Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.
This ArchDaily interview with Gary Chang about nano-scaled architecture is worth a read. Gary Chang is founder of the Hong Kong-based Edge Design Institute and is a pioneer in the world of compact living and small-scale architecture.
In fact, many of you have probably seen where he lives. His place has been widely publicized over the years. Dubbed the Domestic Transformer, Gary has been living in the same 32 square meter apartment in Hong Kong for over 40 years and has been using it as a kind of laboratory for his design work.
Depending on where you live, 344 square feet may not seem like a lot. But this is Hong Kong. And in Hong Kong even this is apparently on the large side for some locals. In his ArchDaily interview, Gary talks about the rise of “nano-homes” in Hong Kong — everything you need, including a wine fridge, in only 16-18 square meters.
Of course, to do this, you kind of have to reconsider how you think about space. Gary refers to it along the lines of time-based space planning. Instead of just focusing on raw space, he focuses on activities and functionality over time.
“Over the years, I have been more focused into the notion of time rather than the physical space itself, and in this latest model M-2007 (calling it the Domestic Transformer, the year the first episode of the movie of Transformer was launched), I simply explore a time-based system of living in this apartment; instead of me moving from one room to another in the traditional sense, the apartment transforms for me for different functions. I basically utilize the entire home all the time, a great departure from the conventional definition of a home such as the system in Japan in nLDK (n denotes the number of bedrooms, L for Living Room, D for Dining Room and K for Kitchen).“
Constructed throughout the 1930s, the R.C Harris Water Treatment Plant (pictured above) is the largest water treatment plant in the City of Toronto. It produces over 120,000 million liters of water each year, which represents about 30% of Toronto’s drinking water.
Designed by Scottish architect Thomas Canfield Pomphrey, it is also the city’s largest collection of Art Deco buildings. This makes the complex pretty unique. Because it was designed to be both a critical piece of municipal infrastructure and an architectural icon.
If you’ve ever visited the grounds, you’ll know that the plant is the furthest thing from utilitarian. There’s an opulence to the buildings and an incredible attention to detail, both of which are characteristics of the Art Deco movement. And if you’ve never been, I would encourage you to go.
So I just learned that architects Bjarke Ingels and Rut Otero live in a converted Norwegian houseboat in Copenhagen’s harbor. A friend of mine sent me the Architectural Digest article this morning with the caption, “now I want one.” The space is exceedingly cool and interesting, but supposedly the heat and water stop working on occasion. Minor annoyance, I suppose. But in addition to being cool and interesting, there’s also a resiliency argument. Houseboats don’t have to worry about sea level rise, because they just float. (Could this type of floating housing be deployed at scale? Ingels thinks so.) In this case, they also repurposed an existing structure, which is generally more sustainable than building something new. I guess I’ll take one as well.
At the beginning of this year (which seems like eons ago), I wrote about a CityLab series that Feargus O’Sullivan was doing on the vernacular home designs of a handful of European cities. Cities like London and Berlin.
Well, after a brief pause, that series is back in the form of a CityLab “storythread.” It’s now called, “The Iconic Home Designs That Define Our Global Cities.” In it, he explores the various floor plans, housing typologies, and tenures that you might find around the world. Everywhere from from Singapore to Reykjavik.
The most recent article is all about Prague’s communist-era apartments. Apparently people call these paneláks because they were initially built using some sort of collection of prefabricated panels. They were a quick and dirty housing solution for a city and country that were rapidly urbanizing starting in the late 1950s. (See, prefab works.)
But what I find most interesting about the story of these paneláks is how their reputation seems to have changed and evolved over time. They proved to be a far more adaptable form of housing than you might initially think, going from written off and ready for demolition, in some cases, to then becoming a form of aspirational housing.
Part of this allegedly had to do with a handover from state ownership to private ownership, which maybe goes to show you that architecture and design, alone, aren’t enough when it comes to housing innovation. You really need to consider the whole picture.
But regardless, it is clear to me that tastes do change, and housing is no exception. Renewal is an integral part of urban life. And one generation’s trash might be another generation’s treasure.
