I was in the mood for some light reading before bed earlier this week, and so I pulled out this comparative critique of Euclidean zoning. Many of you are probably familiar with how single-use zoning works. It is the dominant form of zoning in North America and it is predicated on the idea of "everything in its place." Meaning, land uses are best off when they are segregated and put into distinct zones: commercial here, industrial over there, residential in these areas, and so on.
But there are a whole host of arguments for why this is bad cities. Among other things, it makes them less sustainable, because typically you need to drive between zones when you want to do things. It makes them less resilient, because you've now created monocultures. And it also encourages segregation, because if this zone is only for 2-acre single-family lots, then only people who can afford a 2-acre lot get to live there.
I'm sure that many of you are already aware of these arguments. So what I found most interesting from this light bedtime reading was the comparison to the French model of urbanism. One of the key differences in cities such as Paris is that the French have historically preferred to zone for structures over uses. In other words, aesthetics and how buildings look have long been a priority, but what happens inside of them has been less of one.
The result is an incredible mix of uses that makes the city what it is today. And this is perhaps the great irony of Paris. Its visual harmony might make you believe that "everything is in its place." But really things are often all over the place -- as they should be in a city. Adding to this irony is the fact that many single-use cities do not actually appear very orderly, even though they're kind of supposed to by design.
I thought this was an interesting way of looking at these two different models of urbanism. It makes the case that not everything needs to be in its place; maybe it just needs to look that way and the rest will figure itself out.
Today was a fantastic day for the development manic meter. This was finally installed at Junction House:
If you happen to find yourself in the area, check it out at 2720 Dundas Street West. And if you'd like to know a little bit about how this placemaking art came to be, click here.
I came across this apartment on ArchDaily this morning and I immediately thought to myself, "this looks like the Lagoa neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro." (Rio is one of my favorite cities and we nearly spent a few weeks of winter 2021 in this particular area.) So I opened it up and it turns out I was right. It's a recent apartment renovation, in this building, by Rio de Janeiro-based architects MZNO.
I then got onto the floor plan:
Circular building floor plates invariably create fan-shaped suite layouts like this one here. From my experience, these can create some really beautiful spaces up near the face of the building, but they tend to work better when you have a bit more space to play around with. You're also going to end up with diagonal walls and probably a radial structural system. In this case, the suite is just under 1,000 sf.
I wondered if this might have been two suites that were joined together, with the previous demising being the radial shear wall behind the couch (see above). There seems to be two entrances to the suite on this plan. But then I looked at active listings in the building and this seems to be a typical layout. So I think they just stripped things down to the existing structure in order to open up the plan.
The other item that stood out to me on the plan was the long corridor off the primary bedroom. But again, looking at other plans in the building, I can see that it was initially designed as a walk-in closet. This makes more sense, but it's also a compromise brought about by this being a relatively deep plan.
The bedrooms are "tetrised" together to make efficient use of a limited amount of linear glazing. An alternative trade-off (in this second plan) would have been to give it more frontage, and then bury the office (escritório). But I suppose there's a good argument to be made that it's better to have more light in your office than in your bedroom.
MZNO was probably thinking along these same lines when they designed the linear kitchen in the way that they did in the first plan. By aligning it perpendicular to the suite's exterior glass, you're able to gain access to a view and some light even when you're toward the back of the suite.
Finally, the other thing about circular buildings is that they allow you to do cool circulation spaces like the above. In this case, all of the common area corridors are single-loaded, and wrapped around a huge lightwell in the middle of the building. This maybe isn't so good if you suffer from vertigo, but it's obvious that these corridors are serving as an extension of people's living areas.
And since this is Brazil, they're naturally filled with greenery.