Today we released the above rendering for Junction House and announced that sales will begin this fall.

144 condominium homes. A mix of 1, 2 and 3 bedroom suites, including our Two-Storey House Collection and our Laneway House Collection. Prices starting in the $400s.

One of our partners also happened to serendipitously send me this Globe & Mail article today talking about the increasing demand for and shortage of mid-rise housing:

“The market is substantially undersupplied in mid-rise,” said Mr. Hildebrand, who notes that mid-rise projects in the GTA [Greater Toronto Area] were just 31 of 2017’s new launches, accounting for 3,833 units (12 per cent of the total).

Stephen Price, CEO of Graywood Developments, went on to say this in the article:

“There’s a huge appetite for medium density in Toronto. Many don’t want to live in the downtown core, this buyer is more interested in being in a community and there is a greater propensity to buy larger more livable units.”

Given the huge influx of inquiries we received today after the above announcement was made, I would say that feels right. And our focus at Junction House is very much on “larger and more livable.”

If you’re at all interested in a new home at Junction House, I would encourage you to get on our priority list, here.

After Junction House was announced, an interesting discussion emerged on Twitter around 2 storey suite designs.

There are, of course, many examples of multi-level apartments in the city. There’s 75 Portland by CORE Architects. There’s District Lofts and Mozo by architectsAlliance. And there’s Village by the Grange (pointed out during the discussion), which has a number of 2 and even 3 storey suites.

Another example that was raised by Gil Meslin is 14 Blevins Place. Now demolished, Blevins Place was designed in 1955 and completed in 1957 as part of the Regent Park South urban renewal project. It was designed by the British-born Toronto architect Peter Dickinson and by Page + Steele.

In 2005, prior to its demolition, the building was identified as a listed heritage building, but it was never elevated to a designated heritage building.

Perhaps most notable about the building are its “skip-stop corridors” and its 2 storey suites. See below images taken from this Heritage Impact Assessment by ERA Architects.

The reality is that modern architecture has had a long history of employing multi-level units and skip-stop corridors. Le Corbusier and Oscar Neimeyer were said to be experimenting with them as far back as the 1930s.

But I think most would agree that Toronto is a very different city today compared to what it was in the 1950s. Some still believe that no child should grow up in an apartment, but I disagree with that belief system. I lived in an apartment as a kid and somehow I survived.

This morning while I was having a bowl of cereal and fruit, I came across this floor plan from 75 Portland Street, Toronto by CORE Architects:

It’s a 2-storey unit with a den and double height living room on the main floor and 1 bedroom and 1 media lounge (that could act like a 2nd bedroom, but doesn’t have a window so it can’t be called that) on the second floor.

This floor plan is a perfect example of what I was getting at with my post: The long and narrow of property affordability. 

Rough rough, the overall dimensions look to be about 4.3m wide x 12m deep. It’s a fairly deep plan, which means you have to be careful how much “frontage” you give it. If the apartment gets too wide, then it could quickly become too big and potentially unaffordable.

With the above dimensions, and if you didn’t go 2 storeys, you’d be forced to do an inset/recessed bedroom. The living room would get all of the windows. And if you made the apartment wider to accommodate that main floor bedroom, then you’d likely end up doing an inset/recessed 2nd bedroom, anyways, because of how big the unit had become. So there are trade-offs to consider.

I’ve seen this layout first hand and I like it a lot. I think it’s an elegant solution to the challenge of deep floor plates. 

But what do you think? It may not suit everyone’s needs, so I would be really curious to hear your thoughts in the comment section below or on Twitter.