-purchase finance

If you plan to finance a purchase with a mortgage, examine how banks and insurance companies are currently managing flood- and fire-prone properties in their portfolios. What are the trend lines? What steps are being taken by banks and insurance companies vis a vis such properties to protect their balance sheets over the long term.

Insurance

Examine how insurance companies are managing flood- and fire-prone properties in their portfolios. What are the trend lines? What steps are being taken by insurance companies vis a vis such properties to protect their balance sheets over the long term.

What are current premiums? Is the appropriate insurance provided by private companies, by the government? How much will you receive in case of a disaster? Will you receive the full market value of the damaged property?

Sources & uses of energy

Energy matters. Know sources and uses of energy. A house designed and built for low energy unit intensity offers multiple advantages.

Sources, uses, costs, & quality of water

Water matters. Know sources, uses, costs, and quality of water.

Building materials

Building materials and construction matter. Know how and of what materials the house is constructed. Is the house built for fire resilience? Is the house built for flood resilience?

Access & transportation infrastructure

Access matters. How is the neighborhood served by transportation. Can you get to work / school / the doctor’s and dentist’s office / the grocery store and shops / all those important places by foot, bike, bus, train? Must you drive a car? (Think of the CO2 emissions that are exacerbating both the floods and the fires.) Are there multiple lines of access? One road?

Climate change

Research climate change and its effects in your geographical area of interest.

A team & teamwork matter

Develop a team of experts, whom you can trust and consult and with whom you can work together, in your geographical area of interest.

As you delve into these questions, here are links to articles, and there are many more, that provide information, insight, perspective and links to further sources of information.

See:

“You’re Buying a Home? Have You Considered Climate Change?”, Ron Lieber, Your Money | The New York Times, 2 December 2016

“Flooding Risk Knocks $7 Billion Off Home Values, Study Finds,” Laura Kusisto, The Wall Street Journal, 25 August 2018

“Your coastal property has already lost value to sea rise. This site can tell you how much”, Alex Harris, Miami Herald, 25 July 2018

Fire Weather Outlooks (updated daily), NOAA’s National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center, Fire Weather Outlooks

“Why does California have so many wildfires?”, Kendra Pierre-Louis, The New York Times, 9 November 2018

“Forced Out by Deadly Fires, Then Trapped in Traffic,” Jack Nicas, Thomas Fuller, Tim Arango, The New York Times, 11 November 2018

“Jesse M. Keenan in Newsweek: time is now to evaluate design risk, enhance resilience against wildfires,” Travis Dagenais, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 24 October 2017

“We Should Plan Homes to Minimize the Threat of Wildfires,” Jesse M. Keenan and Alice Hill, Newsweek, 21 October 2017

“North Carolina, Warned of Rising Seas, Chose to Favor Development,” John Schwartz and Richard Fausset, The New York Times, 12 September 2018

“Perils of Climate Change Could Swamp Coastal Real Estate,” Ian Urbina, The New York Times, 24 November 2016

“Underwater. Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for US Coastal Real Estate,” Union of Concerned Scientists, 2018

“Del Mar stands firm against ‘planned retreat”, Phil Diehl, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 22 May 2018

“Can Miami Beach survive global warming?”, David Kamp, Vanity Fair, 10 November 2015

“Rising seas, distressed communities, and ‘climate gentrification’: Jesse M. Keenan talks Miami in Vice, Scientific American,” Travis Dagenais, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 14 August 2017

“California Today: Now Comes the Insurance Challenge,” Mike McPhate, The New York Times, 11 October 2017

“Climate change and commercial real estate: How resilient is your portfolio?” Jeffrey Kanne, Carlos Madex-Madani, Sam Bendix, Institutional Real Estate, Inc., 1 June 2017

“Settling post-catastrophe insurance claims: What agents should know,” Bernice Ross, Inman, 5 September 2017

“High Ground Is Becoming Hot Property as Sea Level Rises,” Erika Bolstad, Scientific American, 1 May 2017

“Wildland-Urban Interface: Key Issues,” L. Annie Hermansen-Báez, Jennifer Seitz, and Martha C. Monroe, Joint product of InterfaceSouth of the Centers for Urban and Interface Forestry, Southern Research Station, U.S. Forest Service and the University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS). Published March 2009.

