Architecture is undergoing a revolution in 2023, which is being fueled by both new technical developments and shifting societal demands. Here are some imaginative topics for articles on architecture in 2023:
Continue readingHow Robbie Antonio Is Building The Home Of The Future
by Talib Choudrhy, GQ via Architectural Digest Middle East
Fittingly, Robbie Antonio, the $1 billion construction start-up CEO, has not one but two extraordinary homes in Manila. The first is a biomorphic art-gallery-cum-private-residence dubbed Stealth in the Philippines’ capital’s most exclusive neighbourhood.
It’s as if a spaceship has landed among the grand villas, an otherworldly, matte black confection dreamt up by the iconic Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, who was persuaded to take his first residential commission in 15 years by the strength of Antonio’s vision. That, and the fact the entrepreneur is as charming as he is persistent, and clearly has a passion for design. “I wanted the art to pop, and usually every gallery has white walls,” says Antonio by way of explanation of the unusually dark palette. “Everything here is matte black. It’s my favourite colour. In the bathroom, even the soap and the tissue paper is black.”

As the name suggests, Antonio’s home is an intensely private space (all the doors have biometric sensors) yet it has a gallery-like feel, thank to the cavernous, shadowy interior and the museum-quality commissions it houses. His astounding art collection is eclectic and colourful, with works by Damien Hirst, Francis Bacon and Paul McCarthy popping out of the gloom. There is nothing cosy or conventional about this house – there are few windows, for one thing; apertures in the ceiling pierce defined spaces with light – and there is something extraordinary to gaze at with every turn.
“I didn’t want it to look like this is a house,” says Antonio, “That was the point. I didn’t want to enter and see a sofa, a TV, a dining room. If I could, I wouldn’t even have chairs. I wanted it to be very distressed and Brutalist. I didn’t want an elegant mansion. That to me is so cliché. I just wanted the architecture to stand out and to make people think.”

Antonio is in the business of reimagining what a home can be, using the greatest design and architecture talents such as Zaha Hadid and Jean Nouvel to elevate the concept of pre-fabricated homes and turn it into something fabulous and desirable. The ethos behind his company Revolution Precrafted embodies democratic design at its best. It specialises in the construction of prefabricated, made-to-order homes that are constructed at a fraction of the cost of houses built using traditional construction methods.“The goal is to be prolific,” he says, “The mission statement is to the ultimate marketplace for designer, modular homes at an accessible price.”

Dotted throughout his own cavernous home there are monolithic pieces that Antonio has commissioned from leading designers and architects, including Kengo Kuma, David Adjaye, Tadao Ando and Daniel Libeskind. Several of the works are pavilions which were created for the launch of Revolution Precrafted at Design Miami in December 2015.

Another novel feature is a rotating bar, which Koolhaas integrated into the house at Antonio’s request; it was a scaled-down version of a much bigger, unrealised ambition. “At one point, I wanted the entire house to rotate – imagine a different facade every week – but it proved to be impossible,” Antonio explains, “I wanted four sides that changed throughout the month.”
His ambitions for Revolution Precrafted won’t be scaled back and it is growing at a pace that has even taken him by surprise. “I always planned and hoped that it would be big, but now I think it’s going to be bigger than I could ever have imagined,” he says, “We launched not even three years ago and there are now over 600 people in the company.”

A year after Revolution Precrafted was founded, it had a Series B funding round which raised the company’s valuation to over $1bn, making it the first ‘unicorn’ start-up from the Philippines, and allowing the it to establish a footprint in a number of global markets, including Italy, Japan and the UAE.
To say that Antonio is a man of action would be an understatement; he gets ‘five or six hours of sleep a night’ and wakes up at around 5.30am, works at least six days a week, and signed deals in over 20 countries last year, with a projected gross market value of $9 billion. Sport helps him to manage stress. Antonio tries to work out twice a day, but rarely uses the swimming pool or the Yves Klein Blue squash court at Stealth. Instead, he prefers circuit training because ‘it is fast-paced but I can still take breaks to look at my phone and work’.
There’s also a whole room dedicated to a Marina Abramovic installation which impels visitors to stop and contemplate by lying on a bed. The door locks for 60 minutes. “I’ve never, ever used it,” says Antonio. It’s hard to imagine him staying still for that long. Our interview is entirely conducted during a walking tour of the house.“I can’t stay still for 60 seconds,” he quips. Just then, he pauses from our interview and steals a glance at his phone. “I’ve had 115 WhatsApps in the time we’ve been talking….I had visitors from Brazil on Thursday, yesterday from Germany, today from Dubai.”

