Miami’s Development Booming: Top 11 Starchitect-Designs Remaking the Magic City
The Grove at Grand Bay by Bjarke Ingels Group. (Courtesy BIG)
After a tumultuous few years, Miami’s real estate market is on the rise once again. When the recession hit the city in 2007, new developments came to a dramatic halt and abandoned construction sites became ubiquitous. But now, a surge of new projects—running the gamut from residential and retail to hotels and cultural institutions—are cropping up around Miami with many more slated for construction in the next few years. And some heavy hitters, such as Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Herzog and de Meuron, and Bjarke Ingels, have signed up to lend their design sensibility to Miami’s changing landscape. The Miami Herald reported that the city now boasts 20 new condo towers with an additional five towers in the works for neighborhoods just north and south of downtown Miami. AN has compiled a list of the most significant projects taking shape in the Magic City.
Smaller Airports Struggle with Vacant Space
Cleveland's airport had 1,565,187 fewer enplanements in 2009 than in 2000. (Image courtesy Cody Austin via Flickr.)
The airline industry was hit hard by the recession—2011 had fewer takeoffs than any year since 2002. Airports in cities like Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Oakland are feeling the effects of that contraction, leaving one-time regional hubs and smaller airports with vacant and underused terminals.
A report on airport building reuse commissioned last year by the Transportation Research Board found enplanements were down more than 60 percent in St. Louis over the last decade. Growing interest in regional rail transit could place further pressure on smaller airports to get creative with their extra space, especially as they face costly demolition bills and shrinking revenue.
California: From Bad To Worse
Just when it looked like things might be getting better, the California construction outlook for the year, it appears, has gone from bad to worse. According to McGraw-Hill Construction’s 2009 California Construction Outlook: Mid-Summer Update, the state’s budget crisis has had a nasty effect on our industry, “reducing state tax revenues and worsening the state’s construction declines.” The report says that construction starts for the state are expected to drop 22% in 2009 to $36.5 billion. Here are some of the sobering figures in the report: Read More
Lessons From The Past
We just came across a story (above) by David Dunlap in the New York Times whose headline reads: Recession Is Ravaging Architectural Firms. In it architects bemoan the state of the industry and make claims like “it will never be the same again,” and “I’ve had the chance to see a lot of ups and downs. This one, to me, is without a doubt the worst.” Dunlap suggests that ‘Now, having shrunk, firms may decide to stay smaller.’ And one architect thinks this is the next Great Depression: “We don’t see a way out, a real turning point, until the end of the decade. If you’re talking about no significant work until the latter half of the decade, you’re talking about a situation that is somewhat similar to the 1930′s.”
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