We are on the train headed to Milan this morning, so as is customary on this blog, here are a few observations from the last few days in Venice:
Venice was a dominant republic for some 1,000 years. It was the fulcrum point of trade in Europe and, at one point, its wealthiest city. But that started to change in the 15th century, which is an important reminder that nothing is guaranteed. The world changes. Markets change. And maybe you won’t be as relevant tomorrow, unless you can find another economic reason for being.
If you’re an old city with lots of history, perhaps the easiest fallback plan is tourism. And it goes without saying that Venice gets a lot of tourists. I was, of course, one of them. After Italian, the most commonly overheard language on the streets seemed to be French. Maybe it was the time of year?
Besides my debilitating spring allergies, May feels like a reasonably optimal time to visit the city. I don’t think you want to visit Venice in peak summer. Too many meandering tourists taking photos (myself included). And too hot and humid. A high probability of “walking rage.”
Hotels in Venice are not cheap. But the city itself didn’t seem overly expensive, at least compared to many other top tourist destinations. Think €2.50 jugs of wine, €20-30 for very nice local leather goods, and €110 for a 7-course Michelin-starred meal.
Venice has some of the most compact streets I have ever walked in. I didn’t have my laser distance measurer on me, but in many cases, you can barely fit two people side-by-side. I certainly couldn’t extend my arms fully outward. (See above photo.)
Wonderful doorbells. Virtually every apartment in Venice, has an array of doorbells at its front door. They are beautiful, typically in metal, and almost always round. But in addition to looking nice, there is also something very personal and about seeing people’s names right on the street. This probably tells you something about how differently privacy and security are viewed in the city.
That said, Venice isn’t a place where I would want a pied-à-terre. (I like to think about this sort of thing when I travel because it speaks to impressions of a place.) I mean, I love it, but: Too many tourists and the whole “we are sinking and have regular floods” thing seems like a bit of a problem. For me, it’s a city that I’d like to regularly visit. We spent much of our 2 days at the Venice Biennale, and there’s obviously a lot more to see.
Finally, and this also goes without saying, but Venice is a city that is necessarily preoccupied with controlling water. Our hotel room had big rain boots in it, just in case. The base of every building is generally solid up to knee height. Interiors have tall tile baseboards. Front doors have removable flood dams. And there are markings across the city indicating some of its historic flood levels. As I understand it, this was always a problem for Venice; however, it is getting worse. I think it tells you just how economically valuable it was for Venice to be located where it is, in a shallow lagoon at the top of the Adriatic Sea.
We spent yesterday and today at the Venice Biennale (both the Giardini and the Arsenale). I really enjoyed it and I’m glad that I was finally able to attend. One of my favorite exhibits was Bahrain’s. It is called “Sweating Assets”, and it’s a demonstration of how air conditioning condensate might be harnessed from the country’s significant cooling infrastructure.
Here’s a video of it in action:
In the middle of the exhibit is a big glass box. This is meant to represent a ubiquitous conditioned space. And as the humid Venice air hits this glass box, condensation is created. This water is then channeled to various soil deposits, where greenery is already starting to grow. And presumably it will continue to grow over the life of the exhibit.
They were careful not to come across as encouraging excessive air conditioning. This was not the point. Instead, the message was: Air conditioning is already an omnipresent necessity in the country, and here is how something that is mostly ignored today — AC condensate — could be turned into a meaningful asset.
I thought it was clever. And they also gave out a nice book for free.
We often talk about the challenges associated with smaller scale developments on this blog. They are difficult to underwrite, there are diseconomies of scale and, after a certain point, developers typically start to require a certain minimum size. In other words, if you have a big development machine with a lot of fixed costs, you probably don't want to build even 100-150 homes at a time. You want something like 250-300 homes as a starting point.
But there is something so great about small infill projects, which is another topic that we like to talk about on this blog. Take, for example, the above 10,940 square foot project at 6001-6009 Rue St-Hubert in Montréal. Designed by L. McComber, the project includes 2 commercial spaces and 8 homes (specifically, 2 studios and 4 multi-level "townhouses").
Using rough measurement approximations from Google Maps, the lot looks to be about 15m wide x 26m deep. So the lot itself is somewhere around 4,200 sf, which is effectively a double lot based on the prevailing frontages in the area. According to this rough math, I'm guessing the FSI (floor space index) of this development is somewhere around 2.5x.
It is certainly a beautiful project, but in my mind the two most noteworthy aspects of this development -- at least for this audience -- are the following:
The architect essentially acted as the developer. They wanted to build and then own their own office space, and so they now occupy the ground floor of this project. As a partial end-user of the development, this likely means that they underwrote it slightly differently compared to if they were a pure developer.
The project's circulation space is outside and is largely housed in a central open-air courtyard.
Here's what #2 looks like:
This second point about circulation is an important one because it's an effective way to reduce hard costs, improve overall efficiency (rentable/saleable divided by gross construction area), and lower long-term operating costs. Of course, exterior stairs/circulation are quite common across Montréal's walkups. So maybe this isn't all that novel for them.
But I still think it's a perfect reminder that we shouldn't use climate as an excuse. Montréal is both colder and snowier than Toronto. And just look how they're building. I would happily live here. Would you?