“Toronto is a city that has long struggled to make any sort of impression on the imagination.”
That is how Monocle correspondent Christopher Frey started his recent architectural feature on Toronto’s iconic City Hall. To watch the video click here. It’s about 5 minutes long.
As a born and raised Torontonian who loves this city, I absolutely hate that sort of introduction. But at the same time, it doesn’t surprise me. Growing up in this city, there were always the haters. However, I think it’s important to keep 2 things in mind.
Firstly, Toronto has gone through a dramatic transformation over the last decade or so. In fact, I recently had a friend say to me: “Brandon, 10 years ago you told me that Toronto was going to be a super cool global city. I didn’t believe you then. But you were right.” This is what I was getting at in my Guardian Cities piece when I talked about how people are becoming noticeably more passionate about this city. (I actually wrote about what my friend said but they edited that part out.)
Secondly, if you’ve ever read Seth Godin’s book All Marketers Are Liars, you might remember this line:
“We believe what we want to believe, and once we believe something, it becomes a self-fulfilling truth.” -Seth Godin
— Brandon G. Donnelly (@donnelly_b)
To illustrate what he means by this, Godin uses the example–among many others–of Riedel wine glasses. Riedel is a high end glassware company founded on the belief that every type of wine needs its own unique glass shape. And indeed, their customers believe that the right glass makes all the difference in terms of how their wine will taste. That’s why they buy them.
However, when you blindfold those same people, they are no longer able to tell the difference between a Riedel wine glass and some cheap alternative. The wine all of a sudden tastes the same. What that tells us is that when we believe something is supposed to be better, we actually experience it differently. You could say that we’re actually lying to ourself.
And I’ve thought about this same phenomenon when it comes to cities. When people visit a place like New York they’re supposed to like it. That’s what everybody tells them. New York is great. You’ll love it. But ultimately, that “supposed to” changes how people experience the city.
Which is why when Toronto gets introduced as being bland and banal I get upset. Not only because I disagree, but because I know it’s creating a “supposed to” in somebody’s mind. And that’s not the story we should be telling as a city.
Image: Wikipedia
Last week Toronto City Council voted to support planning staff’s recommendation to approve the landmark Mirvish + Gehry development on King Street West in the Theatre District.
The revised design now includes 2 towers (as opposed to 3) at 82 and 92 storeys tall. As a result of this change, 3 of the 5 existing buildings on the site will now be retained. I think this represents a good balance between (historic) preservation and progress.
If you’re interested in a bit more of the backstory, Toronto Life published an article today called David Mirvish on the Edge. It talks about his father (Ed Mirvish), his upbringing, and how he got into the real estate development business.
I thought you all might enjoy it.
Image: Projectcore
Last night I was out for drinks with a friend of mine who runs an architecture firm in the city called Reflect Architecture. We started talking about the importance of marketing and storytelling in city building and then got onto the topic of Danish architect Bjarke Ingels and his firm BIG.
At only 39, Bjarke Ingels has become a celebrity architect at a relatively young age. He’s working on projects all over the world from Vancouver to New York to Shenzhen. And he describes his work as a combination of “shrewd analysis, playful experimentation, social responsibility and humour.” But what has always interested me about BIG is their use of dead, simple, diagrams (see above for an example).
A diagram is just a graphic way of communicating information. And lots of architects use them as a design tool. But what BIG does is use them to create a narrative around each and every project. If you look at their website you’ll see that every project is presented using a series of diagrams that outline the process used to arrive at the final design. You’ll never just see the final product. You always see the steps involved. Click here for an example from Vancouver.
What’s powerful about this approach is that it demonstrates that there’s a logic behind every design outcome (even if sometimes it might be contrived or done after the fact). It’s not form for the sake of form; it’s form as a result of the uses in the building, the urban context, and so on.
But at the same time, I think it taps into a deeper psychological phenomenon: people love stories. In fact, research shows that when we’re told stories, our brains actually become more active. We pay closer attention.
I mean, just think about how much people enjoy hearing about rags-to-riches stories. Nobody likes to talk about some rich person who was born rich. That’s not an exciting or interesting story. And it changes how we perceive that person. We want to hear about that guy or girl who came over from a war torn country and built an empire from nothing. Now that’s a good story.
What I’m getting at is that I think a big part of Bjarke’s success has come from his ability to masterfully storytell and market both himself and his projects. Architecture schools don’t usually teach you how to market and sell; they teach you how to design. But the reality is that you need to sell. And storytelling is a great way to do that.
If you liked this post, I recommend you check out this TED talk by Bjarke Ingels and this short interview with marketer Gary Vaynerchuk where he talks about how he used storytelling to sell wine.