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non-smart luxury | investors & retailers slug it out on Madison Avenue

The Real Deal points out that as of May 2016, the amount of available retail space along Manhattan’s Madison Avenue had been growing. Retailers with financial wherewithal were looking elsewhere.

New owners had  bought Madison Avenue properties at record prices. Investors, partners and banks were preventing the new owners from leasing to retailers below certain “pro-forma” numbers. Rents were increasing steeply.

The effect did other than than satisfy investment requirements. As asking rents broke $2,200 per square foot in prime stretches of Madison Avenue, retailers who might otherwise have taken space there were looking for alternative locations.

Retail insiders said some of the buyers who acquired properties over the last year or two at eye-popping prices have their hands tied by investors, partners or banks who won’t let them lease to retailers below certain target amounts or “pro forma” numbers. That, they say, is exacerbating availabilities.

“New owners who bought at record prices that required record rents are less likely to cut pricing because they can’t satisfy their investment returns,” said Jeremy Ezra, a broker at RKF.

But brokers said this slowdown is different from the recession in 2009 and 2010 when retailers did not have the financial wherewithal to make deals. That’s not the case today.

See:

“Madison Avenue retail empties out” | retail spaces on the tony stretch are clearing out as rents get too high and tenants look for cheaper options, Adam Pincus, The Real Deal, 1 May 2016

#luxury #urbanluxury #smartluxury #realestate #retail #resilience #MadisonAvenue #Manhattan #finance

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smart luxury | Tesla surpasses Ford & GM in market value

Tesla has surpassed Ford and GM in market value.

Investors investors are betting that the world’s appetite for electric vehicles will continue to grow and that Tesla will grow with it.

Although the big automakers are financially healthy and produce the best-selling types of vehicles, like trucks and sport utility vehicles, they are perceived as lagging in cutting-edge technology like alternative power and autonomy.

See:

“Tesla Hits a New Milestone, Passing G.M. In Valuation” | The New York Times, 10 April 2017

Tesla

#luxury #urbanluxury #smartluxury #energy #smartenergy #alternativepower #Tesla #resilience #finance #automobiles #transit #smarttransit #urbanplanning #design #climatechange #art #smartart #collectionsmanagement #realestate

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art & architecture | Selldorf Architects designs new premises for Berlin’s Esther Schipper

New York’s Selldorf Architects is designing the new gallery in Berlin’s Potsdamer Strasse gallery district for Esther Schipper.

The new Esther Schipper gallery address is:

Esther Schipper
Potsdamer Strasse 81
10785 Berlin

The gallery will be newly situated in a former printing and warehouse facility. The premises offer a 5,800-square-foot exhibition space split into a large primary room and a smaller, 1,500-square-foot space.

See:

“New Project: Esther Schipper gallery in Potsdamer Strasse” | Selldorf Architects, 1 March 2017

“We are moving!” | Esther Schipper

#art #artcollections #luxury #urbanluxury #architecture #realestate #Berlin

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smart art | collections storage

The American Alliance of Museums will meet on Sunday, May 7 to discuss “sustainable collections storage, strategies for our future.”

Facing increased energy costs, changing standards, and issues brought about by climate change, institutions are reevaluating their facilities, collections storage, and operations.

The May 7 discussion will include a review of building site and architecture, environmental control systems, lighting, and waste.

Speakers will explore practical, pressing, and efficient measures to reduce carbon footprints while maintaining the paramount goal of preserving collections.

See: “Sustainable Collections Storage: Strategies for our Future” | American Alliance of Museums, 2017 Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo

#art #artcollections #collections #collectionsmanagement #artstorage #collectionsstorage #smartart #luxury #smartluxury #urbanluxury #resilience #realestate #museums

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smart art | preventive conservation in China

Based on a nationwide investigation of the current state of preservation of museum objects in China, around 51% of the 35 million museum objects show different degrees of deterioration.

In China’s present situation, preventing damage to museum objects is much more cost-effective than allowing damage to happen and then treating it.

By 2013, the number of museums in China had increased to 3354 from 3055 in 2012, among which the number of private museum is 811. The number of museum visitors annually is 600 million.