Antonio travels to Dubai regularly himself. An office there is in the works, and Revolution Precrafted signed a $3.2bn deal with luxury developer Seven Tides to design, supply and install two-and three-bedroom condominium apartments and villas on Dubai’s The World islands. The challenge for Antonio and his team is to realise the designs at an affordable price; although the Dubai development will be more at the luxury end of the scale, others are eminently accessible and the likes of Jean Nouvel are not used to delivering complete buildings for as little as $20,000.

“It takes six months of value engineering these things and there’s a lot of back and forth with their teams,” he says. “One of the houses took a year to get right. It has to be viable. Some of our homes are super esoteric. I would live in them but very few people want to live in something that’s that far removed from the norm. But they’re like cool art pieces and I want them to be part of the vision. I love those super far-out designs because I think it really pushes you to live differently.”

That said, Antonio’s second Manila home is more conventional than Stealth. The plush penthouse apartment in the city’s Trump Tower overlooks the gleaming cityscape, much of which is his family legacy.
Century Properties, the real-estate company founded by his father, is responsible for developing much of Manila’s prime real estate including branded residences from the likes of Armani and Versace. But Antonio’s sights are set far beyond his hometown. He founded his first company in New York right after business school. “I wanted to do something on my own, completely independent of that,” he explains, “I’m not a ‘local’ person. I like global thinking. We’ve signed deals in 27 markets now, most of them this year. It’s intense, but we’re going after more.”
The Architectural Debut Of Ex-Model Helena Christensen
by Thij Demeulemeester, De Tidj

Can prefab finally shake off its bad reputation, thanks to Helena Christensen and Jean Nouvel? Philippine company Revolution Precrafted delivers affordable ‘designer homes’ to your door within three months. “My logo must be as famous as Apple’s.”
Fancy an upside-down Viking ship in your garden? Also signed by top model Helena Christensen? Thanks to Revolution Precrafted, that doesn’t have to be a distant dream anymore. The Philippine real estate company offers complete prefabricated homes and ready-designed pavilions, signed by the top names in the world of design, architecture and fashion. “Apart from a Viking boat, I was also inspired by the flight of swallows,” says Christensen, who designed the Scandinavian log cabin. Shipped and built, the wooden ‘Swallow Cabin’ can cost $ 228,000. The delivery time is between 60 and 90 days, and construction can be done in a month.

The log cabin may be the first sidestep towards architecture for the Danish top model, but it is not the first time that she colors outside the fashion lines. Christensen has never been the model sitting at home in New York or Copenhagen waiting for the phone to ring for another shoot. Although she graced the cover of international fashion magazines more than 600 times, she always had side projects. In 1999 she was co-founder and creative director of the edgy Nylon Magazine. Together with childhood friend Leif Sigersen, she opened the Butik concept store in New York. The supermodel has also designed lingerie for Triumph and furniture for Habitat.
With Strangelove she founded a perfume company of which she is also creative director. Another hidden talent is photography: her raw, sensual images made it into prestigious magazines as much as the fashion shoots in which she participates as a model.
Armani, Versace and Trump
She collaborates with Revolution Precrafted with (fashion) designer Camilla Staerk, with whom she runs a multidisciplinary studio for photography, fashion, design, architecture and film. Staerk and Christensen have known each other since 2000, when the former just graduated from college and the latter traveled the world as a supermodel, often with colleagues such as Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington and Elle Macpherson.
Revolution Precrafted is the latest project from serial entrepreneur Robbie Antonio. The New York-based Filipino founded Antonio Development, a company with 3,500 employees currently developing 63 major real estate projects around the world. He earned his spurs at Century Properties, his father José’s Philippine real estate company. They are responsible, among other things, for the Trump Tower in Manila. Although they have also worked with the luxury brands Armani, Missoni and Versace for ‘branded’ real estate projects.
In 2009, Robbie Antonio developed the first family real estate project outside of Asia, the Centurion Tower in Manhattan, New York. The architect was an Asian: IM Pei, known for the Louvre pyramid and the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha.
Meanwhile, the 41-year-old Antonio is used to working with such top players. The project counter stands at thirteen ‘Pritzker Prize’ winners. Among them Rem Koolhaas and his Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), who drew his private residence in Manila. According to Vanity Fair magazine, that villa, called ‘Stealth’, has the air of a private museum. In addition to modern and contemporary art, there are also dozens of portraits made of Antonio by top artists such as Takashi Murakami, Julian Schnabel and Zhang Huan. Koolhaas came out as the winner from a circle of top architects, who each drew a housing design for the Filipino: Jean Nouvel, Zaha Hadid and Thom Mayne.
Eighty toppers
That address book will now also come in handy in his new adventure: Revolution Precrafted. That company – feel free to call it the Deliveroo of architecture – is already counted among the ‘unicorns’: young companies with a virtual market value above 1 billion dollars. According to the market research firm CBInsights, there are currently 282 such companies worldwide. Mainly technology start-ups, of course, only four of them are real estate developers. “We are the fastest unicorn in Southeast Asia,” he says. “My ambition is clear: I want to make the Revolution Precrafted logo as ubiquitous as Apple’s.”

