Sunday, June 23, 2019

'Patrick Drahi's acquisition of Sotheby's confirms the Art Market's entry into the digital era of the 21st century'

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ARTPRICE

  17/06/2019 - 22:15

Artprice (New York): thierry Ehrmann: 'Patrick Drahi's acquisition of Sotheby's confirms the Art Market's entry into the digital era of the 21st century'.

(New York, NY) thierry Ehrmann: “Patrick Drahi's acquisition of Sotheby's confirms the Art Market's entry into the digital era of the 21st century. Artprice has always argued that the global Art Market – weighing roughly 90 billion dollars – was several decades behind in terms of digital culture and Internet”.
Fine Art auction turnover for the world two major auction houses: Christie's and Sotheby's
“So it's great news for the Art Market and Artprice to see Sotheby's – the only listed auction operator – being acquired bought by Patrick Drahi, a 55-year-old global entrepreneur with a portfolio of telecommunications, media and digital companies. The offer price, which represents a premium of 61% to Sotheby's closing price on June 14, 2019, and a 56% premium to the company's 30 trading-day volume weighted average share price, reflects Patrick Drahi's genuine confidence in Sotheby's capacity for exponential development via a digital mutation”.
Artprice: “Since 2000, the Art Market has enjoyed a period of distinctly virtuous growth, becoming an efficient market with a return on investment of almost 7% per year and a volume growth of 450%. For much of this period, the backdrop to this growth has been a savings environment of zero or even negative interest rates in the eurozone. Meanwhile, the market itself has evolved from roughly 500,000 art collectors after WWII to nearly 90 million Art Consumers today, the vast majority of whom are completely at ease with new technologies”.