“Key findings from the 2017 Verisk wildfire risk analysis,” Arindam Samanta, Verisk, 12 July 2017

“The Wildland-Urban Interface in the United States,” Susan I. Stewart, Northern Research Station, USDA Forest Service, Evanston, IL (sistewart@fs.fed.us), Volker C. Radeloff, Department of Forestry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Roger B. Hammer, Department of Sociology, Oregon State University

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The Chrysler Museum of Art … and one that got away

The Chrysler Museum of Art alongside The Hague in Norfolk, Virginia … and one that got away.

“The history of the Chrysler Museum includes stories of 19th century feminist visionaries & a mid-20th century penny drive by schoolchildren to buy a single Renoir that was about the size of a paperback book.

“Clearly, everything moved to a new level when Walter Chrysler, Jr. came to town.”

Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., born in 1909 and the son of the founder of the Chrysler Corporation, met, as a young man, leading avant-garde artists in Paris. Retiring from active business in 1956 (he served as President of New York’s Chrysler Building from 1935 to 1953), he devoted himself to the arts.

Mr. Chrysler’s wife, Jean Outland Chrysler, was born and raised in Norfolk. In part influenced by her, Walter Chrysler agreed in 1971 with the City of Norfolk to gift thousands of his works of art to the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences, to be re-named the Chrysler Museum of Art.

Before he relocated his collection, however, Mr. Chrysler, “who once owned a couple hundred Picassos,” traded works – some good trades, some not so good.

He also was generous with institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Chicago’s Art Institute of Chicago.

Gustave Caillebotte’s “Paris Street; Rainy Day” of 1877 was for years owned by the descendants of Caillebotte.

The painting was acquired by Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. in the 1950s.

It was then acquired by and entered the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1964.

C’est dommage.  🙁

Wrote The New York Times art critic John Russell:

“It would be difficult to spend time in the Chrysler Museum and not come away convinced that the most underrated American art collector of the past 50 years was the late Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.”

 

See:

  1. “Chrysler Museum of Art”
  2. “Fun Facts: Paris Street; Rainy Day,” Katie Rahn, @artinstitutechi, 22 May 2015

 

#art #artmarket #museums #chryslermuseum #collection #portfolio #norfolk #virginia #gustavecaillebotte #caillebotte #picasso #artinstituteofchicago #chicago #paris #impressionism #arthistory #history #newyork #chryslerbuilding #amsterdam #thehague #berlin #hongkong #shanghai #seoul #tokyo #dubai #realestatedevelopment #luxury #architecture #design #philanthropy

 

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Zao Wou-ki’s “29.01.64” (oil on canvas, 1964)

abstraction | a kind of inner imaginary landscape

The grand and bold “29.01.64” (the date of its completion; oil on canvas) sold at Christie’s Hong Kong in May 2017 for $19.7 million, then an auction record for the artist, “to bidders who clearly wanted this picture.”

Zao Wou-ki (1920-2013) moved to Paris from Beijing, where he was born, in 1948, began working with New York dealer Samuel Koontz (who encouraged him to experiment with larger formats) in 1956, and took a larger studio in the Montparnasse neighborhood of Paris in 1961.

Christie’s Paris’ specialist Clara Rivollet highlights the very complex composition:

“There’s actually a structure of very deep, black brushstrokes an then you can see around a kind of dilute-ink-wash-like oil around it and then on top of it he adds a whole network of intricate lines.

“You have very controlled sinuous lines that remind us of Chinese calligraphy. But also this very kind of loose movement in white paint is very inspired by Jackson Pollock’s painting.

“The painting could be a Western painting because it’s abstract. But actually in its essence it remains very Chinese because for Zao Wou-ki abstraction always represents a kind of inner imaginary landscape like the Chinese literati painting would do.”

