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A traveling design exhibit takes the question of affordable housing and asks not what it is but what it could be.
What it could be, according to some, is homes with exciting designs that are built with materials that would lead to lower energy and maintenance costs.
With square footage and cost of Habitat for Humanity three and four bedroom homes as a starting point, hundreds of designers from the United States and six other countries submitted plans with a new take on affordable housing. The 100 designs making the tour range from playful to traditional to high tech.
The exhibit, called the HOME House Project, opens Friday with a reception at 5:30 p.m. in the atrium of at the Public Works Building on Charlotte Street. Admission is free.
The exhibit, which has been to cities in Virginia and Texas and will travel to El Paso, Texas, Baltimore and Minneapolis, is the result of a contest organized by the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston Salem.
"Our main thrust was trying to provide inspired design," said SECCA curator David Brown, who organized the contest and will speak at the reception.
One design, from a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is of a tree house whose construction is an organic process that continues along with the growth of the tree. Another architect conceived a house of insulated, translucent poly
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Rusd Bank, a leading regional investment bank, announced Tuesday the initiation of what it bills as the region's largest luxury project.
Marina City, with a capital of $190 million, is one of Lebanon's most important real estate development projects. The bank, which was established in Malaysia, will introduce 1,169,230 shares at a share price of $100 each. Subscriptions will close at the end of September or when target shares have been met.
The Marina City project will be built on 81,000 square meters, across the Metn coastline, north of Beirut. It will include a residential complex of 150 units and 170 furnished apartments, as well as a complex of 200 public timeshare units and a 270-room hotel with a banquet hall capacity of 1,000 people.
The 74,000 square meter project will also include a three-level shopping mall overlooking the marina, which will be able to hold up to 700 yachts and is set to bring in 32 percent annually to investors.
The company says the venture is the only one in Lebanon to offer timeshare rooms on a total of 60,000 square meters.
Marina Joseph Khoury Beirut is the largest marina in the Middle East and will be the main platform for the project.
Project units are attracting international hotel and timeshare companies, many of which have already invested in the project, according to Rusd Bank. Bank officials expect the entir
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Christ Church Spitalfields, Nicholas Hawksmoor's English Baroque masterpiece and the main venue of London's Spitalfields festival, has reopened following a full-scale renovation.
The 18th-century church, often referred to as 'The St Pauls of the East End', is considered the masterpiece of its architect Nicholas Hawksmoor, an apprentice of Christopher Wren. Consecrated in 1729, Christ Church was one of the Fifty New Churches that Parliament ordered to be built in London, Westminster and their suburbs by an Act Parliament of 1711. The church is one of Britain's relatively few Baroque buildings.
However, during the early 20th-century the church, which had undergone a substantial redesign during the Victorian period in the then fashionable mock-Gothic style, fell into disuse. It was declared officially derelict in 1957.
Since then, there has been vigourous lobbying for its renovation - including by the late poet laureate John Betjeman, who declared that he would willingly 'go to the stake' to preserve the building.
In the 1970s, a group called the Friends of Christ Church Spitalfields managed to raise over £4m for the repair of the church's exterior, thereby saving it from demolition. In 1976 the building, still in a state of tragic disrepair, became the main venue for the first Spitalfields Festival, a role which
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Beach house was built to withstand hurricanes
Hurricane Ivan is about to give Fairfax architect Jonathan Zimmerman one heck of a performance evaluation.
Zimmerman designed one of the most prominent homes in the path of the category 5 storm, which is expected to reach the Gulf Coast tomorrow. The home is in Pensacola Beach, Fla., on the coast of the Florida panhandle.
Like many of Zimmerman's designs, the dome-shaped home built last year is specially made to weather even the heaviest of storms. It's made of steel-reinforced concrete and includes windows able to sustain the force of a two-by-four hitting them at 200 mph.
Ivan is promising winds of nearly 160 mph.
Mark and Valerie Sigler own the home, which was damaged twice in recent years by hurricanes Aaron and Opal. They sought out Zimmerman to help them design a home that would meet lofty weather-resistant standards set by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The plan helped the Siglers score a $245,000 FEMA grant to help them rebuild their home from scratch.
With the home in Ivan's path and Hurricanes Charley and Frances having left their devastating marks on the region in recent weeks, Zimmerman is seeing a surge of interest in his work. But he said he has mixed feelings about the potential business, particularly because it's at the detriment of the S
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The Armada Group, a leading UAE investment organization, will be showcasing two innovative construction developments, the Armada Towers and the Salam Towers, at the Emirates Homeshow exhibition. Because of their sheer size, these two massive construction projects are sure to garner interest from the public.
"The Homeshow exhibition is the perfect opportunity to display the innovative designs of our two superb building projects. In this way, the public can initially be introduced to what we are building, and during the exhibition, we can also gauge the amount of interest generated by both professional and non-professional designers," said Dr. Mohammed Raheef Hakmy, Chairman of the Armada Group.
The Salam Tower and the Armada Towers are two massive real estate projects, with investments exceeding AED 1.2 billion. They are two of the largest on-going construction activities in the entire region, making them two of the most sought after land developments in UAE.
"It is the innovative designs that we hope will catch the public's eyes. We want to showcase our buildings and impress the public with the Armada Group's forward-looking vision. We want to show people that we possess the technical know-how to meet the rigorous demands of such considerable construction endeavors," added Dr. Hakmy.
As Sharjah's tallest free standing building, at fifty-seven stories o
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