thierry Ehrmann: “The soft power of the world' major powers is a powerful geopolitical driver for the growth and development of the Museum Industry®. Artprice was one of the first players to appreciate and conceptualize the global importance of this industry. As we analysed in an earlier study, more museums opened between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2014 than during the previous two centuries. Every year approximately 700 new museums with international standing – each holding a minimum of 4,500 artworks – open their doors on five continents, representing one of the primary sustainable drivers of the global Art Market”.
For 21 years, Artprice – the global leader in Art Market information and a dedicated digital pioneer – has contributed to the Art Market's evolution into the digital era. Its databanks are today an absolute worldwide reference in terms of exhaustivity, indices and Art Market statistics. Remember that Artprice, via external growth and R&D, was the first global player to produce algorithm indices, using Big Data and Artificial Intelligence based on the observation of billions of connections to our databanks in strict compliance with existing data protection laws around the world.
In his statement, the position of Sotheby's CEO, Tad Smith, is perfectly lucid: he openly welcomes Patrick Drahi into the Sotheby's family: “Known for his commitment to innovation and ingenuity. He has a long-term view with a proven track record in the field of telecommunications, media and digital companies and I strongly believe that the company will be in excellent hands for decades to come with Patrick as our owner.”
Likewise, Domenico De Sole, chairman of the Sotheby's board of directors, welcomes the move: “Following a comprehensive review, the Board enthusiastically supports Mr. Drahi's offer, which delivers a significant premium to market for our shareholders”.
Several key facts and figures concerning Sotheby's and the Fine Art auction market:
Sotheby's is the world's number two Fine Art auction operator with a total turnover of $3,93 billion in 2018, behind Christie's with $5 billion. Together, the two Anglo-Saxon giants account for over half of the planet's Fine Art auction turnover: Christie's for 32.3% and Sotheby's for 25.4%. Their respective strengths are based on global coverage of the Art Market.
Sotheby's 2018 Fine Art auction turnover by location
© Artprice.com
New York: $2 billion (51%)
London: $1.1 billion (28%)
Hong Kong: $554 million (14%)
Paris: $188 million (5%)
Milan: $32 million (0.8%)
Melbourne: $24 million (0.6%)
Mumbai: $8 million (0.2%)
Zurich: $7 million (0.2%)
Despite 275 years of existence, Sotheby's has experienced a number of relatively close strategy changes:
- 2015: Tad Smith became CEO and the firm terminated sales in mainland China (Beijing) and the Middle East (Doha).
- 2016: 13.5% of Sotheby's was acquired by the Chinese insurance company Taikang Life Insurance, whose CEO is the founder of the Chinese auction operator, China Guardian.
- 2017: the firm eliminated buyers' fees from online sales.
- 2018: buyers' fees were re-established for online sales
Sales growth at both Christie's and Sotheby's has been around 400% since 2000, comparable to the 450% growth of the global Art Market over the same period.
After the announcement of Sotheby's H1 2018 results, Sotheby's share price dropped 10%. Despite rising sales, the company's profits fell by 23%, a contraction that Sotheby's blamed on its own guarantee strategy. Apparently the sale of Modigliani's Nu Couché (sur le côté gauche)(1917-18) for $157 million – an absolute record for Sotheby's – was not the best financial transaction of the year for the world's second largest auction operator.
Artprice: “The world's top two auction houses, with no rivals to date, are now both owned by French investors and collectors: François Pinault acquired Christie's in 1998 and now Patrick Drahi effectively owns Sotheby's since 17 June 2019”.
Copyright ©2019 thierry Ehrmann – www.artprice.com
About Artprice:
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Founded by thierry Ehrmann (see Who's who certified Biography ) (c) https://imgpublic.artprice.com/img/wp/sites/11/2019/03/2019-bio-whoswho-thierry-ehrmann.pdf).
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Artprice is the global leader in art price and art index databanks. It has over 30 million indices and auction results covering more than 700,000 artists. Artprice Images® gives unlimited access to the largest Art Market resource in the world: a library of 126 million images or prints of artworks from the year 1700 to the present day, along with comments by Artprice's art historians.
Artprice permanently enriches its databanks with information from 6,300 auctioneers and it publishes a constant flow of art market trends for the world's principal news agencies and approximately 7,200 international press publications.
For its 4,500,000 members, Artprice gives access to the world's leading Standardised Marketplace for buying and selling art. Artprice is preparing its blockchain for the Art Market. It is BPI-labelled (scientific national French label) Artprice's Global Art Market Annual Report for 2018 published last March 2019: https://www.artprice.com/artprice-reports/the-art-market-in-2018
Artprice is associated with Artron Group the Chinese leader in the Art Market, its solid institutional partner.
About the Artron Group:
“Artron Art Group (Artron), a comprehensive cultural industrial group founded in 1993 by Wan jie, is committed to inheriting, enhancing and spreading art value. Based on abundant art data, Artron provides art industry and art fans with professional service and experience of quality products by integrated application of IT, advanced digital science and innovative crafts and materials.
Having produced more than 60,000 books and auction catalogues, Artron is the world's largest art book printer with a total print volume of 300 million a year. It has more than 3 million professional members in the arts sector and an average of 15 million daily visits, making it the world's leading art website.”
Artron's Web: www.Artron.net
Artprice's Contemporary Art Market Annual Report for 2018 - free access at:
https://www.artprice.com/artprice-reports/the-contemporary-art-market-report-2018
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Thursday, June 20, 2019

"Locals in Venice are feeling increasingly left out of the conversation"




David Chipperfield Procuratie Vecchie in Venice

"Locals in Venice are feeling increasingly left out of the conversation"