“29.09.64”, at 230 x 345 cm. (90 1/2 x 135 7/8 in.), is one of the two largest that Zao painted in the 1960s.

It was purchased directly from the artist in 1969 by a French architect who built hospitals, research centers, and administrative buildings throughout France and Algeria in the years of rapid modernization following World War II.

“29.09.64” remained in the family’s collection for 48 years. The original owner’s son consigned the painting to Christie’s.

In an early 2017 exhibition, New York gallery Lévy Gorvy paired the works of Willem de Kooning and Zao Wou-ki. A little boost to the market?

 

See:

  1. “An inner, imaginary landscape: Zao Wou-ki’s ‘29.09.64,” Christie’s
  2. “Contemporaries: Voices from East & West / Asian 20th C. and Contemporary Art,” lot 4, Christie’s HK, 27 May 2017;
  3. “Zao Wou-ki’s 29.09.64 Sets Record in Hong Kong with $19.7m Sale,” Marion Maneker, Art Market Monitor, 29 May 2017.

 

 

#art #artmarket #zaowouki #arthistory #contemporaryart #postwarart #paris #france #newyork #abstraction #abstractexpressionism #jacksonpollock #literatipainting #songdynasty #oiloncanvas #inkonpaper #calligraphy #hongkong #beijing #berlin #vienna #milan #dubai #algeria #africa #realestatedevelopment #architecture #design #luxury #christie’s #LévyGorvy

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Christopher Wool: “Untitled” (silk-screen, 2001, detail)

Detail of Christopher Wool’s “Untitled” (silk-screen, 2001).

J. Tomilson Hill, the vice chairman of the Blackstone Group who manages its hedge fund business, is the first American private collector to display his works of contemporary art in Asia.

“Christopher Wool: Highlights from the Hill Art Collection” opened during Art Basel Hong Kong in Central District’s H Queens, the new skyscraper designed by William Lim’s Hong Kong-based CL3 architectural practice and custom-built to house art galleries.

The exhibition, on view from March 27 through April 8, was produced by Hong Kong-based advisor Alexandre Errera.

While Mr. Hill ordinarily does not attend art fairs (dealers call him with works of interest instead), he did make it to Art Basel Hong Kong this spring for the opening of his exhibition of the works of Christoper Hill.

Following Hong Kong, Mr. Hill and his daughter left for Beijing to visit the studios of the about 15 artists there whose works he collects. Mr. Hill collects, for instance, works of Liu Wei. (See my post of yesterday regarding Liu Wei’s “Purple Air D1” of 2008).

Asked about the attraction of Chinese art now, Mr. Hill observes:

“Let’s go back to the different collections that we have,

“which is Renaissance bronzes, old master paintings, a dozen post-World War II artists, and now emerging artists.

“They all have one thing in common: At the moment that the art was created, the country of origin was going through a massive series of changes.

“China, in my mind, is going through the same thing now.

“And so I said, ‘I want to be educated.'”

 

See: 1) “J. Tomilson Hill on the Attraction of Contemporary Art,” Ted Lois, The New York Times, 26 March 2018; 2) “J. Tomilson Hill is Giving Asia Its First Christopher Wool Show in Over a Decade,” Nate Freeman, Artsy, 27 March 2018

 

#christopherwool #art #artmarket #arthistory #contemporaryart #jtomilsonhill #collection #portfolio #collectionsmanagement #alexandreerrera #artadvisory #blackstone #blackstonegroup #finance #hedgefund #hongkong #beijing #seoul #tokyo #newyork #london #paris #berlin #vienna #zurich #oslo #dubai #luxury #realestatedevelopment #architecture #design

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Liu Wei: “Purple Air D1” (oil on canvas, 2008)

Liu Wei’s “Purple Air D1” (oil on canvas, 2008).

Liu Wei regenerates various segments of Beijing’s high-rise buildings into digitalized geometric structures of bright hues of pinks, yellows, blues, and greens.

The image was rendered digitally on a computer and then painted onto a larger canvas.

While modern and “digital,” Liu Wei connects with, while seeking to re-explore, more traditional landscape painting. Note the moon and the pine tree, traditional motifs.

