Yesterday's post was written in the co-working (/lobby) area of Junction House. I wrote about this space nearly a year ago when it was under construction, but now it's complete and people like me are using it:

I spent a few hours working in the space yesterday, and it was amazing to see residents and guests coming and going. Some people were waiting to meet someone. Some people were just playing on their phones. And others, like me, were jumping on and off calls and writing blog posts. Later in the evening, it transitioned to guests carrying bottles of wine and flowers.

This was always the intent of this "amenity." We wanted to create a social space for residents and guests, replicating a bit of the feeling that you might get in a hotel lobby bar. But ultimately, this is the kind of space that will almost certainly evolve over time, depending on how residents choose to use it. It's not rigidly defined; it's more of a flex space.

It's also worth mentioning that this space was designed well before COVID. A lot of people have asked us if this was in response to that, hoping to identify tangible ways in which design has responded to the pandemic. But honestly, we didn't change anything. Gathering spaces were important before, and they remain important today.

I guess in many ways this is a space that sits somewhere in between a "first place" and a "third place." It's almost a first place in that it's in a building that people call home. But it's also a more public social environment that isn't technically home or work. So I'm really looking forward to seeing how it settles in and evolves over time.

I'll report back.

Here’s a potentially hypothetical question.

If you were in the market for a 3-bedroom penthouse, and its 1,100 sf wraparound terrace with skyline views just so happened to have an enormous neon-like sign above it, would you consider this to be a feature or a bug?

The sign does turn off at 11PM, but before then, it creates this awesome/lovely pink glow on the terrace. My sense is that this will be fairly divisive. You’re either going to love it or you’re going to hate it. Which side are you on?

Let me know in the comment section below.

I opened up X this afternoon and I saw a photographer tweet that he hadn't sold a single NFT in the last four months. His conclusion: The NFT market is dying, if not already dead. There are no collectors left. Damn.

I'm sure it probably feels this way to most. But the reality is that there are a lot of asset classes that feel this exact same way today. (I know that many of you will contest whether NFTs are actually an asset class.) There aren't a lot of buyers out there right now.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that the NFT market, in particular, is done with. In fact, if you look around, there are countless signs that point to the opposite.

I, for example, find it interesting that if you're an architect or a city planner in the US, and looking to check off some continuing education units, you can now register for a course at Harvard called From Crypto to the Metaverse: Blockchain Applications in Real Estate.

And if you look at the learning objectives, it includes things like demystifying how Blockchain technologies work, how they might impact real estate businesses in the future, and what opportunities they may create. This suggests we're still early.

Right now just feels like that time in the cycle that tests both your conviction and your discipline. It's easy to believe in something when everyone else does. But what about when most people don't?