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art, risk management, & “rolling disasters” as the new normal

There is worry in the insurance industry that “rolling disasters” may become the new normal, the effects of climate change that many scientists believe have resulted in dryer conditions in the west coast and more intense hurricanes in the east coast. “Climate change is a great concern to the art insurance industry, particularly because of the hurricanes we are seeing,” Quinn said. Both AXA and Chubb are active in promoting research in climate change, recognizing that catastrophic natural events may prove to be an annual occurrence.

Insurers are concerned especially over works of art in private homes.

Insurers in areas such as California may seek to limit their risks. The extent of the damage in regions of California affected by the recent wildfires, for instance, may well increase the cost and limit the availability of fine art insurance.

See:

“As Natural Disasters Loom, What You Should Know About Insuring Your Art” | Daniel Grant, The Observer, 18 January 2018

#art #artmarket #collections #collectionsmanagement #insurance #fineartinsurance #climaterisk #risk #riskmanagement #fire #wildfire #hurricanes #flooding #risingseas #luxury #smartluxury #resilience #realestate #CO2 #H2O

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global investment in renewable energy & energy-smart technologies

Annual figures from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) show that global investment in renewable energy and energy-smart technologies reached $333.5 billion last year, up 3% from a revised $324.6 billion in 2016, and only 7% short of the record figure of $360.3 billion, reached in 2015.

Chinese investment in all the clean energy technologies was $132.6 billion, up 24% setting a new record. The next biggest investing country was the U.S., at $56.9 billion, up 1% on 2016.

Solar led the way, as mentioned above, attracting $160.8 billion – equivalent to 48% of the global total for all of clean energy investment.

Wind was the second-biggest sector for investment in 2017, at $107.2 billion. Down 12% on 2016 levels.

The third-biggest sector was energy-smart technologies, where asset finance of smart meters and battery storage, and equity-raising by specialist companies in smart grid, efficiency, storage and electric vehicles, reached $48.8 billion in 2017, up 7% on the previous year and the highest ever.

See:

“Runaway 53GW Solar Boom in China Pushed Global Clean Energy Investment Ahead in 2017” | Bloomberg New Energy Finance, 16 January 2018

#cleanenergy #renewableenergy #energy #finance #solar #wind #energy-smarttech #tech #investments #luxury #smartluxury  #realestate #commercialrealestate #resilience #CO2

 

 

 

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Southern California collections management: fire rescue & restoration

Fueled by seasonal winds and dry conditions, Southern California’s Thomas Fire has become the largest, in terms of acreage, since 1932 when reliable recording began. State officials are saying that the 2017 fire season has been the most destructive that people in state have seen.

As of the Vanity Fair December 20 publication of Jane Borden’s article “In Southern California, Even the Art Has a Fire Rescue Plan,” the Thomas Fire had destroyed about 800 homes, nearing Santa Barbara, Montecito, and Ojai, collectively home to the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, working artists, art collectors, and celebrities.

On the evening of December 4, artists living in Ojai had no time to pack up their work before evacuating. Those with studios in Ventura spent evenings sleeping beside their work.

Works from four collections were moved to purified, closed rooms at the MCASB.

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, with van and crew ready at short notice, safeguarded works of art, valued at millions of dollars, retrieved from homes in the area.

The Conservation Center of Chicago is described as the “most prepared art-rescue team working in Southern California” during the fire.

As the air quality was rendered “really bad” by the Thomas Fire, teams from The Conservation Center rotated every four or five days. Works of art that were not damaged were stored in a safe location in Los Angeles. Works with minor damages were restored locally. More damaged works of art were shipped to Chicago for full restoration.

An industry leader in rescuing works of art after disasters such as fires or floods, The Conservation Center brings over 30 years of experience caring for individual, private, and public collections.

“In addition to restoration and packing and shipping services, The Conservation Center in Chicago specializes in disaster response. The Center’s national clients include corporations, museums, nonprofits, and private collectors, and the response team is trained to triage a variety of situations, most notably flood and fire. This year alone, the 36-person team has responded to hurricane damage in Houston and Miami, and rescued or restored 1,350 works from a Georgia museum damaged by a tornado. Now, the fires. “I’ve been with the company for 29 years, and this is definitely unprecedented, to have these things happening so closely together,“ explains Heather Becker, C.E.O. of The Conservation Center.”

