Hasta La Ideas

Must be something in the air. Earlier today, we were reading a story about the effort by Peruvian inventor Eduardo Gold to bring glaciers back to life using painted rocks. Minutes later, we run across news that the multinational design/architecture firm Woods Bagot is proposing that New York’s empty pits where instances invisible or accidental architecture have happened, leaving stalled spaces without any construction momentum, be filled with a temporary, iceberg-like structure. Quickly constructed and essentially wrapped in a thick plastic, they would not only remove a neighborhood’s eyesore but also allow the land’s owner to be collecting at least a little revenue as temporary stores would pop up inside. While maybe not as environmentally-focused as what’s going on with the painted glaciers in Peru, because the building is temporary and modular and can therefore be rebuilt, it’s certainly more green than a lot of building efforts. Here’s a bit from Fast Company about the financial side:

…Holmes and Woods Bagot believe that simple economics make the Icebergs into a win-win solution for developers. Given construction costs of about $2 million, they estimate that an Iceberg could bring in at least $1 million in rent in the first year, and $2 million after that. (They figured a rental rate of $450 a square foot; Manhattan retail spaces rent for between $250-$2,500.) Moreover, because of the huge faceted planes on the Iceberg facade, they can become huge projection screens, drawing advertising revenues.

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