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As David Chipperfield begins the next stage of the restoration of the Procuratie Vecchie on Piazza San Marco in Venice, James Imam asks if architects can save cities straining to deal with increasing tourist numbers.
David Chipperfield's restoration of the Procuratie Vecchie is a declaration of solidarity with Venice's residents. The city is besieged by hordes of visitors and locals are abandoning the lagoon for the mainland. Now, Chipperfield has pledged to "return the building to the people as a place to love and a font of inspiration". So can architects help save cities buckling under the strain of tourism?
A record 60,000 visitors now arrive in Venice daily. In turn, locals are fleeing as house prices spiral and human congestion becomes suffocating. The city council's attempts to stem tourists by introducing turnstiles and taxes have been futile. Earlier this month, 5,000 furious residents took to the streets after a 65,500-ton runaway cruise ship collided with a ferry, injuring at least four.
Cities elsewhere are similarly afflicted. Barcelona now hosts 30 million tourists a year (10 million more than Venice). And in Bruges, the "Venice of the North", city authorities have passed measures limiting the movement of cruise ships. Clearly, lessons gleaned from Venice could have broader relevance.
As a potential symbol of the city's will to live, the Procuratie Vecchie, with its iconic 172-metre-long arched colonnade that skirts the entire north face of Piazza San Marco, is a prominent one. It was constructed in 1538 to house the Doge's most senior administrators, before insurers Generali occupied them from 1832 to the 1980s. The buildings have been unused since then and have been closed to the public throughout their 500-year history.
As a potential symbol of the city's will to live, the Procuratie Vecchie is a prominent one
Now, Generali is opening them up as work and public spaces, with a scheduled delivery date of 2021. The first two floors will house offices for Generali and other businesses, while the third will be a base for Human Safety Net – Generali's new charity, and will also feature an auditorium and exhibition spaces.
Chipperfield's team started work on the structure in 2017, and now has been given permission to start the bulk of the renovation. Although Generali GCEO Philippe Donnet has dodged questions about the cost of the project, he has repeatedly underlined that Generali is "creating something that is not dependent on tourism".
His comment belies a strong sense of purpose and chimes with recent calls in the architecture world for great social responsibility. At last year's Venice Architecture Biennale, curators Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara proposed the theme "Freespace", beseeching architects to "go beyond the visual" and "arm the public" by including them in the dialogue.
Whether intentional or not, this felt pertinent to Venice, where careless new builds like Santiago Calatrava's hopelessly impractical Ponte della Costituzione and the roundly-pilloried cuboid Hotel Santa Chiara now litter the city centre.
Renovations are often equally problematic, with virtuous projects like the neo-Gothic Casa dei Tre Oci on the island of Giudecca (reopened by culture fund Fondazione di Venezia as a photography gallery in 2012) and the the 16th-century Ca' Tron (reopened two years ago after a competition held by architecture university IUAV) exceptions to the rule. More often, historical buildings are turned into hotels.
In Venice careless new builds like Santiago Calatrava's hopelessly impractical Ponte della Costituzione and the roundly-pilloried cuboid Hotel Santa Chiara now litter the city centre
Locals are feeling increasingly left out of the conversation. The city council has asked locals for suggestions on how to redevelop the largely-disused 45-hectare Arsenale site. In 2016, Forum Futuro Arsenale, an alliance of resident associations, published well-researched proposals, but these have been ignored.
OMA's redevelopment of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in 2016 saw the lavish former refuge for German merchants turned into a deluxe shopping centre for wealthy tourists. Resistance by groups like Italia Nostra Venezia to the planned introduction of escalators and a skylight, which were deemed to damage the building's aesthetic, did not get very far.
Faith in Venice's ability to bounce back is ebbing. Last December, the Fondazione di Venzia opened M9, Italy's first digital museum, in mainland Mestre rather than the historical centre. Dubbed a "micro-smart city", the €110m project aims to spark the urban regeneration of the post-industrial urban area. Speaking at the time of the launch, Foundation President Giampietro Brunello said, "realistically, Mestre is going to become increasingly important for the administration and coordination of the entire city".
Faith in Venice's ability to bounce back is ebbing
The 10,000-square-metre Sauerbruch-Hutton-designed centre incorporates a 16th-century convent, an old factory and new builds, while the central, objectless museum recounts Italian 20th century history through VR goggles, holograms and immersive environments; there is also a retail centre for innovative companies. Yet there has been alarm that the museum is falling well behind its objective of drawing an 200,000 annual visitors.
Focus should return to the historical centre where more can be done to coordinate the city's unique weave of academic institutions, resident associations, philanthropists, charitable foundations and rich cultural heritage for the greater good.
The challenges of the Chipperfield project are immense. To improve accessibility and permeability he has overhauled the building's design by adding new staircases and feeding long passageways through previously separate apartments, converting the vertical structure into a horizontal one.
Simultaneously, he has protected the finer details that form the building's multifaceted identity. Strict regulations in Venice mean materials used in the building can only be replaced when irreparable. Gouged brickwork will be plastered and whitewashed rather than replaced. By threading electrics and sprinkler systems through internal tracks, disruption to ancient materials will be minimised.
Focus should return to the historical centre where more can be done to coordinate the city's unique weave of institutions
Chipperfield's extensive experience with sensitive sites means he is well prepared for this task, but the Procuratie Vecchie, where improvised alterations have been made over five centuries, are particularly complex. The building's identity is richly layered: in one room, bright frescoes and plaster ornamentation make an interesting contrast with windows bearing the Generali insignia.
The Chipperfield renovation demonstrates that, when managed intelligently, real progress can be made despite such projects' inherent complexities. At the press conference, it was clear that potentially antagonistic council-employed conservationists, real estate professionals and architects have made real progress through shared drive and a willingness to compromise.
However, Chipperfield doesn't believe this building, or even architecture, can save Venice. "That is a question for politics," he told me. "Architecture is only as useful and viable as political decisions. The real question is how do you keep rents low and provide infrastructure and facilities? That is the challenge for all marginal parts of Europe."
In Galicia, the Spanish region blighted by high unemployment and a dearth in opportunities for young people, Chipperfield has created an agency working on environmental and economic issues.
"I think architects can contribute to finding solutions but not through architecture," explained Chipperfield. "In Galicia we do town planning, traffic control, work on green space and on trying to protect the identity, partly by working with politicians. You end up giving up your architectural tools and adapting your training to other things. Town planning is gone, leaving political decisions alone".
During the Procuratie Vecchie project, Chipperfield has resembled both architect and town planner by deftly realising commercial requests within the framework of tight regulations whilst unerringly seeking to preserve the buildings' essence. If more socially-engaged architects can step up to the mark, cities like Venice can surely benefit.
Photography is by Contrasto Martino Lombezzi
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new headquarters for the Olympics