See:

“Thomas Fire is Now California’s Largest Wildfire in History” | Doreen McCallister, NPR, 23 December 2017

“In Southern California, Even the Art Has a Fire Rescue Plan” | Jane Borden, Vanity Fair, 20 December 2017

The Conservation Center

#art #SouthernCalifornia #ThomasFire #SantaBarbara #Montecito #Ojai #MuseumofContemporaryArtSantaBarbara #MCASB #SantaBarbaraMuseumofArt #SBMA #conservation #rescue #restoration #artcollections #collectionsmanagement #CO2 #luxury #smartluxury #design #architecture #engineering #fireresistance #TheConservationCenter #Chicago #resilience #health #wellness#realestate #culturalrealestate #culturalheritage

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energy efficient, living smart, developing a legacy, increasing sales

Maracay Homes, an Arizona homebuilding company and leader in the Arizona real estate industry, “providing homebuyers with smarter choices,” for more than 25 years, reports a correlation between EnergySmart, energy efficiency, and sales.

““We have outperformed our competitors because of the Energy Star and LEED component,” reports Maracay Marketing Manager Elise Goodell. “Realtors and prospects are seeing a lift in value, and they are willing to pay for the LEED certification…'”

The home construction company, headquartered in upscale Scottsdale, Arizona and serving the Phoenix- and Tuscson-area markets, correlates EnergySmart with LivingSmart in its entirety and the quality of life of homeowners together with legacy and better sales.

All homes constructed by Maracay are now Energy Star-certified.

Two years ago Maracay “beta tested” LEED certification on a small scale. Maracay understands LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) to provide a more holistic analysis of home energy savings than Energy Star ratings and an educational requirement, on a small scale. The company is now integrating LEED on a large scale.

“One essential element in Maracay’s educational campaign is an in-depth, locally produced video that includes interviews with potential (and actual) buyers and a walk-through of an under-construction Maracay home, hosted by D.R. Wastchak (DRW), a local Arizona energy efficiency rating company with a 17-year track record in the field and a list of credits that includes EPA ‘Partner of the Year.’”

See:

“Arizona homebuilding company finds success with energy efficiency” | Tina Casey, Inman, 29 December 2017

Maracay Homes

#homes #homeconstruction #buildingtechnology #sales #homesales #realtors #realestate #commercialrealestate #culturalrealestate #energy #energyefficiency #LEED #USGBC #EnergyStar #luxury #smartluxury #CO2 #Arizona #Scottsdale #Phoenix #Tuscon #MaracayHomes #resilience #art #collectionsmanagement#education #health #wellness #family

 

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HouseZero ・retrofitting a 1924-era wood-frame house

Harvard University’s Center for Green Buildings and Cities, in collaboration with international architecture and design firm Snøhetta, is retrofitting a wood frame house built in 1924 in what is now an historic district of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The house now serves as the Center’s headquarters.

The retrofit is intended to fulfill multiple objectives:

A focus on inefficient existing buildings. In the United States, buildings consume around 40% of energy produced annually. This equates to more than $230 billion spent annually by property owners heating, cooling, and powering the nation’s 123.6 million homes. Housing consumes 18-23% of that.

A focus on using current technologies together with better design.

The use of zero energy for heating and cooling. A retrofitted building that produces more energy than it consumes.

100% natural ventilation and daylight autonomy

Zero CO2 emissions, including embodied energy in materials

A positive rather than a negative impact on the surrounding environment. A house conducive to occupant health, encouraging productivity and creativity.

Use of self-generated data that will allow the building to self-adjust. The house will adjust itself seasonally and daily to achieve thermal comfort targets.

The development of ideas and a working model that can be used by homeowners as they seek to renovate existing houses towards significant energy and carbon use improvements without costly or wasteful tear-downs.

The Center for Green Buildings and Cities will not seek any kind of independent certification, such as USGBC LEED, WELL, or Living Building certification. The intent is, rather, to exceed those standards’ criteria.

The renovation, says Ali Malkawi, professor of architectural technology and founding director of the CGBC, is guided not only by the goal of net zero energy consumption with 100% natural light and ventilation but also by the understanding that a green building is “a sustainable building, which means it has the lowest impact on its surrounding environment as possible. It might have a positive effect on its environment—the surrounding as well as the global.” Such a building is, furthermore, “healthy for its occupants” and encourages productivity and creativity.