Based on China’s national long-term outline plan for museum development (2011‒2020), we expect that by 2020 there will be one museum for every 250 000 people, compared to one per 400 000 in 2014, and that 20% of museums will be privately funded.

Owing to the impressive number of museums opened in the twentieth century, a large number of objects has been accumulated and has often been left in unsuitable environments, resulting in irreversible damage. Treatment of individual objects cannot meet the ever-increasing demand.

Rather than treatment after they show signs of degradation, looking for preventive conservation solutions becomes the most important museum function.

See:

“Overview of preventive conservation and the museum environment in China” | Nan Feng, Research Center for Chinese Frontier Archaeology, Jilin University, Changchun, China, published online on 12 August 2016

#art #artcollections #smartart #smartluxury #urbanluxury #collectionsmanagement #China #museums #preventiveconservation #realestate #airpollution #climatechange #risk #riskmanagment

 

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art & smart engineering | protecting art from natural disasters

Architect Renzo Piano’s new Whitney Museum of American Art opened on May 1, 2015. Construction on the new museum building, located at the intersection of Gansevoort and Washington Streets in Manhattan’s West Village and Meatpacking District, began in 2010 on a previously city-owned site. The museum site marks the southern entrance to the High Line.

Reviews of the Whitney’s new design have been wonderful. One design feature, extraordinarily important yet perhaps most often not noticed, is the custom flood-mitigation system.

The flood-mitigation system was designed after Hurricane Sandy brought a 13-foot storm surge to the shores of Manhattan in October of 2012, flooding the museum’s construction site with more than five million gallons of water. The system includes a perfectly balanced,  15,500-pound, 14-feet-tall by 27-feet-wide door designed by Walz & Krenzer engineers who build water-tight latches for the U.S. Navy’s Destroyers.

The Whitney’s system, with its technical sophistication and aesthetic sleekness, is proving to be a model for other U.S. art museums asking the same questions.

While the country has been stuck in a surreal debate over the reality of climate change, disaster-preparedness has become a matter of pressing concern, and institutions in vulnerable areas are having to respond in real time.

The museum’s actions—turning to specialists in naval engineering, for example—augur an era of improvised ingenuity, of localized efforts to address a problem in dire need of a global solution.

See:

Whitney Museum of American Art

The High Line

Walz & Krenzer

“Protecting Priceless Art From Natural Disasters” | How Renzo Piano’s New Whitney Museum Protects Its Art From Climate Change, John Whitaker, The Atlantic, 27 May 2015

“Whitney Museum of American Art” | Wikipedia

#smartart #art #smartluxury #luxury #urbanluxury #artcollections #collectionsmanagement #museums #climatechange #risk #riskmitigation #realestate #resilience #theWhitney

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smart prosperity | capitalizing on urban resilience

Prosperity will ultimately belong to cities and nations around the world that find ways to capitalize on strategies of resilience against the inevitable impact of climate change.

Those cities will retool themselves for new technologies and global businesses whose employees, reflecting a growing worldwide generational shift, want to walk, ride bikes and take mass transit.

“The challenge …is taking the long view.’

See: “Changing Climate, Changing Cities; Rising Waters Threaten China’s Rising Cities” | Michael Kimmelman, The New York Times, 7 April 2017

#urbanluxury #luxury  #smartluxury #realestate #resilience #urbanplanning #design #development #finance #climatechange

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smart luxury | the art market is “ready for an upgrade”

Scheduled to open in Manhattan in July of this year, Arcis Fine Art + Collection Arcis will be a 110,000 sq. ft, purpose-built art storage facility within a federally designated Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) that is insured to hold up to $3 billion in art.

“The foundation of Arcis is providing real, museum-level sustainable storage to the private sector” to serve the needs of international collectors in Manhattan.

A key factor in obtaining authorizations for the FTZ was a proprietary business model. The West 146th Street site, in contrast to locations in Chelsea, was seen as presenting no “accumulation risk. ” Hence insurance broker Willis Towers Watson allowed the highest possible insurance rating.

