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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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Material Ecology

Brilliant, beautiful, and stylish MIT polymath Neri Oxman, coiner of the term Material Ecology and pioneer in the research discipline, observes how matter is not secondary to shape but is, rather, a progenitor to form.

“Today, perhaps under the imperatives of growing recognition of the ecological failures of modern design, inspired by the growing presence of advanced fabrication methods, design culture is witnessing a new materiality. Within the last decade in both industrial design and architecture, a new body of knowledge is emerging within architectural praxis.

“Examples of the growing interest in the technological potential of innovative material usage and material innovation as a source of design generation are developments in biomaterials, mediated and responsive materials, as well as composite materials. With the growing relevance of “materialization”, new frontiers of material science and digital fabrication are supporting the emergence of new perspectives in architectural and industrial design.

“Thus the role of digital design research as the enabling environment of the transformation to a new age of material-based design in various design disciplines has become the cutting edge of computational design research. Here we are at the cusp of a new paradigm inspired by the Troika structure of craft, at the interaction of Materials Science, Digital Fabrication and the environment.

“Material Ecology is an emerging field in design denoting informed relations between products, buildings, systems, and their environment (Oxman, 2010).

“Defined as the study and design of products and processes integrating environmentally aware computational form-generation and digital fabrication, the field operates at the intersection of Biology, Material Science & Engineering, and Computer Science with emphasis on environmentally informed digital design and fabrication.”

See:

Neri Oxman, “Material Ecology.” Abstract, 21 February 2014.. ”

Neri Oxman, Mediated Matter, MIT Media Lab People

“Style | Who is Neri Oxman?,” Penelope Green, The New York Times, Style, 6 October 2018

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Liu Wei (劉韡): “Sandwiches No. 13” (oil on canvas, 2015)

Born in Beijing in 1972, Liu Wei (劉韡) graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou in 1996.

Lehmann Maupin describes 劉韡‘s work:

Liu Wei “explores 21st century socio-political concepts such as the contradictions of contemporary society and the transformation of developing cities and the urban landscape.

“In many of his sculptural and installation works, he uses found materials that are re-contextualized to draw new meanings out of the materials from which they are made.”

Liu Wei’s works are exhibited and collected globally. Institutional and private collectors include Seoul’s Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art (리움 삼성미술관); the M+ Museum for Visual Culture in Hong Kong; and the Rubell Family Collection in Miami.

As you research Mr. Liu’s work, examine his entire œuvre. This work documents an eye and sense for the universal appeal of line, color, and composition.

Lehmann Maupin will highlight Liu Wei and his work during next week’s Art Basel in Basel 2018.

Look for the extraordinary “Library V-II” (books, wood, and iron) of 2015-2018.

Lehmann Maupin, by the way, with a gallery in both Manhattan and Hong Kong and a space in Seoul that is open by appointment, is doing superb work.

See: Liu Wei, Lehmann Maupin

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Henri Matisse: “Flowers and Ceramic Plate” (oil on canvas, 1913)

Dear to the heart and collection of Frankfurt, Germany’s Städel Museum, Henri Matisse painted “Flowers and Ceramic Plate” (“Blumen und Keramik”) using oil on canvas in 1913.

While lovely to our eyes now, Matisse was then not only enjoying color but also experimenting with radically new, in the European aesthetic, perspectives, some well-practiced and well-received in other parts of the world, such as Africa and Japan, and making their way into Europe via trade.

Like Picasso and Braque and their contemporaneous alignment of reduced objects into a shallow space using multiple vantage points (“cubism”), Matisse renders objects placed in close proximity to each other from different vantage points and perspectives.

The flowers are painted as viewed from a side perspective. The ceramic plate is painted as viewed from above.

As the Städel Museum points out:

“This new form of beauty gives preference to the surface over spatial depth and was highly controversial at the time.

“That means the end of the spatial illusionism European painters had worked so hard to perfect over many centuries.”

 

See: “Henri Matisse: Flowers and Ceramic Plate,” 1913 (oil on canvas), Städel Museum

 

 

#matisse #henrimatisse #picasso #braque #cubism #städelmuseum #städel #collection #portfolio #perspective #art #artmarket #modernart #arthistory #ceramics #design #architecture #frankfurt #germany #paris #france #africa #japan #newyork #oslo #dubai #hongkong #shanghai #seoul #tokyo #tech #entrepreneur #energy #co2 #realestatedevelopment #urban #luxury #urbanluxury

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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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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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information, asset condition, & advantage

When buying, selling, or using a tangible asset such as a home, building, or work of art, the condition of the tangible asset is important. Condition affects the purchase, use, and sale of a tangible asset.

What factors inform the condition of tangible assets and the markets for tangible assets? There are many.

The New York Times has been following the interactions of the real estate market (purchase and sale transactions, predicated on condition) with documented effects of changing climate and more frequent occurrences of extreme weather.

Information and perspective around such interactions are presented in the November 24, 2016 article, “Perils of Climate Change Could Swamp Coastal Real Estate.”

Pertinent questions arise. What information. How sourced. How to make use of information. How to turn challenges into opportunities. Opportunities at point of purchase, at point of sale, and during the lifetime and use of the asset. Opportunities for health, wellness, lifestyle, and value.

Here is an excerpt:

“As difficult as it is to predict the pace of climate change, modeling how it will affect the real estate market is even more complicated. Like a game of hot potato, builders, homeowners, banks, flood insurers and buyers of securitized mortgages try to hand off risky properties before getting burned. Developers erect houses and sell them typically within a couple of years, long before their investments depreciate. Banks earn commissions even on risky home loans before bundling these mortgages into securities and selling them to large pension funds, insurers or other buyers.

“Home buyers tend to think short term, focus on what they can afford and hope that the local infrastructure keeps pace with the rise in sea levels. Home buyers are also generally on their own as they look at prospective properties and try to size up their risk, as real estate agents vary in what they disclose.

“… Good information is hard to come by. No one knows whether, when or by how much properties will depreciate, seas will encroach or flood insurance policies will change.”

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