The construction process can be a pain in the ass. It’s messy. It’s inefficient. It’s always filled with surprises. And you could argue, as many have before, that every job is really a custom job — a kind of prototype. But at the same time, there is something so deeply satisfying about seeing a building come to life. Part of that satisfaction no doubt comes from the fact that it usually takes years and years to get to the point in which you’re digging holes, pouring concrete, and framing out spaces. It’s almost as if we don’t want things to get built. It’s a feeling of “finally.” But perhaps the bigger part of this satisfaction stems from the fact that building is creating and making something new. It’s about imagining what something could be and then going out and doing everything you can to make that a reality. Some people won’t like what you’re trying to build. But they might when it’s finished. And it is almost certainly not going to be an easy process. But it’s a fulfilling one. Few things are as rewarding as creating and making something new.
My super scientific Twitter balcony survey has revealed that most people seem to like balconies and terraces. Out of the 257 people that voted (not a huge number), 77.4% said that if they were in the market to buy or rent a new place, they would probably want a balcony or terrace. I realize now that my wording could have been more precise. Either way, the results seem to suggest a clear preference.
But there are all sorts of reasons for why you might want to avoid building balconies: energy performance, upfront costs, long-term maintenance, usability at high elevations, overall aesthetics, and so on. In fact, I once had an architect turn down a job because they don’t typically work on residential buildings and, when they do, they refuse to work on ones that have balconies. He told me that they don’t want the liability.
But then what inevitably happens is that the sales and marketing team joins the design meeting and says, “yeah, we hear what you’re saying, but people like outdoor spaces.” And then the great debate starts. Okay, so what percentage of the suites should have an outdoor space? What about a sliding glass well? I think so-and-so is doing it on their project. Yeah, but they’re real expensive and they leak air.
The reality is that there are many buildings without private outdoor spaces and there are many cities where it is common not to build them. Moreover, my Twitter survey doesn’t really tell you exactly how people might behave when they’re about to make a purchasing decision. What you really want are data points and things like A/B tests.
Let’s take for example two typical/identical 600 square foot suites, with the only difference being that one has a balcony and the other doesn’t. Now let’s say that the one with a balcony is selling for $1,400 psf or $840,000 and the one without a balcony is selling for $1,350 psf or $810,000. Will some of the 77.4% that voted balcony/terrace possibly buy the $810,000 suite? Of course. Because it’s less expensive.
So how does one go about making the right decision when it comes to designing for outdoor spaces? Well, in some cases, you won’t have a choice. We have had instances where the City has asked us (okay, forced us) to remove all of the balconies on a particular elevation because they didn’t fit with the urban design aesthetic that they wanted for the streetscape. That always pisses me off.
That aside, my view — and this is just my opinion — is that you can’t generalize when trying to make this decision. You need to carefully consider who your customer is or will be. I’ve written before about the divide between investor demand and end-user demand in residential buildings. It impacts design, and outdoor spaces are no different.
If you take for example Junction House, it is a predominately end-user building. That’s who we thought would be buying and that is who bought. When the team was designing the two-storey House Collection, the intent was to create a kind of substitute for low-rise housing. And so these homes had to have outdoor spaces (they have terraces). This was never a question or a debate.
Similarly, one of the reasons why One Delisle looks the way that it does is because the team set out to create unique terraces, as well as varying outdoor spaces, all throughout the tower. The thinking was, “people like terraces in mid-rise buildings, like Junction House, so let’s figure out how to do that in a high-rise building typology.”
At the same time, we have suites with Juliet balconies at Junction House and it is certainly true that the above recipes may not be suitable for every project. Again, there are lots of buildings without private outdoor spaces, including ones that have sold during this pandemic. One of the things that I have also discovered is that common area outdoor spaces and nearby green spaces can have an impact on whether or not people feel they need private outdoor space.
All of this to say that one size does not fit all. Which is probably why this topic remains such a great debate.
Note: I am making a distinction between balconies and terraces. Balconies typically cantilever out from a building and are not insulated. Terraces, on the other hand, are typically a roof condition in that they sit above a conditioned space. This usually means that the concrete slab will need to get “built up” with insulation and paving. A drainage system will also be required.
MAD Architects recently completed its first project in the United States at 8600 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. It’s interesting (and beautiful) in that it was designed to resemble a village of gabled residences sitting on top of a green hillside.
The green hillside is actually a three-storey concrete podium that is covered in what is said to be the largest living walls in the country. The gabled houses on top are wood-frame construction and were assembled to create an open-air courtyard in the middle of the site. Eighteen residences in total. Prices starting from USD 3.7 million (as of May 2019).
