Construction Maison

NASTASSIA ARENDSE:  I’m sure you’ve seen, as you drive through the streets of Sandton, lots of buildings coming up, a lot of corporates moving into Sandton. I suppose this all started during the early 2000s, when the likes of Investec and Nedbank all moved in. But on the same side of that there are some high- rise luxury apartments that have piggybacked on this relocation of corporates into the area, which would in theory create demand from buyers who decided to live closer to work. We have Kent Gush, who is the managing director of Kent Gush Properties , on the line to talk about Sandton’s luxury- apartment demand . Ken, thank you so much for your time. KENT GUSH:   Good evening, Nastassia. Thank you for having me. NASTASSIA ARENDSE:  I see this all the time – some properties coming up around the corner, especially the luxury apartments . They look absolutely beautiful. But what I want to know is what the demand is like for these apartments at this current stage. KENT GUSH:   As i...

Americans ditch checks ? " /> The first time Amelia Howells ever wrote a check, she was 28 years old and standing in a Connecticut apartment leasing office , with no idea what to do. The British expat had just moved to the U.S.; she'd never had to write a check in London or during her seven years in Switzerland. "I had to sit down with a woman to learn how to do it. She thought it was hilarious and called in all the other people in the office to have a laugh at me," she recalls. "In Switzerland, they don't even have checks. We did all our rent and utilities online, and that was back in the early 2000s." In an era of smartphones, online banking, and Venmo transfers, the U.S. still can't seem to wean itself off paper checks. In most countries, they've gone the way of the fax machine and the rotary telephone. But their demise isn't coming to America any time soon. Americans still reach for their checkbooks more than anybody e...

"Puppy apartments" have recently received rave reviews to help with a well-known challenge: potty- training puppies . It is a well-known fact that a great number of puppies are surrendered to shelters and put to sleep simply because the owners found potty -training too challenging. The so- called puppy apartment is built in such a way as to make the process easier . But do they work? As a certified dog trainer I have observed pros and cons to using a puppy apartment to train dogs. I'll discuss them both here, as well as how the method is meant to work. First, some definitions.The puppy apartment is basically a one bedroom apartment with a bathroom. If you purchase a puppy from a reputable dog breeder , the puppy will have started the potty training process . They will recognize a puppy apartment as similar to the whelping or nesting box that they were born and nursed in. Both spaces work because they rely on innate instincts, offering areas that separate soiling from ...

EMA: “I like long synth songs with a story about fucked-up suburban life.” Alicia Gordon Noise- folk artist EMA ’s new record, Exile in the Outer Ring , began life in 2015 in a white dome in MoMA P.S.1’s snow-covered courtyard. For four hours on a Sunday in February, she sculpted soundscapes from atop a platform set up like the blandest of living rooms: TV, palm plant, messy coffee table , Ikea lamp. She never addressed the crowd; she was in a bubble inside the bubble of the dome, her audience an intermediate layer that formed a ring around the stage. “I like the idea of multiple realities layered on top of each other,” she says. “And that space from the performance — this generic American apartment , with beige carpeting and a shitty couch, slit blinds, a ceiling fan — that’s where I wrote the record from.” EMA, whose full name is Erika M. Anderson, worked on Exile in her similarly bland apartment outside Portland, Oregon, where she’s lived since 2010. “I feel like that apartment,...

Fans of best-selling crime novelist  Laura Lippman  will want to be sitting down for this announcement. Lippman’s next book, Sunburn ( William Morrow ), may come out in February 2018, but you can start reading it now. That’s right—Lippman, author of the acclaimed Tess Monaghan series , has exclusively shared the jaw-dropping cover of Sunburn for the very first time with  Parade , and she’s also giving us a sneak peek at the first few chapters. (Spoiler alert: We’re already hooked on Lippman’s newest characters, and you will be too.) When you’re done staring at the gorgeous cover, read on for an excerpt from  Sunburn . OneJune 11, 1995Belleville, Delaware It’s the sunburned shoulders that get him. Pink, peeling. The burn is two days old, he gauges. Earned on Friday, painful to the touch yesterday, today an itchy soreness that’s hard not to keep fingering, probing, as she’s doing right now in an absentminded way. The skin has started sloughing off, soon those narrow shoulders won ’t b...

Samira Samii attended high school in the Rockaways, but she never thought she’d return to the seaside neighborhood to live. Then circumstances—and a love of all things surf and sand—propelled her back there this month. At the time she signed the lease on her rental in Rockaway Park, she knew that her commute to her job on the Upper West Side would be long, but nothing could prepare her for what that meant in practice. The route she settled on involves taking a shuttle bus to a ferry, then walking to the subway, and making one last transfer before arriving at her work. Read on for Samira's walkthrough of the gorgeous but extreme trip. Living in Rockaway is a little bit like coming back home . See, I heard about the apartment I’m renting—it’s the upstairs apartment in a two-family house—through my high school friend who has lived here all of her life. It’s a block and a half from the ocean. I’m a little bit of a sun worshipper and love the ocean, so I knew I’d love it here. Then th...

The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club .  I'm sitting in the lobby of the Players Club, in Manhattan's Gramercy Park, waiting to meet my interview subject. She is a longtime celebrity assistant , a profession that is both hard to find and incredibly difficult to convince to talk to you about. I'm in the lobby because in order to walk past the entrance of the Players Club you have to be escorted by a member, and I'm waiting because her principal, which I will later learn is a fancy word that celebrity assistants use to describe their bosses, landed after a long flight with a laundry list of things he needed to talk about immediately.  It's during this time that my mind starts to wander to that classic and brutal  Brad Pitt movie.  The Players Club reminds me of Fight Club, if Fight Club took place in a Gothic revival mansion facing the only Manhattan park so exclusive that one needs a key to enter. And replace the barren cement walks with...

Construction of a new park in the Kenmount Terrace area of St. John's began on Friday with a ceremonial sod turning , and while most residents in the area are elated, not everyone is quite as enthusiastic. 'Now we can be out and be active, and be safe.' - Brittany Tibbo The $10-million Kenmount Terrace Community Park comes after years of complaints from residents who felt the relatively new neighbourhood lacked the green space and walking trails they were promised during the early years of development. But following a two- year engagement process and the creation of a steering committed made up of residents, the park is now set to become a reality. The cost for the new park is being shared equally between the provincial government and the city of St. John's. Brittany Tibbo kenmount terrace" width="100%" /> Brittany Tibbo lives in the Kenmount Terrace area and was on the steering committee for the new park. (CBC) Kenmount Terrace resident Brittan...

A human sculpture photography project created by an internationally-renowned choreographer is coming to east London this weekend. Stratford Living , by Willi Dorner (bodies in urban spaces) and presented by East London Dance , has been created especially for Stratford. This is the first time Will’s eye- opening living room project has been mounted in the UK. Working with east London- based professional dancers , Willi has choreographed a series of human sculptures in a range of private homes and public spaces in both the historic and more recently developed quarters of Stratford. He hopes to offer a creative exploration of urbanisation and living environments in east London today . Willi says: “ Stratford Living subverts conventional views of the everyday lived environment by making public the arranged systems that define our private spaces . “We move within a strict framework of arranged systems and regulations. They are so every day that, over time, they become invisible t...