“I call it: living in a house that looks twice as expensive,” said CEO Robbie Antonio. ©rv
Antonio finds traditional bricks-and-mortar construction companies something of the last century. ‘I didn’t invent prefab. But I can take the idea into the 21st century. I want to run a company that can offer luxurious living in quality architecture for an affordable price.’
He says he now has worldwide exclusivity on about eighty designs by top architects and designers. Clappers such as Jean Nouvel, Christian de Portzamparc, Sou Fujimoto, Ron Arad, Tom Dixon, Marcel Wanders, Daniel Libeskind, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Kengo Kuma or the late Zaha Hadid. A strange name at first glance among that architectural and designer violence is Lenny Kravitz. However, connoisseurs may know that the rock musician has been quietly active as an interior designer for some time now.
And Christensen is also part of the designer range. Antonio met her through a mutual acquaintance. ‘I had first called in Helena and Camilla to come up with an interior, but they suggested drawing a complete house. I was immediately impressed by their design.’

To keep his top homes affordable, Antonio mainly counts on scale. ‘We not only sell to private individuals, but also to project developers and large landowners, who can suddenly order large quantities of homes from us. At the moment, 35,000 houses have already been ordered for eleven countries. In time, I want to become the largest housing supplier in the world.’
Wallpaper
With Revolution Precrafted, Antonio is mainly concerned with the combination of art, architecture and design. ‘But in affordable form,’ he says. ‘I’m aiming for around $100,000 per house, depending on the number of bedrooms and the size. I call it: living in a house that looks twice as expensive.’
The Filipino entrepreneur himself categorically refuses to use the word ‘prefab’. He prefers ‘precrafted’ to emphasize the quality difference, because his ‘prefab’ has ‘Pritzker Prize’ ambition. He sees it as anything but small. In a first phase, he mainly wants to deliver pavilions and homes. He already got off to a good start in Asia and the Middle East. Europe is Antonio’s next field of action, who already has contact(r)acts in Portugal and Spain. He himself dreams aloud of prefab retail projects, hotels, restaurants, glamping sites and even residential parks with art.
He even tries to get the British magazine Wallpaper on board with his disruptive real estate adventure: the magazine is co-curating a collection of ‘architectural homes’ for Revolution Precrafted, with creations by Paulo Mendes da Rocha, AFGH (Andreas Fuhrimann and Gabrielle Hächler) and J. Mayer H. “Prefab has become a way to build in advance what might be impossible on site,” said Tony Chambers, Wallpaper’s brand & content director. ‘You would never buy a car built in a field, would you? Then why a house?’
Camilla Staerk and Helena Christensen Join Forces With Robbie Antonio On Prefab Houses
by Rosemary Feitelberg, Women’s Wear Daily
With the help of fast-moving developer Robbie Antonio, Camilla Staerk and Helena Christensen are redefining the meaning of a designer house.
The creative duo behind the New York-based design studio Staerk Christensen are the newest boldface names to align with Antonio’s Revolution Precrafted Properties. Recruiting fashion-minded talent to reimagine a prefab house was new territory for the ardent art collector and enterprising developer. Antonio runs Antonio Development in New York and is managing director of Century Properties in Asia. He has collaborated with Giorgio Armani for Armani Casa, Versace and Missoni among many others.
Staerk and Christensen impressed him with their well-defined intent and clear-eyed directives.
Staerk and Christensen join the ranks of other Revolution collaborators including Jean Nouvel, Marcel Wanders, Tom Dixon, I.M. Pei, Zaha Hadid and Philip Johnson.
Originally hired to handle the interiors, the pair were so assured in their vision that they were asked to take on every last post and beam. “They said, ‘You know, you guys have so many opinions about how you want the structure to be for the furniture you’re designing. So why don’t you just do the whole house?’’ Staerk said. “We could not believe they gave us that whole responsibility. We couldn’t believe it but we definitely thought they should.”
