The Largent House at 49 Hopkins Avenue was designed specifically for the clients, as was commonly the case with Neutra’s projects. Although it had been deemed by the city not to be architecturally significant enough to warrant preservation, the house, which was recently demolished by a new owner, has already been ordered to be rebuilt.

Ross Johnston bought the two-story property for $1.7 million in 2017, at which time he was given permission to alter the house as long as the first floor was retained —presumably so that the house’s signature white flat roofs and staggered volumes would still be visible. Nonetheless, Johnston all but completely leveled the house, leaving only an internal stairway and door frame intact.

After the demolition was reported to the relevant authorities, the city of San Francisco’s Planning Commission ordered Johnston to “reconstruct the structure to its original footprint and massing,” and to use the same materials that were used in the initial building (in this case, white shingles and a lot of timber).

As is turns out, Johnston demolished the existing property to make way for a three-story, 4,000-square-foot house on the site that would better accommodate his six-person family. He tried to receive retroactive approval for the demolition but was eventually denied. Lucky for him, he will be allowed to continue his work as long as he recreates the Largent House’s original exterior in full — the interiors can be remodeled entirely at his own discretion. He’s also been ordered to erect a plaque outside the house upon its completion to give passers-by a chance to learn a little more about its original construction.

The San Francisco Planning Commission’s decision is as much about deterring other property owners from carrying out such illegal demolitions as it is to preserve the city’s architectural history. This type of “mansioning,” in which people purchase small plots and then redevelop them into extortionately expensive homes, is something that has increasingly been seen in San Francisco as of late. This phenomenon directly contributes to the city’s rising property values.

This is not the first time a San Francisco house of historic architectural significance has been demolished. It also happened in 2016, that time with a house by Willis Polk in Russian Hill. City Planning Commissioner Dennis Richards says: “We’re experiencing an epidemic of cannibalizing housing stock. I’m saddened by what our city has become.”

The post Man Ordered to Rebuild Demolished Richard Neutra House in San Francisco first appeared on Dornob.

The Alleged Culprit

The housing block at 15 Clerkenwell Close in London was designed, approved, and built under the direction of renowned architect Amin Taha in 2013. The six-story project is comprised of eight apartment units, including Taha’s own home and the office for his architectural firm Groupwork + Amin Taha. But it’s the building’s exterior finish that lies at the center of this brouhaha.

When the scaffolding was removed from the property upon its completion, neighbors observed that the exterior did not match the images they’d seen on the planning commission’s website. The posted pictures showed a conventional brick exterior, but the actual exterior was made from sections of raw quarried limestone strewn with fossils.

Taha explained, and the council confirmed, that he submitted modifications to the proposed exterior after the brick plans were proposed. Although he received the council’s written approval for the new plans, they never managed to make their way online.

The Plot Thickens

In June 2017, Taha received an order from the commission to demolish the building and replace it with the original brick one. He protested, stating that it was the council who had failed to publicly post his final plans on their website. “The neighbors could only see a brick approval, as planning hadn’t uploaded the later stone approval notices and drawings, similarly the head of enforcement and the councilor. However, the latter should know better,” he explained.

After Taha’s lawyer presented the commission’s enforcement department with a request for a report on the details of the decision, the demolition order was withdrawn. It appeared that the matter had been resolved.

Not so. In February 2018, the council issued a second demolition order. Taha reported that this new order cited “the exact fossil locations [being] rough, haphazard, and therefore deleterious to the conservation area and listed buildings,” along with a whopping nine other issues.

Taha is convinced that the resolution to issue the second order was spearheaded by Councilor Martin Klute, the chairperson of Islington Council’s planning committee. He elaborated on that suspicion in a recent interview, saying: “[The decision is based] entirely on the initial opinion of the councilor and a handful of neighbors. It has now escalated from an error in not uploading the stone approval — so that it was evident for anyone who cared to look — to the mistaken first demolition notice, to the now face-saving second notice entirely driven by someone’s opinion that it’s ugly.”

