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art, real estate, luxury, & billion-dollar storms | the new normal?

The superstorms and wildfires of 2017 cost the US $306 billion.

As the temperatures of the oceans rise, the increasing temperatures will increase how strong hurricanes can become.

As global temperatures continue to rise, things will get more costly.

The new normal?

There are proactive steps you can take to protect and enhance the value of your tangible assets.

See: “Billion-Dollar Storms: Is This the New Normal?” | Deborah Acosta, The New York Times, 29 January 2018

#art #artmarket #collections #collectionsmanagement #artrisk #insurance #insurancerisk #realestate #commercialrealestate #culturalrealestate #realestaterisk #GRESB #GlobalRealEstateSustainabilityBenchmarks #climaterisk #financialrisk #CO2 #resilience #luxury #smartluxury

 

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Paris floods | the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, & the Musée de l’Orangerie launch their Plans de Protection Contre les Inondations (PPCI)

The Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, and the Musée de l’Orangerie have each launched their Plan de Protection Contre les Inondations (PPCI; protection plan against flooding). The Musée du Louvre has closed the lower level of its department of Islamic Arts until Sunday (28 January) as a “preventive measure” from flood damage.”

See: “Rising River Seine causes closure at Musée du Louvre” | Anna Sansom, The Art Newspaper, 25 January 2018

#Louvre #MuséeduLouvre #Muséed’Orsay #Muséedel’Orangerie #art #artcollections #collectionsmanagement #risk #riskmanagement #Paris #flooding #PPCI #PlandeProtectionContrelesInondations #museums #resilience #luxury #smartluxury #CO2 #realestate #culturalrealestate #design #engineering

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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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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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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

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elegance in design & engineering meets recycling

Ten years in the making, a public-private partnership between the New York City Economic Development Corporation and Sims Municipal Recycling, a division of Sims Metal Management, designed and master-planned by Selldorf Architects, New York City’s 11-acre South Brooklyn Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility performs.

Opened in December of 2013, the 140,000-square-foot facility is the principal processing facility for all of New York City’s residential metal, glass, and plastic recyclables. The facility has the capacity to process 1,000 tons of recyclable material every day.

Selldorf Architects (architect to museums and galleries worldwide, including the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego) organized the buildings to create the site’s own urban context and designed the facility to optimize environmental performance.

The buildings are made from 99% recycled American-made steel. The buildings, wharf, recycling equipment, and electrical substations are elevated four feet – using a blend of recycled glass and crushed stone from Second Avenue subway tunneling operations – to prevent damage from sea level rise and storm surges. New York City’s first commercial-scale (100 kW) wind turbine and the City’s largest solar installation (600 kW) generate energy on site. On-site storm water management is included as are two acres of native plantings.

Access by barge will help eliminate 150,000 annual truck trips (240,000 truck miles). Newly-renovated freight rail will be used for the export of processed recyclables.

See:

“Sustainability and Design Tour of Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility” | AtlasObsura, May 2017

“Selldorf Architects’ Sunset Park recycling facility in Brooklyn sets a new standard in sustainable design” | Pei-Ruh Keh, Wallpaper, 13 December 2013

“Mayor Bloomberg, Deputy Mayor Holloway and Sanitation Commissioner Doherty Announce Opening of New State-of-the-Art Recycling Facility – Able to Process Metal, Glass and All Plastics in One Location” | Office of the Mayor, City of New York, 12 December 2013

“Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility” | Selldorf Architects

Sims Municipal Recycling

Sims Recyling Solutions

Sims Metal Management

#sunsetparkmaterialrecoveryfacility #Brooklyn #NewYork #NewYorkCity #SimsMetalManagement #SimsMunicipalRecycling #SelldorfArchitects #NYCEconomicDevelopmentCorporstion #recycling #architecture #design #art #museums #galleries #luxury #smartluxury #urbanluxury #resilience #energy #solar #solarenergy #windenergy #engineering #construction #buildingtech #tech #sealevelrise #stormsurge #CO2 #H2O #realestate #commercialrealestate #CRE #finance #ROI

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SFMOMA・optimizing for sustainability was the fun part

After three years of construction under the direction of architectural firm Snøhetta and environmental design firm Atelier Ten, the expanded and high-performing San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) opened to the public in May of 2016.

Doubling the size of the museum and tripling gallery space, the museum achieved and surpassed LEED gold, working towards maximum sustainability. Optimizing for maximum sustainability was the fun part.