Traces of Staerk’s and Christensen’s Danish roots are evident in the dual-level, two-bedroom, two-bathroom prefab home. Inspired by a traditional Scandinavian cabin, their design is a glass and stained black wood house. The curved structure is meant to be reminiscent of a swallow in flight. However unlikely it might sound, they enhanced their design with inspiration from the craftsmanship of a viking ship. The silhouette of the swallow-inspired home resembles the hull of viking ship turned upside-down, they explained.
“Ships hulls have the wingspan of a bird. To us, that means a lot. Both of us grew up in Denmark. The sound and the visuals of swallows flying low on summer nights is just something that stayed within us. It’s a very peaceful place for both of us to go back into in our memories,” Staerk said.
Designed to be built anywhere in the world, the first prototype for each structure may be set up in Malibu or Montauk so that potential clients can walk through and experience the house firsthand. As with any prefabricated home, the structure requires a good amount of land and then is built for you. With shipping and building, the $228,000 unit can be somewhat altered to accommodate the climate that the buyer lives in.
Staying true to their healthy Scandinavian upbringing, the duo is also creating a spa pavilion for $27,300 and a gym for $153,000. Through the years, rugs, lamps, glassware, interiors, furniture, pillows, throws and bedspreads and even glamping-quality safari tents are categories they have delved into. With the help of the Brooklyn-based Bower, the duo is creating a mirror collection which will include a wardrobe-screen divider that also can double as a martini bar. And glassware is on deck with Danish company Mater, with furniture to follow. These new endeavors are expected to debut around the same time as the Revolution prototype.
While Staerk earned a degree in fashion and textiles at Ravensbourne College in London, the “absolutely self-taught” Christensen has designed lamps for Habitat and gleaned knowledge from the legendary photographers as a model. “I really can’t think of a career that gives you more versatile options of branching out, learning and absorbing everything you possibly can if that’s what you want. I guess that’s what I did. With our combined background and knowledge, we get by,” Christensen said.
That need to always be learning and searching means they often can’t write down, sketch or photograph their ideas fast enough — a habit that other friends might not be so accepting of. And even though they each approach creativity with a different lens, somehow it all comes into focus. “When we met, we were so different and in that difference we found a common ground. Camilla’s form of expression, the way she looks visually, the pieces she designs, the homes she lives in is completely opposite of mine — in all ways. Somehow over the years we have approached each other in all ways — first and foremost as friends, but also learning from each other and opening up to each other’s differences,” Christensen said.
“We spur each other on,” Staerk added. “We clicked creatively from the first time we met. It was from immense respect for each other’s work. Then we found this way of expression together and we just felt so lucky.”
UNStudio Creates Woven “Ellipsicoon” Pavilion For Revolution Precrafted
by Philip Stevens, Designboom
UNStudio — the dutch architecture practice led by ben van berkel — has designed a mobile structure conceived as a place of rest, retreat, and mindfulness. the project forms part of the revolution precrafted pavilion series, a collection of structures whose wide variety of functions are designed to complement existing spaces. constructed from strands of 100% recyclable high-density polyethylene (HDPE), the project was designed and developed digitally, before being handwoven by highly skilled craftsmen.

titled ‘ellipsicoon’, the UNStudio-designed pavilion is a detached, secluded space for solitary moments of rest, reading, contemplation, or even a cocoon-like theater for conversation and communication. the structure’s curved sides taper inwards as they rise, with the rounded openings blurring the boundary between internal and external space. inside, a sunken seating area follows the fluid contours of the space.