Executive director Tom Sapienza and the director of operations, Kevin Lay, partnered with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and Vidaris, the firm that advised the Whitney Museum regarding the envelope of its new building, to create a sustainable microclimate system. The system filters the air three to six times per hour. LEED and BREEAM environmental assessment certifications are in the works.

See:

“Collectors reserve space as New York’s first art freeport prepares for summer launch” | Sarah P. Hanson, The Art Newspaper, 5 April 2017.

“Protecting Priceless Art from Natural Disasters” | How Renzo Piano’s New Whitney Museum Protects Its Art from Climate Change, John Whitaker, The Atlantic, 27 May 2015

#art #collecting #collections #collectionsmanagement #luxury #urbanluxury #smartluxury #realestate #resilience #Manhattan #FTZ #climatechange

 

 

 

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smart luxury | the art of pricing climate risk

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with $5.1 trillion of assets under management across the globe, discusses the art of pricing climate risk.

BlackRock concludes that greater transparency on climate risks and exposures will likely lead to a gradual discounting of companies and assets exposed to climate risk and increase the value of those companies and assets most resilient to climate risk.

“Most industries lag insurers when it comes to properly accounting for and pricing risks of climate-related events. Many equity investors ignore climate risk, and credit investors and ratings agencies do not routinely assess it. Real estate markets often ignore extreme weather risk, even in highly exposed coastal areas. Most asset owners do not measure their exposure to potentially stranded assets such as high-cost fossil fuel reserves that may have to be written off if their use is impaired by climate change regulation.

“Who can blame them? There is little evidence that assets more susceptible to climate change and related regulatory risks trade at a discount to the market. … In other words, we found there has been no climate change risk premium for equities.

“Yet this does not mean there will be no premium in the future. In fact, we think there likely will be one. … Greater transparency on climate risks and exposures will likely lead to a gradual discounting of companies and assets exposed to climate risk — and increase the value of those most resilient to these risks.”

See:

“‘Climate is King’ Says BlackRock; Companies Must Now Address Risk” | by Jan Lee, TriplePundit, 16 March 2017.

“The Price of Climate Change, Global Warming’s Impact on Portfolios” | BlackRock Investment Institute, October 2015.

#risk #climaterisk #pricing #realestate #smartluxury #finance #resilience #BlackRock #art #smartart #collectionsmanagement #luxury #urbanluxury

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smart luxury | PassivDom, the first totally autonomous house

Word is out of PassivDom, a passive and elegantly luxurious house designed and built in the Ukraine by Max Gerbut, a PhD of Engineering Sciences (physics of the solid state) and his start-up PassivDom.

PassivDom is the first totally autonomous house in the world that doesn’t need any fuel combustion even in Arctic climate conditions.

“The module uses only ecologically clean solar energy for all inhabitants’ needs: climate control (heating and cooling), water generation, air quality and oxygen control. The house itself produces electricity for all household appliances.

PassivDom is “designed to self-sustain in all climatic conditions with their own, off-the-grid power sources and self-learning systems networked to the internet of things.“

John Biggs, the East Coast Editor of TechCrunch.com calls it “pretty darn rad.”

Biggs reports,

““PassivDom is the world’s first mobile and transportable house with Passive House parameters,” said Gerbut. “Due to the use of advanced materials and unique developments by our engineers, PassivDom has the highest thermal performance among residential buildings. The walls of PassivDom are as warm as brick. Thermal characteristics are high enough to use 20 times less energy than an ordinary building. That’s why it is possible to realize full off-grid autonomy in a cold climate without complex and expensive engineering heating system.”

“The first model, the modulOne, includes solar panels that power the climate control system, a clean water system that takes moisture from the air and an air quality control system that includes carbon dioxide control. The frame is made of 3D-printed carbon fiber and fiberglass, and the entire house is recyclable.

See:

“PassivDom” (a US telephone number is included)

“PassivDom is a Zombie-proof ‘autonomous 3D-printed mobile house’” | John Biggs, TechCrunch.com, 10 March 2017

“Ukraine startup 3D prints fully autonomous home” | Blouin News, 17 March 2017

#luxury #urbanluxury #smartluxury #realestate #art #resilience #tech #design #materialsscience #climatechange