Building on the the science of conservation, born out of the World-War-II-era movement of London artworks to slate caves in Wales, and on the San Francisco mandate that all new construction meet USGBC LEED gold criteria, the SFMOMA initiated a Sustainability Roundtable to research solutions that would work for the museum. Participants in the Sustainability Roundtable included museum staff and representatives from Atelier Ten, Snøhetta, Taylor Engineering, The Getty, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), the Indianapolis Museum of ARt, and Stanford University’s Anderson Collection.

Testing approaches and combinations of approaches iteratively, the group determined to optimize “seasonal set points” and customized every aspect of the structure’s design and systems including mechanical, lighting, water, and HVAC.

See:

“Optimize, Optimize, Optimize: Museum Conservation in the LEED Era” | Lindsey Westbrook, freelance editor and writer specializing in art, architecture, and design; clients include SFMOMA, SFMOMA

“SFMOMA reopens with Snøhetta extension that triples its gallery space” | Dan Howarth, Dezeen, 28 April 2016

#art #museums #artmarket #SFMOMA #SanFrancisco #architecture #design #resilience #builtenvironment #buildingtech #construction #tech #energy #conservation #luxury #smartluxury #urbanluxury #realestate #LEED #Snøhetta #AtelierTen #TaylorEngineering #Getty #MFABoston #IndianapolisMuseumofArt #AndersonCollection #CO2 #H2O #collectionsmanagement #contemporaryart #engineering

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buildings are a big part of our lives ・let’s get to know them

Many of us, somewhere in the world, live, work, study, go to school, see the doctor, worship, shop, eat out, vacation, collect and/or exhibit and/or sell art in buildings of some sort. The building might be a single-family home, large or small, grand or modest, a multi-family home, a residential tower, an office building, library, school, a shop large or small, a hotel, resort, or spa, a restaurant, hospital, a gallery or museum, public or private, … the list goes on and on. Buildings are a big part of our lives. Let’s get to know them.

A building is much more than an inert structure that we can take for granted. A building is a system of systems that interacts with us on many levels. A building almost lives.

Dodge Data & Analytics together with United Technologies have published a SmartMarket Report that we all can read. This particular report, World Green Building Trends 2016 SmartMarket Report, focuses on a crucial aspect of buildings, how they are “going green.” The intent of the report is to provide information, new world green building trends data, to support green building development.

The report is long-ish. 60+ pages. So I suggest that you read through it step-by-step, in small increments, perhaps a page or two a day. You’ll find lots of good information, valuable economic analyses, and comparative analyses, illustrating how people in different countries are approaching the development, costs, benefits, and economics of green.

How is “green” defined? “Green building” is defined in the study as a construction project that is either certified under any recognized global green rating system or built to qualify for such certification.

Why “green”? We’ll examine this question step-by-step. Hint? Quality of life, longer-term value, longer-term credibility, higher resale values, “future proof.”

Stay tuned.

See:

“World Green Building Trends 2016 SmartMarket Report” | Dodge Data & Analytics, United Technologies, 2016

#buildings #builtenvironment #resilience #luxury #smartluxury #houses #museums #galleries #retail #restaurants #hospitals #art #artcollections #collections #hospitality #realestate #CRE #commercialrealestate

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art-market disruption & the brick-&-mortar gallery

In a time of disruption of the art market by auction house and online agents, global accumulation of wealth at the high end, and growth of the world’s contemporary art market (21 times between 2001 and 2008), Belgian investment banker and art connoisseur/collector Alain Servais believes in the brick-and-mortar model of the art gallery.

In his opinion, a brick-and-mortar gallery, like a museum or an art biennale, is where works of art look best. Galleries are a “right location” and a “right context” for works of art. “There is an aura to the work of art in the right location and the right context, which nothing replaces.”

Mr. Servais provides insight into his collecting and offers his thoughts as to how the gallery could well evolve.

Why collect?

“I don’t believe that one decides to become a collector, but rather that you are or you are not. And more generally, collecting is more than acquiring works of art. It is a way of living, a way of thinking.”

“To express myself. Adding my “sentence” around the “words” created by the artists. To share new ideas, questions, doubts, and surprises. To learn about myself and the world I am living in, so to open my mind to other options. To participate in the constitution of the history of the art of today. To feed my insatiable drive to learn what is not taught. To think outside of the box.”

“Finally, art must surprise me, challenge me, open up my mind and heart following the definition that I heard many years ago from Mera Rubell: “Art is a language which opens your heart to the Other.”

How does he collect?

In “constant conversation with art history, because when you look with connoisseurship you can find people who are completely forgotten, disregarded, or underestimated.”

How should the gallery model evolve?

The goals of the gallery are to court collectors, sell artists’ works, and give priority to the artists and to the art.

