

Tishman Speyer just unveiled a new condo project in Brooklyn called 11 Hoyt. And it just so happens to be Studio Gang’s first residential project in New York City. Preview above. More renderings over here.
It’s a 51 storey condominium with 480 residences and 55,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor amenities. The unit mix ranges from studios to four-bedroom residences, and prices range from $600,000 to over $4 million (USDs, of course).
If you’re from Toronto, you’re probably looking at the renderings and thinking to yourself: “There are no balconies or outdoor spaces.” But that’s fairly typical in the NYC market, as I understand it.


Jackson, Wyoming is one of my favorite places on the planet. (Here is a ski/snowboard video that my friends and I made a few years ago in Jackson.)
Earlier this year, Eagle Point Hotel Partners and the Brooklyn-based design firm Studio Tack completed a renovation of the Anvil Motel in Jackson – it’s now the 49-room Anvil Hotel.
Apparently reclaimed motels are the new hospitality trend.
What I appreciate about their approach, is the emphasis on creating something that feels local and contextual. Here are a couple of snippets from Surface Magazine:
The designers wanted to avoid a rustic feel, or what Ruben Caldwell, one of Studio Tack’s four partners and an avid backcountry skier, calls “Mountain Modern,” referring to architecture, common in places like Vail, Colorado, and Lake Tahoe, California, that excessively uses reclaimed wood and Cor-Ten steel. “We knew we didn’t want to steer anywhere near that,” says Chou, a long-time snowboarder who more recently got into skiing. “It takes a bit of familiarity with ski towns to know what you don’t want to do.”
The vibrancy of Jackson’s local culture impressed the design team—and Caldwell so much so that he moved there full-time last year. “As a design team,” Caldwell says, “we’re hyper-aware of the need for projects to be deeply embedded into the local scene.”
It’s easier to copy and paste. But the results are always better when you take a bit of time to understand a place.
Image: Anvil Hotel
Canada has a rich graphic design history and that story needs to be told. Here is a Kickstarter project that’s absolutely worth checking out: Design Canada.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1002969621/design-canada/widget/video.html
Greg Durrell (a graphic designer from Vancouver) and Jessica Edwards and Gary Hustwit (of Film First in Brooklyn) have partnered up, and they are looking for your support to produce the very first documentary about Canadian graphic design.
As a proud Canadian, I am thrilled to see this project. Because this is obviously not just a documentary about graphic design (though in the 60′s and 70′s we were the best in the world). It’s a story about Canada, our history, and our evolving identity.
If you can’t see the embedded video above, click here to make your way over to Kickstarter.