See:

“Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities unveils HouseZero project, an ambitious retrofit of its Cambridge headquarters” | Travis Dagenais, Harvard Graduate School of Design, 25 May 2017

“Harvard’s ‘HouseZero’” | Alisha Ukani, Harvard Magazine, 3 August 2017

“Future Home: HouseZero” | Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities”

#architecture #architecturaltechnology #buildingtechnology #technology #design #engineering #netzero #energy #resilience #CO2 #home #luxury #smartluxury #retrofit #homeownership #realestate #commercialrealestate #culturalrealestate #culturalheritage #art #collectionsmanagement #museums #galleries #snøhetta #harvard #harvardcenterforgreenbuildingsandcities #Cambridge #data #health #wellness #family

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Architect Stefano Boeri-designed Liuzhou Forest City

Recognizing the capacity of trees and plants to absorb carbon pollution and the critical need for urban forests, Italian architect and urban planner Stefano Boeri has contributed to the design of Liuzhou Forest City, now under construction in China.

Intended to help provide homes for a rapidly growing population without creating more carbon pollution, the plan calls for terraced buildings with almost a million plants and 40,000 trees.

Should you have interest in tangible assets such as works of art, art collections, luxury, and/or real estate, all of which interact physically with their surroundings and all of which are affected by carbon pollution (excess of CO2), this news will be of interest.

Should you wish your tangible assets to perform at an optimal level, please feel free to be in touch.

See:

“China is building a futuristic ‘forest city’ with more trees than people” | Daisy Simmons, Yale Climate Connections, 26 December 2017

#architecture #design #urbanplanning #engineering #StefanoBoeri #CO2 #carbonpollution #trees #urbanforests #resilience #luxury #urbanluxury #smartluxury #urbanliving #tangibleassets #art #artcollections #collectionsmanagement #realestate #commercialrealestate #culturalrealestate #Yale

 

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issues of condition ・ too complex to be explained?

Extraordinary that there may be ” … a consensus that issues of condition, and the work of conservators, are too complex to be explained to gallery visitors as a matter of course” (Burlington Magazine, as reported by The Art Newspaper).

Physical condition is a fundamental component of value of tangible assets, inclusive of works of art, buildings, and houses.

Neither the art market nor the real estate market are “hermetically sealed,” or entirely self-sufficient, existing apart from condition, as some believe and might like to believe.

See:

“How to identify a wreck” | Bendor Grosvenor, The Art Newspaper, 18 December 2017

#art #conservation #conservators #connoisseurship #collections #collectionsmanagement #condition #value #artmarket #tangibleassets #luxury #smartluxury #urbanluxury #architecture #design #engineering #resilience #CO2 #realestate #commercialrealestate #culturalrealestate

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The Getty | a Type 1-rated complex, designed & built to resist fire

The Getty Center in Los Angeles performs.

The New York Times and Reuters highlight how the Getty Center has been designed and built to provide resilient stewardship and protect its art holdings, even in a fire- and earthquake-prone area.

The Getty’s design, “and a plan developed with insurers eager to keep the valuable collection safe” [the Getty works with commercial property insurer FM Global], help protect the art from damage.

The Getty’s architect, Richard Meier, built fire resistance into the billion-dollar complex, said Ron Hartwig, vice president of communications for the J. Paul Getty Trust. These hills are fire prone, but because of features like the 1.2 million square feet of thick travertine stone covering the outside walls, the crushed rock on the roofs and even the plants chosen for the brush-cleared grounds, “The safest place for the artwork to be is right here in the Getty Center,” he said.

Within that lovely milky travertine skin, the buildings have reinforced concrete walls and automatic fire doors that can trap fires in sealed-off areas. A carbon-filtered air conditioning system pushes smoke out instead of letting it in, and the internal sprinklers — whose pipes remain dry until needed, to avoid damaging accidents – stand ready to douse flames.

“Should any fire move within one of those compartmentalized areas, it can’t get anywhere,” said Michael G. Rogers, director of facilities at the Getty. Since water supplies can be cut off in a disaster, The Getty has its own million-gallon water tank buried under the parking garage. The result is a complex that is rated Type 1, the highest level of fire resistance.