Liu Wei, born in Beijing in 1972, is one of China’s leading contemporary artists. He lives and works in Beijing and is represented by Lehmann Maupin.

Rather than “subversively reference politics,” he often looks for inspiration in found objects and architectural constructions, expressing his views of a changing material landscape.

Liu Wei’s work is included in numerous collections such as the Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul; M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong; the Rubell Family Collection, Miami; and White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney.

Lehmann Maupin

 

See: 1) Phillips “20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Evening Sale,” Lot 36, Hong Kong, 27 May 2018 2) Lehmann Maupin

#liuwei #art #artmarket #contemporaryart #arthistory #digitalart #tech #entrepreneur #collection #portfolio #architecture #design #realestatedevelopment #luxury #urban #landscape #china #beijing #shanghai #hongkong #seoul #tokyo #newyork #losangeles #miami #london #paris #berlin #oslo #zurich #vienna #milan #dubai

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Kehinde Wiley’s “St. Andrew” (2006)

Kehinde Wiley’s “St. Andrew” (oil and enamel on canvas in an antiquated frame with gilded ornament) of 2006.

A young man in contemporary street-wear straddles the cross on which he will die. The unusual cross is associated with St. Andrew, a disciple of Christ who was executed for refusing to renounce his faith.

Kehinde Wiley poses his contemporary St. Andrew against rich brocade that comes to life as it winds over the figure.

The subject is painted in a powerful and dramatic Baroque style in strong contrast to the flat background.

Kehinde Wiley, born in Los Angeles in 1977, now lives and works in New York. He earned his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1999 and his MFA from Yale in 2001.

Represented by New York gallerist Sean Kelly, Wiley “has firmly situated himself within art history’s portrait painting tradition.

“As a contemporary descendent of a long line of portraitists, including Reynolds, Gainsborough, Titian, Ingres, among others,

“Wiley engages the signs and visual rhetoric of the heroic, majestic, and the sublime in his representation of urban, black and brown men found throughout the world.”

Kehinde Wiley’s “St. Andrew,” a museum purchase of 2014, is now in the collection of Norfolk, Virginia’s Chrysler Museum of Art.

 

#kehindewiley #art #artmarket #arthistory #contemporaryart #oldmasters #portrait #obama #losangeles #newyork #nigeria #africa #berlin #oslo #london #zurich #milan #dubai #hongkong #shanghai #seoul #tokyo #jakarta #luxury #design #architecture #realestatedevelopment #collection #portfolio #seankelly #chryslermuseum

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Dan Colen

Dan Colen’s “TBT” (chewing gum and gum wrappers on canvas, in artist’s frame, 2008) sold at the Phillips Auction New York Contemporary Art Day sale of 17 May 2013 for $305,000.

Born in Leonia, New Jersey in 1979 and a 2001 BFA graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Dan Colen has long questioned the “editorial decisions artists have to make when creating a scene from scratch on canvas.”

Stepping away from paint as a medium in 2006, Colen started using chewing gum. In 2008 he wrote, “When I first started, the canvases were very sparse … It slowly developed into a more elaborate and involved process. I started adding a lot more gum to each canvas; I would put pieces down, pick them up again, move ’em around, stretch them out, mush ’em together, and mix flavors to create new colors”.

Dan Colen creates his work in a variety of media – painting, sculpture, photography, performance, and installation – from a variety of materials including gum, dirt, grass, tar, feathers, and street trash from the street.

He examines cultural mythologies and archetypes, the boundaries between “high” and “low” art, and the artist’s measure of “control” over the behavior of a given material.

Dan Colen’s recent “Purgatory” (2017) is a work of strong imagination and probing. On view at New York’s Lévy Gorvy Gallery, that now collaborates with Gagosian and Massimo De Carlo to represent Mr. Colen, stylistically it is as if by another artist entirely. Oil on canvas in deep reds and black, the painting draws the viewer frighteningly in along a diagonal through a tunnel of dark clouds back towards a receding glow.