‘I have long been interested in exploring spaces which extend function to replace the reality of the everyday with the potential for more nuanced, reflective experiences,’ explains ben van berkel, founder and principal architect of UNStudio. ‘the ellipsicoon offers a place of temporary disengagement, where the practicalities, duties and interruptions of daily life can momentarily fade and the imagination can take over.’


the project was designed and developed digitally rounded openings blur the boundary between internal and external space. A sunken seating area follows the fluid contours of the space
project info:
name: ellispsicoon pavilion, 2015 – 2018
UNStudio: ben van berkel with ren yee and philipp meise, peng wang
client: revolution precrafted, manila
location: non site-specific
dimension: 5.70m l x 4.10m w x 2.60m h
floor area: 15 sqm
materials: woven strands of 100% recyclable high-density polyethylene
program: limited edition retreat pavilion
status: completed
Batulao Artscapes: The World’s First Live-in Art Park
by Emelie Yabut Razon, Tatler Asia
A mountain range on the outskirts of Manila may be the last place you’d expect to find a world-class art museum, let alone four. But property magnate Robbie Antonio is determined to make his latest development, Batulao Artscapes, a must-see destination in Southeast Asia

The recently announced Batulao Artscapes, located at the foot of the Philippines’ Mount Batulao, will be home to four themed museums designed by four different architects, all of whom are Pritzker Prize laureates:
There’s the Revolution Museum for Design and Architecture by Christian de Portzamparc (who designed Cité de la Musique in Paris), the Revolution Museum for Visual Arts by Jean Nouvel (who designed the Louvre Abu Dhabi), the Revolution Museum for Art and Technology by US-based Philip Johnson/Alan Ritchie Architects, and the Revolution Museum for Performing Arts by Japan’s Tange Associates.
See also: 7 Things To Know About The Louvre Abu Dhabi
Robbie Antonio, an avid art collector and founder and CEO of Revolution Pre-crafted—a start-up for prefabricated designer homes—is the mastermind behind the US$1.1 billion project, which he calls “the world’s first live-in art park”.
“For Batulao Artscapes, I was inspired by Naoshima which, in my opinion, is one of the most remarkable art and architecture destinations in the world,” he says, referring to the island in Japan known for its contemporary art museums, mostly designed by another Pritzker Prize-winning architect, Tadao Ando.
See also: Travel By Design: Top 5 Spots In Hong Kong For Design Lovers
Antonio adds: “There’s also Inhotim in Brazil (a public contemporary art park within a 5,000-acre jungle). These spots around the world have become cultural meccas, so I thought, what if we could create a similar project, but this time, giving people the option to live there? Batulao Artscapes is a place where you can enjoy the cool mountain air in your prefabricated weekend home, and see world-class art in a Jean Nouvel museum without having to go to the Louvre Abu Dhabi.”
Another major attraction of Batulao Artscapes is its residential offerings. Those looking for chic weekend retreats or retirement properties can consider prefab designer homes by Berlin’s Studio Libeskind, French-Brazilian architect Elizabeth de Portzamparc, Pelli Clarke Pelli, LA-based Marmol Radziner, style icon Daphne Guinness and even rock star Lenny Kravitz. Plans also include sports facilities, a floating chapel, and a man-made lake and beach.

Antonio’s idea for Revolution Pre-crafted, the Philippines’ first unicorn startup, came about after he commissioned renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas to design his home in the Philippines. He realised there was a wealth of opportunity in working with award-winning architects to create upscale, yet easily accessible living and commercial spaces, similar to how high street brands were collaborating with high fashion designers.
By this time, he had amassed quite an art collection, including works by Francis Bacon and Jeff Koons, even commissioning portraits from Julian Schnabel, Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami, and David Salle.
“For a while, I really followed the circuit. Modern contemporary artists like Bacon and Pollock are my favourite, but right now I’m also looking at the masters, like Delacroix, Rubens, and Goya.”

In the last two years, Antonio has made “prefabricated” a real buzzword in the property development arena. Since he started Revolution Pre-crafted in 2015, Antonio has made headlines by successfully enlisting more than 30 of the world’s star architects—including Marcel Wanders and Zaha Hadid Architects—to work on his ambitious prefab projects, ranging from cutting-edge homes to pavilions, pop-ups, and restaurants.
With the first phase of Batulao Artscapes underway, Antonio’s team hopes to get at least two of the museums open by the time Art Basel Hong Kong comes around in 2019.
“We want visitors to the show to include us in their itineraries. The plan is to have an internationally curated collection together with commissioned work, host gallerists and to juxtapose local with international artists. Why not have a Poklong (Anading) next to a Basquiat, right?”
Mount Batulao, famous for its easy hiking trails and breathtaking views, is a 90-minute drive Manila, and a stone’s throw from Tagaytay, a popular weekend getaway.
Find out more at batulaoartscapes.com
Robbie Antonio Revolutionizes Pre-crafted Architecture
by Bilyonaryo
Robbie Antonio is putting the Philippines on the map with his #revolution.
The Revolution PreCrafted CEO has revolutionized building homes with his new venture. By providing pre-crafted structures designed by the world?s leading architects and designers, he is fulfilling his principle to ?cross-borders, cross-cultures.?
Cheers to a Robbie revolution, everyone!
The Stars Of Architecture Hoist The Flags
by Mary Godfrain, IDEAT
Jean Prouvé’s revolutionary prototypes in the 1950s had their offspring… The Filipino entrepreneur Robbie Antonio flooded the five continents with his prefabricated houses, and reserved architect pavilions for the wealthy, which he exhibited in Miami or Paris. Meeting with an ultra-hurried “serial real estate developer” and a tad megalomaniac…
You presented your pavilions during FIAC 2017. Why did you choose the Tuileries Garden to exhibit these works?
It’s very moving to talk about this project carried out with Jean Nouvel , a few meters from the Louvre pyramid, the work of the architect Ieoh Ming Pei, who carried out one of my very first projects with his sons. They designed the Centurion together in 2008 and 2009, an all-glass condominium in south Central Park.

