Things are busy right now as we get ready to unveil Junction House this fall and so I’m a bit behind on my news and reading. 

I just finished reading Alex Bozikovic’s Globe article on BIG’s new KING Toronto project (official name). It is an interesting piece about creating villages and a sense of community in new developments – something that Bjarke Ingels has been focused on for many years. 

Below are a few renderings of the project. I’m excited for this one. And as I said before on the blog, I am sure it will be precedent setting in a number of ways.

One remark from the article that stood out for me is this one here:

Still: The design breaks a lot of rules. Which is why it took two years of difficult negotiations with city planners to reach approvals. “We wanted it to be quieter,” says Lynda MacDonald, a senior Toronto planner who was involved in overseeing the project. “It’s a very large project, and we wanted to make sure it respected the character of King Street.”

I am often asked why we don’t see more innovation in architecture and real estate. There are a number of reasons for that. One of them is risk. Development is in many ways a game of risk mitigation. 

But another reason is that when you try and do something unconventional that disrupts the status quo, you also call into question the typical planning criteria used to evaluate projects. And that may slow you down.

Alex accurately points out in his article that we are used to doing things around here in one of two ways:

The King Street project is also an ambitious experiment with urban design. There are basically two species of tower in Toronto: a midrise slab of six to 10 storeys, which steps back at the top; and a “tower-and-podium,” a model borrowed from Vancouver that combines a fat, squared-off base (or “podium”) with a tall, skinny residential tower. Both can work, but can also create the big-box blandness that many people dislike about new urban housing.

None of this is to suggest that we should ignore the character of a particular area. It is critical and I believe that KING Toronto has been mindful of that. 

But I also firmly believe in ambitious city building and I think there’s no question that KING Toronto is doing exactly that.

Images: Hayes Davison via Dezeen and courtesy of Westbank

Reed Kroloff has a noteworthy piece in the New York Times talking about how architecture is no longer just a ‘gentleman’s profession’. Though less than a third of AIA (American Institute of Architects) members are females, “offices led or owned by women are creating an ever-wider range of public buildings that address architecture and urbanism in new and invigorating ways”, says Kroloff.

I am thrilled, but not surprised, to see Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang on the list (pictured above). Her firm is the design architect behind our One Delisle proposal. And I was also happy to see Magui Peredo of Estudio Macias Peredo on the list. She is based in Guadalajara and, if you aren’t familiar with her work, I recommend you check it out. I love the materiality of it.

Image: New York Times

I spent this evening driving around Toronto with an architect friend of mine looking for laneway houses. (Late summer sunsets have a wonderful way of extending the day.)

I think most people would be surprised by how many of them are hidden away behind our streets. I think of laneways as a forgotten third layer behind our major avenues and smaller streets.

One of my favorite laneway houses, pictured above, is Armstrong Avenue by Taylor_Smyth Architects. It’s a bit unusual in that it’s exceptionally large for a laneway house (2,200 square feet). But that’s because the building was originally built as a dairy (1912).

What’s interesting about the house is that from the outside it looks rather nondescript. Okay, it looks raw and rundown. Here is a closer photo:

But then inside, it looks like this. Modern. Clean. Polished. And light-filled.

I’m not suggesting that this should or could become a repeatable model for laneway housing in Toronto. Again, it’s a unique circumstance. But I think contrast is an extraordinary poetic device. And in this case, it speaks to both the past and the future of this city.