Brandon Donnelly
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Caffè del Popolo in Córdoba, Argentina

Brandon Donnelly

Brandon Donnelly

Cities should do what they can to allow the smallest of interventions.

What I mean by this is that -- when it comes to our urban environment -- small and granular is usually a good thing. It's why our historic main streets tend to be better urban streets than the ones we are creating today from scratch. They were built at a time when cities were more compact and it was more feasible to build small. Now, intuitively, we know this to be true. It's why planners will encourage things like "fine-grained retail" and impose maximum areas for each CRU (commercial-retail unit). It's to try and recreate how things were done before.

But at the same time, we (as cities) also do lots of things that make it more difficult to go small. Every hurdle means that you need that much bigger of a project in order to make it worth while for a developer or small-business owner. Take for example Toronto's current debate over allowing small-scale retail shops in residential neighborhoods. This is a perfect place for smaller businesses. The rents should be lower than on any major street. But only if we don't erect too many barriers.

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To this end, here's a project and coffee shop in Córdoba, Argentina that I have liked since it was completed back in 2021. Designed by Estudio Rare, which is one of ArchDaily's Best New Practices for this year, the building is situated on a triangular piece of leftover land created by its orthogonal neighbors. The resulting footprint is only about 4 square meters, which is somewhere around half the size of a typical Toronto condominium bedroom. So it's the kind of "site" that could have been easily forgotten and left to collect garbage. And yet, the architect, client, and operator made something work.

Here's the ground floor plan:

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And here's a street view image from May 2024:

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Now, I don't know what hurdles the project team had to jump through to build and operate this coffee shop. Maybe there were very few or maybe there were many. If any of you are from Argentina and familiar with the planning landscape, maybe you can let me know. But for the purposes of this post, it doesn't really matter. The simple point is that these kind of small-scale developments are a positive thing for cities. It doesn't matter that the footprint is only half the size of a small bedroom. It's a place to stop for coffee and a place to linger on the street with others.

Images via Estudio Rare

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farnhamgb55
Commented 3 months ago

Totally agree. A good Toronto example would be the little coffee shop across from the Riverdale Farm/Park.

Brandon Donnelly
Brandon Donnelly
Commented 3 months ago

love that place - imagine if we allowed more of it in our neighborhoods

farnhamgb55
Commented 3 months ago

Very strange that we wouldn't. These are the little anomalies that make Toronto a "city of neighbourhoods"

myron.nebozuk
Commented 3 months ago

Love it! Although the space is tiny, the height of this cafe says: “I may be small but I matter!”

Brandon Donnelly
Brandon Donnelly
Commented 3 months ago

exactly!

paulstapleton
Commented 3 months ago

This reminds me of the notion of the “spandrel” that Stephen Jay Gould introduced as a concept extended to evolution where a constraint provides a space in which the architect (natural selection) can work.

Brandon Donnelly
Brandon Donnelly
Commented 3 months ago

absolutely. constraints are very helpful in the design process. it's much harder to start with a blank canvas.

oceanjangda
Commented 3 months ago
Brandon Donnelly
Brandon Donnelly
Commented 3 months ago

great find!

Caffè del Popolo in Córdoba, Argentina