Where Things Stand Today

Today, opinions of the building’s final design are completely at odds. It went on to win a RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) National Award, for instance, but it was also nearly nominated for the Carbuncle Cup, which celebrates the most awful buildings in the UK.

Taha has filed an appeal against the second order, with a hearing currently set for March 2019. He is also submitting a revised application detailing the locations of each and every fossil on the building’s exterior. Islington Council has yet to respond to Taha’s claims of bias.

The post Fossils Fuel Campaign to Tear Down Amin Taha’s Prize-Winning Apartment Building first appeared on Dornob.

The post Frank Lloyd Wright House Donated to Arizona Architecture School first appeared on Dornob.

A world-wide sensation, this working human-scale Lego home constructed from over 800,000,000 miniature colored bricks attracted the attention of toy fans and architects alike. Equally amazing: without a taker for this free Lego structure, its creator was forced to destroy this fully-functional house after it aired on the BBC’s Toy Stories show – complete with working plumbing, Lego fixtures and furniture.

At even the relatively modest estimated moving cost of $80,000, no one stepped forward to pay for the cost of desconstructing and reconstructing the world’s largest livable Lego structure despite its record-setting stature.

Sure, the toilet, shower and sinks really worked but they may not have been the most comfortable in the world, let alone the Lego bed, slippers and strange life-sized Lego cat accessory. It was hoped that an entrepreneur would step forward with the willingness to fix the issues and attempt to make even more out of this strange structure but it was not meant to be.

Along with problems of water leakage through the permeable Lego roof and issues of mobility, Lego donated the bricks for this specific purpose and (unsurprisingly) was unwilling to let them be sold off without a license after the fact since their specific contract was with James May and the BBC. While it may have come as a disappointment to the thousands of volunteers who helped build it, ultimately this simply was not destined to become a permanent residence or ongoing attraction.

From The Telegraph:

“The plastic bricks are to be donated to charity once the house on the Denbies Wine Estate in Dorking, Surrey, has been demolished. A spokesman for the estate said that the house had to be dismantled – because it did not have planning permission.”

The post Sad Saga of the Full-Scale Lego House first appeared on Dornob.

We have seen compelling images of what happens when one half of a townhouse is abandoned or when structures are deserted, but what about the ghosts of buildings from which a shared party wall is all that remains? In many cases, these ghostly leftovers reveal spatial secrets exposed only after a structure is destroyed.

Photographer Jos Antonio Millan lets architectural remnants tell their own stories, through the impressions of decorative and structural elements on surfaces and the stark material transitions between different walls and rooms. He captures private spaces made public, revealing the remains of tiles, fixtures and furnishings from spaces past.

Other photographers like Xenmate have found ghost buildings where the walls have been artistically redecorated, animated with ghostly figures as flat as the non-spaces they inhabit.

Still others, such as freelance architectural photographer Marcus Buck, find have an art to the way they frame and photograph the urban decay of these leftover walls and imply relationships between the finished images of disparate structures. Viewed another way, he gives each building he finds equal aesthetic treatment and lets viewers determine meaning and visual relationships for themselves.

Of course, it is not only professional photographers who capture this global phenomena on film. Many other individuals have taken photos of the structural aftermath left when buildings are demolished. Some of these show strange party walls seemingly suspended in midair, the cut-off ends of row houses, colorful interiors-that-were and other revealing remnants from once-occupied spaces.

Above are a few of hundreds of images in The Unconscious Art of Demolition photo pool on Flickr. New images are added all the time, so it’s worth it to check in every now and then. Of course, you’ll want to take in the images one by one and examine all the details, but the cool thing about this collection is it allows you to view them as one big tapestry of urban ruin as well, giving the topic a new level of depth.

The post Ghost Buildings: Accidental Art of Demolished Architecture first appeared on Dornob.