Famous Names Design
New Luxury Condos

Architect Daniel Libeskind has built his reputation on some famous commissions. He created the master plan for the new World Trade Center in Manhattan and designed the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Now he's got a new project: a luxury condominium in Covington, Ky.

As developers flood real-estate markets around the country with posh apartment buildings, they are turning to big-name architects like Mr. Libeskind to distinguish their gleaming towers from any others in town.

As a result, in major cities and smaller urban centers, new residential buildings are emerging as the most striking designs around. It's a shift from past generations, when the largest or most interesting building in town was constructed for a corporation, not residential life.

Daniel Libeskind's condo with a slanted roof in Covington, Ky.

"Downtown living is reformulating cities. A new skyline is being created by housing," says Ralph Johnson, a Chicago architect with the firm Perkins & Will who is designing a sail-shaped 34-story tower in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Even Donald Trump, who in the past hired less well-known architects to devise black glass and gold-encrusted towers, has attached his name to a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., condo hotel with eminent architect Michael Graves. In New York, developer Frank J. Sciame brought in noted Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava for what is among the most ambitious buildings in the world. The project, Eighty South Street, which has yet to begin construction in lower Manhattan, will price condos starting at $35 million.

In part, developers are taking advantage of affluent buyers' interest in brand-name architecture. And the strategy is working, at least for now. Two-thirds of the 55 units in a condo building designed by Mr. Libeskind in Denver sold for more than $500 a square foot, a record for that city. The groundbreaking isn't until mid-May. The $35 million glassy block structure will sit across a small park from Mr. Libeskind's $120 million addition to the Denver Art Museum. Both will open in 2006.

Architect Ralph Johnson's design in St. Petersburg, Fla.

The developers, Mile High Development and Corporex, are using a large photo of Mr. Libeskind in its promotional materials for the Museum Residences. Brochures offer multiple views of the building and Mr. Libeskind clad in black garb and sporting his signature square spectacles. The slogan: "Location, Location, Architect."

The location, however, is not an established residential neighborhood. It's near the state Capitol Building and local courts, and people accused of crimes buy bail bonds in converted Victorian homes nearby. The nearest supermarket is a 15-minute walk.

Five blocks closer to a more residential neighborhood is the Beauvallon. It's also a luxury condo, but not designed by a famous architect. The units sold out, but for $140 a square foot less than Mr. Libeskind's building even though it has amenities such as a spa and a gym that Museum Residences lacks.

Kirk Brown, an oil and gas developer, and his wife, Jill Wiltse, inventor of Pet Pickups disposable dog waste bags and dispensers, bought a one-bedroom apartment in the Museum Residences for $533,000, three days after it went on sale. "It's such dramatic architecture, we wanted to be there," says Mr. Brown of the five-story building that wraps around the museum's parking garage.

Like other early buyers, the couple preferred a unit facing the museum rather than the Rocky Mountains. They envision using the apartment as an office, a place to lodge out-of-town guests and temporary living quarters while they construct a space in their current home nearby to display their collection of modernist Hungarian paintings.

Notwithstanding the high prices, Mr. Libeskind says he's interested in building housing that's unique to the market. "It's democracy," he says. "It's not social housing or the fantasy Calatrava building [in New York]. It's the middle market. It's an interesting neighbor to this grunt civic sculpture," he says, describing his museum design's aggressive, sharp-angled form.

After the quick pace of sales in Denver, one of the building's developers, Corporex, hired Mr. Libeskind to redesign a 22-story rounded tower called the Ascent at Roebling's Bridge in Covington, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. Like many of Mr. Libeskind's designs, the roof slants upward and the façade is marked with sharp angles. It will cost $36 million to build, and most of the 80 units will be offered between $380,000 and $1 million, a new high for the area.

Craig Nassi, president of BCN Development, the company that built the rival Beauvallon in Denver, has hired Mr. Libeskind for a 39-story luxury condo tower called the Aura in the decidedly unflashy market of Sacramento, Calif. (He says he didn't know about the Museum Residences when he hired Mr. Libeskind.) BCN, too, will capitalize on Mr. Libeskind's reputation: the sales office will feature a minimuseum of Mr. Libeskind's work.

Using an architect's name to sell apartments isn't a new strategy. Modernist icon Ludwig Mies van Der Rohe designed several apartment buildings in the 1950s and 1960s, including those along Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. They remain among the most coveted addresses in the Windy City.

Donald Trump is working with architect Michael Graves on a condominium-hotel in Fort Lauderdale that won't be completed until 2007. Average cost per square foot is over $1,100.

The latest fad was reignited two years ago when two condominium towers designed by architect Richard Meier on a highway near the Hudson River in Manhattan opened to rave reviews for their architecture. The project also commands huge prices: a 3,700-square-foot unit is on the resale market now for $9 million. The towers attracted famous buyers such as Calvin Klein and Martha Stewart. Despite publicity over the buildings' quality issues, including a major leak, Mr. Meier's third tower is going up across the street. It's 60% sold and studios there have sold for more than $1.5 million.

It's unclear whether an architect's name attached to a building pays off in price appreciation compared to the old standby in real estate -- a good location. Mr. Mies van Der Rohe's Colonnade, a 22-story glass and metal building constructed in 1960 in Newark, N.J. has stunning views of Manhattan, but fetches only around $1,000 in monthly rent for a two bedroom, about average for the working-class neighborhood.

Frank Lloyd Wright is widely admired but his houses are often a pain to sell. Archaic layouts, small bedrooms and a lack of closets don't suit today's lifestyles. His flat roofs are notoriously leaky and there are often restrictions on remodeling historic structures.

In Chicago, two-year-old Skybridge, a condo developed by Moran Associates and Howard Weiner and designed by Mr. Johnson of Perkins & Will, is more than 20% empty despite a healthy housing market and industry honors for its design. One of the developers, Tom Moran, says too many three-bedroom units were constructed and competitors in more established neighborhoods lure buyers.

Yet many developers have decided such architectural cachet is worth the price. Well-known architects command two to fives times more than the average fees, which are about 2% of construction costs.

"Michael Graves costs more money, it's true," says Roy Stillman, lead developer on the Trump project in Fort Lauderdale, a condominium-hotel that Trump will operate. Since the sales office opened in March, the building has garnered 5% refundable deposits on 225 of its 300 units without any advertising. The average cost per square foot is more than $1,100. The building won't be completed until 2007.

Mr. Stillman equates a respected architect's work to a good insurance policy. "God forbid there's a downturn," he says. "I believe this building is the last to suffer and first to benefit. It's unique."

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