At five storeys, I suppose you would call this a mid-rise building. The site area is about 25,700 square feet and the building area is not even 48,000 square feet, according to ArchDaily. So the overall density on the site is actually remarkably low. At least compared to what we’re accustomed to building in Toronto. It might be dense for Beverly Hills.
I would love to see the development math for a site like this. After I got over the architecture, the first thing I thought was, “you could never build a mid-rise building like this in Toronto.” I suspect it’s also not obvious in Los Angeles. And you probably need “starting from 3.7 million” in order for it to pencil.
What is your position on outdoor space in multi-family buildings? (Assume you're in the market to buy or rent a new place and assume there's a cost to outdoor space.)
Over the years, I have written a few times about the great balcony debate. It’s a discussion that comes up time and time again as those of us in the building industry go through the process of designing new residential buildings. One the one hand there are the arguments that balconies don’t really get used all that much and that they are bad for the environment (thermal bridging through the slabs). And on the other hand there’s the argument that, regardless of whether or not they actually get used, they form an important part of the buying/renting decision. Usually the former is made by architects and engineers and the latter is made by sales and marketing teams.
Back in 2016, I remarked that I was starting to see more Juliet balconies across Toronto (could have been some sort of bias at work — like when you’re shopping for a new car and then all you can see is that new car). Regardless, there are countless examples of architects and developers omitting balconies and finding creative ways to connect inside and out. But given that this pandemic has forced us to reconsider and reallocate how we use space in our cities, it’s probably worth revisiting the great balcony debate. Has COVID-19 changed how we view outdoor space? And if so, will it last?
I’ve decided to start with a Twitter survey (see above tweet) and then either do a long-form article or a series of posts on the topic. If you have any thoughts that you would like to share (ideally before I write), please leave a comment below or on Twitter.
Italian techno DJ Deborah De Luca recently released this live set with Mixmag. Naturally she was playing by herself on a rooftop. Even if you don’t like techno, you may find this set interesting because of its setting. It was filmed in Vele di Scampia, which is a housing complex in northern Naples and the suburb where she grew up. But Vele is also one of the most notorious public housing projects in Italy and the world — known for its decaying brutalist architecture, its drugs and crime, and its role in housing the Camorra crime syndicate.
Built between 1962 and 1975, the “Sails of Scampia” were designed by Italian architect Franz Di Salvo and inspired by the work and thinking of architect Le Corbusier. Obviously this is a recipe that has been tried out all over the world and the results here are not entirely unique (see also Pruitt-Igoe). The complex was based on two building types: towers and tents. The towers are what you might imagine and the tents are what create the “sails” that today define the complex.
The apartments were designed to be simple. But the idea was to connect them with elaborate exterior common spaces that simulate, in a way, the many alleys and courtyards of Naples. (Does this sound like a co-living project?) There are many possible explanations for what went wrong. Perhaps the best place to look for answers is the book Gomorrah written by Robert Saviano.
But what I always wonder is to what extent was the architecture and the approach to urban design responsible for these outcomes? In other words, how much of this is a result of built form and how much of this is a result of socioeconomic factors, such as poor management, high unemployment, and a lack of policing in the area? According to Wikipedia, Scampia had an unemployment rate of about 50% as of 2004.
Le Vele initially consisted of seven buildings, but four of them have already been demolished. In the next few years two more will come down, leaving only one. Supposedly the plan is to keep this last building and refurbish it so that the history of Le Vele isn’t lost entirely. Some, including Robert Saviano, are questioning why the state would ever want to commemorate such a horrible place. But if it is repositioned and if it proves to be successful, it may actually help to answer some of my questions.
In the meantime, we’ll just have to enjoy Deborah’s set.
I’ve never been to Whitefish, Montana, but it is on my list (mostly to try out the snowboarding). I have also been following a home in Whitefish that was designed and built by Alex Strohl and Andrea Dabene called the Nooq. I like to periodically dream about living in the mountains and this home is the sort of thing that usually comes to mind.
Take a look at the home’s Instagram page and you’ll see that every detail has been carefully considered. Each bathroom, for example, has a different tile color — all of which are meant to mimic the color palette of Montana throughout the year. As I’ve said before on the blog, that’s one of the things that you want from good design — you want to know that somebody thought about things.
They have also recently made the home available for rent on Airbnb. But the listing is private. So if you’d like to learn more, you’ll have to drop your email address over here. I may just have to do that once winter rolls around.