Mr. Colen’s works are in a number of public and private collections including New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery,  LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Oslo’s Astrup Fearnley Museet, Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, the Dakis Joannou Collection in Athens, Miami’s de la Cruz Collection, and Puerto Rico’s Jiménez-Colón Collection.

 

See:

Dan Colen, “TBT,” 2008, Phillips Contemporary Art Day, New York, 17 May 2013, Lot 125

Dan Colen, Gagosian

Dan Colen, Lévy Gorvy

“Lévy Gorvy to Represent Dan Colen in Collaboration with Gagosian, Massimo De Carlo,” Sarah Douglas, ArtNews, 31 May 2017

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private museums | Oslo’s Astrup Fearnley Museet

The Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art is a privately owned contemporary art museum in Oslo, Norway. The museum was funded by two philanthropic organizations, the Thomas Fearnley Foundation and the Heddy and Nils Astrup Foundation, that merged in 1995 to form the Thomas Fearnley, Heddy and Nils Astrup Foundation.

Established and opened to the public in 1993, the museum moved into two new buildings in 2012.

The two new buildings, located in the Tjuvholmen skulpturpark along the banks of the Oslofjord in the center of Oslo, are designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano (who also designed New York’s new Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, Switzerland).

The collecting focus of the museum is Norwegian and international contemporary art. Artists represented include Olafur Eliasson, Francis Bacon, Janine Antoni, Dan Colen, Cao Fei, Olav Christoper Jenssen, Elmgreen & Dragset, Jeff Koons, Fischli & Weiss, Sigmar Polke, Richard Prince, Charles Ray, Gerhard Richter, Torbjørn Rødland, Matthew Ronay, Cindy Sherman, and Christopher Wool.

See:

Astrup Fearnley Museet, www.afmuseet.no/en/hjem;

“Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, Norge,” GoNorway

 

#art #artmarket #contemporaryart #museums #privatemuseums #collection #collector #dancolen #olavchristopherjenssen #christopherwool #torbjørnrødland #francisbacon #signarpolke #gerhardrichter #astrupfearnley #astrupfearnleymuseet #oslo #norway #renzopiano #architecture #design #engineering #whitneymuseum #whitney #lacma #centrepompidou #fondationbeyeler #newyork #paris #losangeles #riehen #hongkong #luxury #realestate #philanthropy

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R8 Property’s energy positive Powerhouse Telemark

Powerhouse Telemark, an energy positive (producing more energy than it consumes) 6,500-square-meter (70,000-square-foot), 11-story office building, has been commissioned by real estate developer Emil Eriksrød for the Norwegian town of Porsgrunn.

Eriksrød has commissioned the American-Norwegian architecture and design firm Snøhetta to design the building. Powerhouse Telemark is set to be completed in February of 2019.

 “The future is all about thinking big, bold, and long term,” says Snøhetta founding partner Kjetil Trædal Thorson, “and we need someone to pave the way. With its innovative solutions and design, we believe this building will inspire commercial real estate developers worldwide to push the limits of what buildings can accomplish”.

“The world needs a lot of energy-positive buildings,” observes the developer, Emil Eriksrød, CEO of R8 Property. “I hope we will be plagiarized and copied, replicated in all seven continents.”

“This building should do wonders in lowering the bar for daring to do both spectacular and environmentally forward buildings, hopefully in a combination”.


See:

“Snøhetta Designs World’s Northernmost Energy Positive Building in Norway,” Patrick Lynch, ArchDaily, 18 January 2017

“Snøhetta designs ‘potentially world-changing office building’ for small Norwegian town,” Amy Frearson, Dezeen, 19 January 2017

 

#powerhousetelemark #emileriksrød #r8property # snøhetta #porsgrunn #norway #design #architecture #engineering #realestatedevelopment #realestate #commercialrealestate #energy #energypositive #solar #solarenergy #co2 #resilience #luxury #art #artmarket #collections #collectionsmanagement #museums #newyork #berlin #milan #beijing #shanghai #hongkong #seoul #taipei #jakarta #singapore