3XN builds new headquarters for the Olympics on shore of Lake Geneva

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Copenhagen studio 3XN has completed Olympic House, a new headquarters for the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Lausanne, Switzerland.
3XN collaborated with Swiss architecture office IttenBrechbühl to create the building, which has been designed around the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) principles.
"We designed the building around five key objectives that translate the Olympic movement's core values into built form: movement, transparency, flexibility, sustainability, and collaboration," Kim Herforth Nielsen, co-founder of 3XN, told Dezeen.
Olympic House in Lausanne Switzerland by 3XN
Built within a public park on the shore of Lake Geneva, Olympic House stands next to 18th-century castle Château de Vidy. Created as offices for the organisation's 500 staff, many of the building's elements reference the Olympics.
"Every part of the building has a meaning," said Jan Ammundsen, head of design at 3XN.
"From the dynamic glass facade that mimics the high-powered athleticism of an Olympic athlete, to the central staircase that references the iconic Olympic rings and the spirit of international collaboration that they represent
Olympic House in Lausanne Switzerland by 3XN
The five-storey building is wrapped in a glass facade, which was created using parametric design – a digital process that allows you to test various design iterations.
Appearing differently from all angles, it is intended to represent the energy of an athlete. It also allows visitors to the park to see inside the building and observe the workings of the Olympic organisation.
Olympic House in Lausanne Switzerland by 3XN
"The visual transparency of the building is a metaphor for the new direction of the IOC as they strive towards a greater organisational transparency, reflected in the overall structural changes initiated by the Olympic Agenda 2020," explained Nielsen.
"The glass facade allows the daily work of the building’s inhabitants to be visible from the outside, and also celebrates its particular location by providing stunning views of the lake beyond."
The headquarters is arranged around a central atrium, with all five storeys connected by the Unity Staircase.
This oak staircase, which has been designed to references the five rings on the Olympic flag, is surrounded by a meeting rooms and exhibition spaces, with a cafeteria on the ground floor.
"The staircase is designed to be visual expression of unity and collaboration within the organisation and the Olympic Games," added Nielsen.
Olympic House in Lausanne Switzerland by 3XN
Around the central atrium the offices have been designed to follow the Olympic core values of collaboration, flexibility and movement.
"At 3XN we believe that architecture shapes behaviour – thus, we have designed the interior with as few structural constraints as possible, in order to facilitate interaction and communication among the staff," added Ammundsen.
"The offices can be easily moved though the open spaces, and workspaces can be modified to suite the ever-changing needs of the organisation."
Olympic House in Lausanne Switzerland by 3XN
The Olympic organisation wanted the the building to be an exemplar of sustainable construction, and the building has been certified as achieving LEED Platinum.
To achieve this, 3XN and IttenBrechbühl incorporated numerous energy- and water-saving measures into the office block.
Olympic House in Lausanne Switzerland by 3XN
The facade has a double skin, with the inner layer triple glazed, and the whole building is designed to be extremely airtight. Rainwater is captured to be used in the building and solar panels have been installed on the roof.
During the construction process more than 90 per cent of material from buildings that were previously on the site were reused or recycled.
Olympic House in Lausanne Switzerland by 3XN
Copenhagen-based 3XN was founded by Kim Herforth Nielsen, Lars Frank Nielsen and Hans Peter Svendler Nielsen in 1986.
Photography is by Adam Mørk / International Olympic Committee.
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