revolution precrafted
From the start of your career, you called on starchitects…
Yes, I worked with a dozen Pritzker Prize winners , including Rem Koolhaas, Ieoh Ming Pei, Jean Nouvel, Christian de Portzamparc, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Zaha Hadid and many others. I’m obsessed with architecture!

revolution precrafted
What interests you in contemporary architecture?
It’s the idea of being able to raise the prefabricated house to a fairer level, more in line with our times. In two days, we assemble houses that took two months to manufacture and can be transported and assembled anywhere in the world. And we offer them at a fair price: a few hundred thousand dollars! I don’t want to work only for a wealthy clientele. Moreover, my clients are also public authorities and developers. In Asia, I have just built a thousand prefabricated amenity houses by the sea. I also have large orders coming to me from the Middle East. My next project is prefabricated hotels, delivered turnkey. And, for the more fortunate, I imagined prefabricated pavilions designed by designers and architects…

revolution precrafted
A collection that erases the boundaries between art, architecture and design. Are you part of this trend?
Like many people of my generation, I am passionate about these three disciplines. Thanks to my job as a promoter, I try to combine them through my limited-edition pavilions. A desire that I have just materialized with the first prefabricated museum developed by Christian de Portzamparc. Our “reproducible museum” is a museum space with several elements that can be combined to adapt to the site and the hanging. I personally develop the first of these spaces in the province of Batangas, one hour from Manila. It will open this month.

revolution precrafted
Apart from the price, what is the basic difference between pavilions and houses?
Pavilions are not necessarily utilitarian. I would say that the houses respond to a need and the pavilions to a dream, like the tea pavilion or the meditation pavilion. To imagine them, I called on personalities that I took out of their comfort zone: Ron Arad or Lenny Kravitz, for whom these are the first achievements.

revolution precrafted
How is the genesis of these pavilions going?
I think first of a use. For example, I ordered a pavilion for dinner from the late Zaha Hadid, another from the Gluckman Tang agency to exhibit art. Jürgen Mayer’s agency imagined a place to meditate, while Michael Maltzan designed a beach pavilion, and Sou Fujimoto, a multifunctional space.

DR
What is the role of technology in your projects?
It is essential ! Imagine the technology that had to be developed to build a house in two months. I make the architect and the engineers work in parallel. Thus the modular glass house, inspired by that of Philip Johnson (built in 1949, editor’s note) , was developed in ultra-technological factories. I also use technology as a sales force since all orders are made on the Internet. I spend a lot of time sourcing and meeting manufacturers around the world who work with glass, wood or steel. That is about 300 professionals on whom I rely according to their know-how and the quality-price ratio of their production.
How do you deliver these buildings?
We transport them by container and by truck. The houses, of course, need building permits, as they are equipped and must be connected to the water and electricity networks, but not the pavilions, which can simply be put up by our teams.
The Gray Market Weekly
by Tim Schneider, Happening
Seven days in the evolving business of fine art. This week, three cases of the industry treating an extreme as the new normal…
Every Monday Tim Schneider, Director of Research at Kayne Griffin Corcoran Gallery and the brains behind The Gray Market Blog, dissects the most important stories of the week from the art market.
SLEEPWALK WITH US