See:

“Why the Getty Center’s Art Stayed Put as Fires Raged Nearby” | John Schwartz and Gilbert Gates, The New York Times, 12 December 2017

“California’s Getty museum survives wildfire, ready for quakes” | Suzanne Barlyn, Reuters, 8 December 2017

The Getty Center

#Getty #GettyCenter #art #museums #collections #collectionsmanagement #stewardship #scholarship #conservation #preservation #resilience #fire #smoke #particulatematter #airfiltration #design #architecture #RichardMeier #engineering #California #LosAngeles #luxury #urbanluxury #smartluxury #realestate #commercialrealestate #culturalrealestate #insurance

 

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San Diego performs ・three San Diego scientists awarded the Breakthrough Prize for 2018

San Diego performs.

Three of the seven Breakthrough Prize awards (each of $3 million; founded in 2012 by tech entrepreneurs including Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder; Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook co-founder; and Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of personal genomics company 23 and Me) for 2018 went to San Diego scientists in recognition of their research and achievements in life science, bio-medicine, and math. The prize for achievement in math is shared equally between UCSD and the University of Utah collaborators.

It is a short distance from downtown San Diego walk-ability and luxury, such as the Kohn-Pedersen-Fox-designed Pacific Gate, with interior design by Hirsch Bedner Associates (HBA), not only to the airport but also to the universities and research institutes.

See:

“Sweet recognition — and major cash — for three San Diego scientists with Breakthrough Prize” | Bradley J. Fikes, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 3 December 2017

Breakthrough Prize

#realestate #luxury #smartluxury #urbanluxury #BreakthroughPrize #UCSD #SalkInstitute #science #tech #engineering #commercialrealestate #walkability #downtown #downtownofcourse #education #PacificGate #international #global #globalluxury #KPF #KohnPedersenFox #HBA #HirschBednerAssociates #architecture #design #interiordesign

 

 

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the newly-opened & very lovely Louvre Abu Dhabi

The result of an intergovernmental agreement signed in 2007 and opened to the public on November 11, the $1 billion Louvre Abu Dhabi is a museum of juxtapositions and chronology that serves many purposes.

The museum is an integral “part of the town and of life [La ville et la vie],” (the museum’s architect Jean Nouvel). The museum is an expression of “soft power” and enhances a cultural strategy to serve as a bridge between civilizations and counter tensions in the region (Zaki Anwar Nusseibeh, the U.A.E. minister of state). The museum presents “a narrative of humankind from the beginning of knowledge, using art as a witness of the times,” (Jean-François Charnier, the project’s chief curator and scientific director for Agence France-Museums).

An iteration of a north African medina and rising no more than 30 feet in most places, the museum is composed of 55 separate pavilions, some beneath a 180-meter-diameter, 7,500-ton dome. The dome is comprised of eight layers of interlocking steel and aluminum effecting more than 7,800 perforations that filter the hot Arabic sun into brilliant spots of light that dapple the walls.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi is designed to achieve LEED silver. It has already achieved a 3 Pearl Estidama Design Rating. The museum creates a comfortable micro-climate with passive design techniques. Such techniques include a concept based on traditional regional architecture, passive water and energy conservation techniques, and highly efficient HVAC systems, lighting, and sanitation. Other techniques include the use of solar shading provided by the dome roof, the self-shading of buildings, the roof perforations that allow daylight without excess solar gain or wind flow, and exposed thermal mass such as stone floor and cladding that benefit from night-time cooling.

There are 23 galleries for the permanent collection, a huge, 2,000-square-meter temporary exhibition space, a children’s museum, and a waterside restaurant. The complex is designed to be used as a social space in the evenings.

See:

“Inside the Louvre Abu Dhabi with architect Jean Nouvel” | Caroline Roux, The Telegraph, 14 November 2017

“The Louvre Abu Dhabi Puts a $1 Billion Spotlight on Globalization – But Makes Some Glaring Historical Omissions” | Javier Pes, Artnet.com, 8 November 2017

“Louvre Abu Dhabi, a Cultural Cornerstone Where East Meets West” | Doreen Carvajal, The New York Times, 7 November 2017

The Louvre Abu Dhabi | About Us, Architecture