Montreal is, in many ways, a city of winding exterior stairs. If you've been there, then you know. The city is overwhelmingly a city of low-rise apartments (less than five storeys). And with these, comes lots of exterior circulation. But this tradition doesn't just apply to older buildings. Here is a contemporary tall-building example which follows a similar approach.

Designed by MSDL Architects, the project, called The Laurent & Clark, consists of two tower volumes. They read as two separate towers, but they're connected and share egress paths. On the east side is a conventional "scissor stair" tucked behind two elevators. And on the other end, connected by an open-air corridor, is an exterior exit stair that runs all the way up the tower.

Here is a circulation diagram via Azure:

This is novel (at least in this part of the world). The suites in the west tower are all dual aspect; meaning, they have windows on both ends.

They also have direct elevator access (see cores above), which means a lot less non-revenue generating circulation space. I mean, if you think about it, the open-air corridor on the north side of the west tower is akin to building a simple balcony. Extend the slab and add a guard rail. And so you could argue that this portion of the building has a near 100% efficiency factor.

However, the downside is that you need more elevators. Here, it looks like they have 6 for their 356 suites. That's an overall ratio of just under 60 suites per elevator, which is lower (i.e. better) than what you'd typically find in a conventional tower. The crude rule of thumb is 1 elevator for every 100 suites. That said, these direct-access suites would be premium.

But perhaps the most important takeaway is this: If cold and snowy Montreal is cool with open-air corridors and exterior exit stairs, then maybe your city should be as well.

There is an ongoing architecture/development joke that the way you design a building is by first starting with the parking. Once you've figured out how the parking will work, you can then move on to, you know, the secondary stuff, like figuring out how actual humans will occupy your development. I'm calling it a joke, but there's obviously some truth to this. Parking is almost always a challenge, especially if you're developing in a city that still has parking minimums.

Previously, I've talked about the benefits of "unwrapped" above-grade parking. This is generally counter to how most cities like to think about parking. But for a few reasons, it can make a lot of sense. However, to be clear, I'm not advocating for more parking. My point was simply that -- if you absolutely have to build parking -- then maybe you should look at spaces that give you some flexibility in the future.

At the same time, there's another more nuanced thing to consider: how big are your actual parking spaces? Here in Toronto, a standard parking space is 2.6m wide x 5.6m deep (about ~157 sf). This is larger than some apartments. But these minimum dimensions can vary greatly by municipality. Oftentimes you'll hear planners say, "well, people here like their big cars." The problem with this is that these dimensions will dramatically change your parking design.

So today I thought it would be interesting to gather a few data points from all of you. What are the minimum parking space dimensions in your city? Please leave a comment below so that everyone can see. As far as I know, there isn't a globally accepted set of dimensions for parking spaces. Perhaps because some places like big cars and other places don't care. But maybe there should be.

This is the sort of housing project that you'd fully expect to find in Tokyo. Seven homes built on a small urban lot measuring only 11 feet wide by 93 feet deep. But in this case, it's not Tokyo; it's Chinatown, Philadelphia, where a residual lot that was created when the sunken Vine Street Expressway was carved through the middle of the city in the 1950s.

Designed by Philadelphia-based Interface Studio Architects (ISA), the project contains 7 levels of livable space. What's interesting, though, is that from a building code perspective this is still a 4-story building. There are two mezzanine levels that don't get counted (and that create some great double-height spaces). This also seems to be what allowed them to get away with a single egress stair in the middle of the building.

The other technique that was used to maximum density is facade projections. Philadelphia's zoning code allows for projections up to 3 feet in the horizontal dimension. And if you look at the above plans, you'll see that these were used to "top up" or extend the site's 11 foot width to 14 feet, when it made sense to do so from a programming standpoint. The result is some very livable spaces.

I am endlessly fascinated by these sorts of projects because they demand creativity and because you ultimately end up unlocking something that the market had been overlooking. Here is an example of a small leftover urban parcel that was previously used as surface parking for two cars. Now it's seven beautiful homes.

Photos/drawings: ISA