On Tuesday specialty insurer Hiscox and market-analytics firm ArtTactic released the 2017 edition of their annual Online Art Trade Report. As usual, the study made colossal claims about e-commerce in the industry, including that total estimated sales reached $3.75 billion in 2016—a value alleged to account for “an 8.4 percent share of the overall art market,” based on the cumulative figure assigned by the 2017 TEFAF Art Market report. (You know, that one.) As usual, pundits and insiders around the art business immediately began spreading around these numbers like the clap would tear through a freshman dorm in a latex famine. And as usual, the methodology, which only maniacs like me bother to read, reveals the report to be almost a complete exercise in guesswork.
Since bulleting through every issue I see with Hiscox/ArtTactic’s approach would leave me with no time or ammunition to hit anything else this week, let’s just focus on the two most glaring problems. First, as I’ve written before, many, if not most, of the report’s grand results flow from a kiddie-sized pool of sources. This year, responses came “from 758 art buyers surveyed through ArtTactic’s client mailing list, Twitter, and Facebook.” Largely informed by those 758 anonymous art buyers, Hiscox and ArtTactic felt comfortable making multibillion-dollar proclamations about an industry rightly pegged as “gloriously-opaque” by Robert Read, Hiscox’s Head of Art and Private Clients and, based on this portrait on page 3 of the report…
…humanity’s world champion in obliviousness to camera placement. Even if small samples don’t unsettle you all on their own, ask yourself this: If our threshold for belief in an alleged news item becomes netting 758 responses on social media, won’t we all be living in bunkers, militia-barracks, or prison cells by Memorial Day?
The report’s second major problem bridges both the buy and sell-sides of the data. Regarding the collector survey, Hiscox and ArtTactic disclose the following wrinkle in the proverbial fine print of the methodology (emphasis mine): “Although the central focus is around fine art, we have in this survey also explored online buying habits of OTHER COLLECTIBLES.” Similarly, of the 132 galleries and dealers surveyed for the study, 60 percent “were linked to contemporary art, whilst 40 percent represent a wider selection of dealers in different collectible areas (such as photography, modern and impressionist art, design, furniture, decorative art, antiquities and old masters).” In practice, this means we have literally no idea what proportion of the Hiscox/ArtTactic numbers apply to artwork versus, say, Louis XIV armchairs or Neolithic ritual masks. No matter what a particular reader’s preferred niche may be, indiscriminately blending the data from all these disparate sources into one churning mystery stew makes the end result equally rotten for everyone.
Most important of all, this last flaw isn’t even exclusive to the Hiscox/ArtTactic report. Instead, it reappears to some degree in even the most trusted annual art-market reports, including those from TEFAF and Art Basel/UBS. And yet, after years of analyzing these reports, I can’t recall a single instance of anyone in the art industry ever sounding the alarms about this foundational problem. Instead, it’s been normalized into oblivion. Yes, the fine-art and collectibles markets share many qualities. But for those of us solely concerned with quantifying the art industry, treating all collectible numbers as equal is like treating fun-size candy bars and new toothbrushes as interchangeable to trick-or-treaters because, hey, they’re both prepackaged items you can easily chuck into a sack. But guess what? The kids care about the difference. And if we ever hope to get anything close to accurate big-picture data about the art market, we should too. [Hiscox/ArtTactic]
PRICE POINT OF NO RETURN
On Wednesday, NYC mayor Bill de Blasio came out in support of the Met’s making a move it “has been quietly talking to city officials [about] for a year,” per Robin Pogrebin: charging mandatory admission to non-New Yorkers. If the venerable-yet-recently-cash-strapped museum were to make the proposed change, it would represent the first time the Met had demanded anything more than a “suggested” or “recommended” fee since it began receiving state funding in 1893.
I’m not going to pretend that I can tell you definitively whether or not requiring admission for any segment of the population would winch the Met out of the fiscal sinkhole it hydroplaned into with Thomas Campbell behind the wheel. However, I do feel comfortable saying that, if it makes the switch, the Met likely won’t reverse the policy again even after it inevitably rights its balance sheet. Although more and more American art museums seem to go permanently admission-free every month, it’s worth remembering that in 2006 the Art Institute of Chicago, another of the US’s renowned encyclopedic jewels, became one of the few to re-institute a required rate after years of free entry. More telling, the $12 general-admission fee the Art Institute began charging adults back then has, depending on ticket-buyers’ residency status today, ballooned to between $22 and $27. And most troubling of all: As far as I can tell, the initial resistance to the rate-resuscitation (and its subsequent rise) has by now faded into quiet acceptance of the revised status quo. That might be great for any vaunted American museum’s bottom line. But it’s a troubling data point for anyone concerned that the arts are increasingly being herded out of the public eye and into the VIP section. [The New York Times]
ABSOLUTELY PREFABULOUS

