There is a comforting story sold across luxury real estate: that any building designed by a famous architect will, simply by carrying that signature, outperform the market. It's a story brokers tell, developers underwrite, and buyers want to believe. It also happens to be only half true. The other half — the half we usually omit — is where the discipline of the trade actually sits.
Heart of the City represents a small portfolio of architecturally significant residences. We sit on the side of the argument that says architecture, properly defined, does drive long-run value. But "properly defined" is doing most of the work in that sentence. This piece is an attempt to define it honestly — using the available data, the documented cases, and the four conditions we've come to use as a filter ourselves.
— IThe case for architecture as an appreciating asset.
There is enough empirical evidence to take the thesis seriously. Four data points, each from a different vantage:
The Manhattan condo premium. Research by CityRealty on New York condos designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architects found that, on a price-per-square-foot basis, those buildings sell 44% higher than the surrounding neighborhood and 47.5% higher than the Manhattan market average. The list includes towers by Jean Nouvel, Tadao Ando, Herzog & de Meuron, Zaha Hadid Architects and Rem Koolhaas.
The long-run appreciation differential. A long-run survey by Lindsey Architects compared architect-designed homes against non-architect properties over the same holding period: 200.7% appreciation vs 172.6%. A 28-point spread in appreciation rate is not noise. It compounds.
The branded-residences premium. Knight Frank's Residence Report 2025/26, surveying nearly 80 luxury brands across hotel groups and non-hotel entrants (Bentley, Aston Martin, Bugatti, Bulgari), found that branded residences command, on average, a 20% to 35% premium over comparable non-branded units. At the top of the market — Dorchester, Aman, Bugatti — the premium can reach 70% or higher. Bugatti Residences in Dubai have been selling at a reported 237% premium over the local benchmark.
The single-asset compounds. The penthouse at Zaha Hadid Architects' 520 West 28th Street in Chelsea was acquired in 2020 for $20.2 million. In October 2025 it entered contract with a $35 million ask — roughly 73% appreciation in five years, in a Manhattan market that did not appreciate 73% in five years.
A 28-point spread in appreciation rate isn't noise. It compounds.
— IIThe case against — three buildings that didn't perform.
If the thesis were universal, this section would not exist. It does. The same body of evidence that supports the case for architecture also contains failures sharp enough to discipline our enthusiasm.
53 West 53 / MoMA Tower — Jean Nouvel
The Jean Nouvel-designed tower above MoMA was projected to generate $2.14 billion in sales. Four years after launch, partners had taken more than $167 million in cumulative price cuts. A Pritzker laureate, an iconic site, a five-star sales operation — and still, sustained underperformance versus the launch expectations.
152 Elizabeth Street — Tadao Ando
Ando's first New York commission. A penthouse that originally asked $35 million closed at $29.95 million in 2018 — a 14% discount from the initial ask. The object remains a status symbol. It hasn't, on the available evidence, been an outperforming financial asset.
520 West 28th Street — Zaha Hadid Architects
The same building that produced the +73% penthouse appreciation cited above also produced the triplex that closed at $20.2 million against an original $50 million asking price, and the apartment Ariana Grande sold for roughly $12 million after acquiring it at $16 million. Inside a single iconic structure, the dispersion of outcomes was as wide as the broader market.
Add to these the documented quality issues across other starchitect projects — Bjarke Ingels' Vancouver House flooding from its own water system, Calatrava's Valencia opera house roof leaking and shedding mosaic, Zaha Hadid's Vienna library shedding an 80-kilogram block of concrete — and the picture is clear enough: pedigree alone, without execution and context, is not a yield.
— IIIThe four conditions.
Reading the wins and the losses side by side, a pattern emerges. The architecture thesis is not random. It works conditionally. Heart of the City uses four filters before we agree to represent a project:
Institutional pedigree of the architect
Not "famous" — institutional. Pritzker laureate, RIBA Gold Medal, monographs published by Phaidon or Taschen, museum retrospectives. The kind of pedigree that compounds in cultural memory over decades, not press cycles.
Edition size that creates real scarcity
Under 200 residences total, ideally under 150. Above that threshold the object stops behaving like a collectible and starts behaving like inventory. Muraba Veil's 131 residences sit comfortably inside the threshold.
Location that already commands its own premium
Architecture multiplies value. It does not create it from nothing. A Pritzker building in a secondary location compounds at a lower rate than the same building on a first-tier address. The Bilbao Effect academic literature is unambiguous on this point.
Execution that holds up after three to five years
The building must still function — and look — the way it did at handover. Buildings that flood, crack, or shed materials lose their premium fast, regardless of the signature above the door. This is the most under-discussed condition and arguably the most decisive.
Where all four hold, the thesis tends to hold with them. Where one is missing, dispersion of outcomes widens. Where two or more are missing, the premium evaporates.
— IVHow we read Muraba Veil through this lens.
The Object of the Month on the cover of this issue is, predictably, the case we believe in most clearly. Read against the four conditions:
- Pedigree. RCR Arquitectes are Pritzker laureates (2017). Muraba Veil is their first skyscraper. Catalonian provenance, monograph-level practice.
- Edition. 131 residences total. The number does not change. Every floor is a full unit, which compresses the buyer pool further.
- Location. Al Wasl, directly on Dubai Water Canal, between Downtown and Jumeirah. Already a premium micro-location before the tower lands.
- Execution. The unknown, and we say so. Completion is scheduled for Q4 2028. The four-condition read on Veil will be possible to verify, not simply argue, sometime in 2031–2033.
Three of the four conditions hold. The fourth is the bet. That is, on balance, a position we are comfortable representing. It is not a position we are comfortable selling as a certainty — and we don't.
Architecture does not eliminate risk. It changes the shape of it.
— VWhat this means in practice.
The reason we wrote this piece — and the reason it sits permanently on the site rather than as a marketing pitch — is that the buyers we work with read this kind of writing the way analysts read research. They want the failure cases. They want the conditions, named clearly. They want to know what we'd be willing to argue under cross-examination, not just what we'd write in a brochure.
Architecture as a collectible asset class is a real thesis. It is also a conditional one. The clearest favour we can do for a serious buyer is to keep both halves of that sentence in the room at the same time.