What must galleries do to evolve well?

reinforce legal and best-practices infrastructure

stabilize the artist-gallery relationship

balance contracts at all levels of the industry

provide more transparency

on pricing: “there are growing conflicts of interest between artists and gallerists. Sometimes what is in the interest of the gallery is not in the interest of the artist. For example, pricing policies. How fast do you want to raise the price?”

on the gallery-museum relationship, “what’s dubious about the gallery system? One thing is the relationship between the museums and the galleries. Right now only the wealthy galleries can get their artists work into museums because one of the problems is: who can produce the works? Who can put the money up front for massive pieces for exhibitions and biennales?”

develop multiple exhibition strategies

multiple exhibition spaces

select art-fair participation

space exchanges in different cities

pop-up exhibitions in dedicated spaces

cooperative events with artists and peer-group galleries

 animate with intellectual discourse

“art spaces need to be “animated” – with talks, conferences, and events

this will serve to enable meeting spaces – forums for exchanges – between artists, galleries, dealers, curators, collectors, and other stakeholders

See:

“Interview with Alain Servais” | BMW Art Guide

“Collector Alain Servais on Why Galleries Should Act Like Luxury Brands to Survive the Internet” | Alain Servais, Artspace, 27 December 2016

“Collector Alain Servais on Insider Trading in the Art Market, “Blood-Sucking Leeches,” and Why We’re Now Just the Fashion Industry” | Andrew M. Goldstein, Artspace, 23 May 2015

“Art in the shadow of art market industrialization” | Alain Servais, NYAQ/LXAQ/SFAQ International Art and Culture, 10 November 2014

#art #artmarket #smartluxury #luxury #artcollecting #collectors #collections #connoisseurship #AlainServais #museums #galleries #brick-and-mortar #auctionhouse #disruption #finance

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art & emergency planning・the MFAH shares perspective

Having passed through Hurricane Harvey with an emergency team onsite 24/7 to monitor and manage everything throughout the duration of the storm, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston has shared information about its protocol for storm protection.

This information could prove helpful and encouraging to other arts institutions. A lesson to be learned: best to have an emergency plan and protocols in place ahead of possible natural disasters … and practice.

Here are some elements of the MFAH emergency protocol:

  • a hurricane-preparedness team
  • storm-planning measures to secure the buildings
  • sandbags (the MFAH has thousands of sandbags, each filled with sand the museum stores and re-cycles)
  • emergency water pumps (sump pumps)
  • floodgates to be activated as needed (the MFAH floodgates are house-made and 24-inches high)
  • preparation of a disaster-recovery website
  • a 24/7 emergency team to be stationed on site to monitor everything through the duration of the storm
    • the MFAH crew includes more than 30 people, each with a list of emergency contacts, including first and second responders, printed on a slip of waterproof Tyvek in their pockets. the team splits 18-hour shifts.
      • engineers
      • art handlers
      • IT
      • security guards
      • the chief technology officer (Shemon Bar-Tal)
      • the chief of building operations (Mike Pierce)
      • the chief operating officer (Willard Holmes)
  • relocation of works | works of art that are in potentially vulnerable locations to be moved as needed
  • a sense of humor, perspective, and humility
    • “Mother Nature and water are strange. You say, ‘I’m OK, I’ve got a floodgate, I’m good,’ and then she comes around the back door!” (Willard Holmes, COO)
    • “I think we’re really good on the broad strokes, but you can never just assume that the next storm is going to be like the one that just passed. If the last four days have taught us anything, it’s that it’s not over until it’s over.” (Willard Holmes, COO)

The permanent collection of the MFAH includes 65,000 paintings, sculptures and other objects at the main campus and at Bayou Bend and Rienzi, two historical estates along Buffalo Bayou, the city’s central waterway.

The museum is also responsible for several hundred masterpieces from other institutions, on loan for shows such as the current “Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernization, 1910-1950.”

Paint the Revolution includes works by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Antonio Ruiz, Alfredo Ramos Martínez, María Izquierdo, José Clemente Orozco, Tina Modotti, Adolfo Best Maugard, and Saturnino Herrán.

See:

“How Harvey unfolded at MFAH” | Molly Glentzer, Houston Chronicle, 1 September 2017

“This Is How Museums In and Around Houston Prepared for Tropical Storm Harvey” | Priscilla Frank, Huffington Post, 1 September 2017

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH)

 

#art #artcollections #museums #MFAH #TheMuseumofFineArtsHouston #Houston #stormprotocols #emergencyteam #Harvey #HurricaneHarvey #realestate #resilience#smartluxury