Finally this week, my colleague Eileen Kinsella detailed a new entrepreneurial initiative by Manila-based collector and real-estate developer Robbie Antonio—one that is, in his own words, “really challenging the norm”: prefab private museums. In collaboration with starchitects Jean Nouvel and Christian de Portzamparc, Antonio’s firm, Revolution Precrafted Properties, will begin offering modular permanent-exhibition units that can be mixed and matched based on the needs of any aspiring collector—some of them for under $1 million, and all of them fully buildable in six months to a year. Are you heavy into new-media works? Try copping a few soundproof-room modules. What if your storage unit is swollen with epic sculptures? Just order up the so-called “Big Hall” unit. And if you want your giant Calder to kiss the flesh of the evening, you can even select an open-air courtyard component like the one pictured below. Just make sure no one in the vicinity remembers what the Cloverfield monster looked like.
From a profitability standpoint, I think Antonio’s strategy might be brilliant. At the same time, the sound business logic for backing his enterprise also depresses the hell out of me. With the 21st-century rise of art advisers and, driving that profession’s growth, the proliferation of the buyer class I call COINs—Collectors Only In Name—acquiring artwork has increasingly become an exercise in outsourcing. The socioeconomically ambitious know all too well that, today, a high-end collection is a must-own for any youngblood hoping to be jumped into the established Gulfstream Gang that lords over much of our global capitalist world. But if you’re too much of a neophyte to know the art game, or too busy snorting Adderall and poring over profit & loss statements to do extracurricular research, in-demand advisers can simply deliver you all the instantly recognizable branded works you need for your very own “world-class collection.”
Revolution Precrafted is simply pushing this hands-off trend to the next level. Thanks to the firm’s modular units, COINs don’t just have the luxury of building up their actual artistic holdings with minimal thought. They can also just as effortlessly build out their own private museums—the next logical plutocratic trophy acquisition—by literally ordering a la carte off a developer’s menu. Is this an event of significance in the art market? Absolutely. But will it create a “culture of significance” around the globe, as Antonio hopes his prefab division will do? That’s a proposition I would happily short if given the chance. [artnet News]
That’s all for this week’s edition. Til next time, remember: The biggest changes are sometimes the ones we don’t notice until it’s too late.
DESIGNER PREFABRICATED HOUSES: THE PRÊT-À-PORTER OF GREAT ARCHITECTURE
by FILIPPO ROMEO AND LISA CORVA
A new concept of living. Light, mobile, sustainable, designer. These are micro prefabricated houses signed by stars of architecture and design. Ready for use, they can be ordered and delivered, at home, to any destination on the planet.
The idea comes from Robbie Antonio, a forty-year-old from Manila with a family fortune in the real estate world. And a dream: “accessible architecture”, and very signed, for everyone. “With my Revolution Precrafted I want to bring a Pritzker Prize into everyone’s life,” he explains. “My prefabricated houses are a small revolution: the pret-a-porter of great architecture”.
Using sophisticated technologies and optimizing production costs, Revolution Precrafted manages to make the architecture of the great masters democratic. For now, Antonio has enlisted 40 personalities, including archistars and designers. The latest project, Simple by Jean Nouvel, was presented in Paris, at the Tuileries. But the legend Zaha Hadid, Ron Arad, Jurgen H. Mayer, Daniel Libeskind, Kengo Kuma, the Campana brothers, Marcel Wanders and Tom Dixon also participated.
Among the most interesting examples is the Modular Living Unit by Paulo Mendez Da Rocha + METRO, a flexible system that can be used in a variety of contexts and environments: urban and rural, tropical and temperate. Composed of living room, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and verandas, it allows you to create different spatial combinations through multiple units. And it can also be extended over several floors. The structural elements that compose it are sized to allow ease of transport and to minimize the equipment during installation.
Matilda Home by Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas is a mobile prefabricated housedesigned for any location in the world. The unit’s design allows multiple modules to form a large cloud, with no size limitations: it can be a city, a landscape or simply a house.
Philip Johnson/Alan Ritchie Architects’ Modular Glass House, inspired by the American architect’s masterpiece, has been redesigned as a series of modular components that can be pre-manufactured and shipped. The design follows the principles of the original architecture with greater lightness and flexibility.