This apartment is such a great idea:
Let me explain.
Freunde von Freunden (FvF) is a Berlin-based publication that documents inspiring people from creative and cultural backgrounds. If you don’t read their stuff, I think you should. Sample: Here’s an interview with Chang Lin. He is Creative Director at Zalando and lives in Mitte, Berlin. I always find it fascinating to see how people live.
In 2014, FvF decided to bridge the online and offline worlds and open up their first “apartment” in Berlin. They refer to it as: The FvF Apartment - Visions for Urban Living. And they describe it like so:
“The apartment has been designed to be fully adaptable to the diverse and often unexpected scenarios of everyday life, reflecting how a creative, mobile and digitally-oriented generation lives. It serves not only as a platform for innovative products from friends and partners, but as a unique venue for events, workshops, and presentations.”
Basically, the space serves as one part apartment and one part venue. They have used it as a pop-up shop, as a stage for photo and film productions, as a place for distillers to host private tastings, and the list goes.
Again, I think this is such a great idea as a brand extension. It is giving me all kinds of ideas and so I thought I would share it with you all today as well.
Image: The FvF Apartment
Earlier today my friend Saadat sent me the following tweet:
@donnelly_b you need to apply to this: https://t.co/NrYmO1D1ge
— Saadat Qadri (@saadatqadri)
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
It’s a link to a new research project by Y Combinator – the famed Silicon Valley seed accelerator. They want to explore the possibility of building new and better cities.
I don’t have the time for something like this, but if any of you are city experts (I know a lot of you are) and you’re based in or willing to be based in San Francisco (I think they are flexible on this), you should absolutely consider applying to be their full time “Cities Researcher.” The deadline is July 30, 2016.
Here’s a taste of what they are thinking about…
There are many high-level questions we want to think through, for example:
- What should a city optimize for?
- How should we measure the effectiveness of a city (what are its KPIs)?
- What values should (or should not) be embedded in a city’s culture?
- How can cities help more of their residents be happy and reach their potential?
- How can we encourage a diverse range of people to live and work in the city?
- How should citizens guide and participate in government?
- How can we make sure a city is constantly evolving and always open to change?
And there are tactical questions we want to dig into, for example:
- How can we make and keep housing affordable? This is critical to us; the cost of housing affects everything else in a city.
- How can we lay out the public and private spaces (and roads) to make a great place to live?
- Can we figure out better zoning laws?
- What is the right role for vehicles in a city?
- Should we have human-driven cars at all?
- How can we have affordable high-speed transit to and from other cities?
- How can we make rules and regulations that are comprehensive while also being easily understandable?
- Can we fit all rules for the city in 100 pages of text?
- What effects will the new city have on the surrounding community?
The convergence of city building and tech is something that I’m deeply interested in. I also think it’s inevitable. And I think that Toronto – thanks to our robust real estate industry – is in an ideal position to be a leader in this space. So I would love to see someone from here take on this job.
But even if you’re not from Toronto, you should still apply because it’s an exciting initiative :)
I’ve been reading the blog 5 Kids 1 Condo for, I think, about a year now. It’s written by Adrian Crook who is a single dad of 5 kids, living in a 2 bedroom condo in downtown Vancouver. And his blog is about just that.
A few days ago he posted a video of himself speaking at a public meeting in support of a new purpose-built rental building at 18th and Commercial Drive in Vancouver. The proposal includes 110 secured market rental units; 37% of which will be 2 or 3 bedroom apartments. (More information on the project, here.)
It’s rare to see people come out in support of a project at a public meeting. Usually people only show up when they’re grouchy and upset. So today I’d like to share his speech (click here if you can’t see the video below).
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-ENWu__HdM?rel=0&w=560&h=315]
I’m curious to know what was shouted right at the beginning after he said that he was in favor of the proposal. I listened a few times but couldn’t figure it out.
In any event, Adrian’s speech touches on a number of important points that transcend this specific development proposal and that are relevant to many of the topics that we discuss here on this blog.
This apartment is such a great idea:
Let me explain.
Freunde von Freunden (FvF) is a Berlin-based publication that documents inspiring people from creative and cultural backgrounds. If you don’t read their stuff, I think you should. Sample: Here’s an interview with Chang Lin. He is Creative Director at Zalando and lives in Mitte, Berlin. I always find it fascinating to see how people live.
In 2014, FvF decided to bridge the online and offline worlds and open up their first “apartment” in Berlin. They refer to it as: The FvF Apartment - Visions for Urban Living. And they describe it like so:
“The apartment has been designed to be fully adaptable to the diverse and often unexpected scenarios of everyday life, reflecting how a creative, mobile and digitally-oriented generation lives. It serves not only as a platform for innovative products from friends and partners, but as a unique venue for events, workshops, and presentations.”
Basically, the space serves as one part apartment and one part venue. They have used it as a pop-up shop, as a stage for photo and film productions, as a place for distillers to host private tastings, and the list goes.
Again, I think this is such a great idea as a brand extension. It is giving me all kinds of ideas and so I thought I would share it with you all today as well.
Image: The FvF Apartment
Earlier today my friend Saadat sent me the following tweet:
@donnelly_b you need to apply to this: https://t.co/NrYmO1D1ge
— Saadat Qadri (@saadatqadri)
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
It’s a link to a new research project by Y Combinator – the famed Silicon Valley seed accelerator. They want to explore the possibility of building new and better cities.
I don’t have the time for something like this, but if any of you are city experts (I know a lot of you are) and you’re based in or willing to be based in San Francisco (I think they are flexible on this), you should absolutely consider applying to be their full time “Cities Researcher.” The deadline is July 30, 2016.
Here’s a taste of what they are thinking about…
There are many high-level questions we want to think through, for example:
- What should a city optimize for?
- How should we measure the effectiveness of a city (what are its KPIs)?
- What values should (or should not) be embedded in a city’s culture?
- How can cities help more of their residents be happy and reach their potential?
- How can we encourage a diverse range of people to live and work in the city?
- How should citizens guide and participate in government?
- How can we make sure a city is constantly evolving and always open to change?
And there are tactical questions we want to dig into, for example:
- How can we make and keep housing affordable? This is critical to us; the cost of housing affects everything else in a city.
- How can we lay out the public and private spaces (and roads) to make a great place to live?
- Can we figure out better zoning laws?
- What is the right role for vehicles in a city?
- Should we have human-driven cars at all?
- How can we have affordable high-speed transit to and from other cities?
- How can we make rules and regulations that are comprehensive while also being easily understandable?
- Can we fit all rules for the city in 100 pages of text?
- What effects will the new city have on the surrounding community?
The convergence of city building and tech is something that I’m deeply interested in. I also think it’s inevitable. And I think that Toronto – thanks to our robust real estate industry – is in an ideal position to be a leader in this space. So I would love to see someone from here take on this job.
But even if you’re not from Toronto, you should still apply because it’s an exciting initiative :)
I’ve been reading the blog 5 Kids 1 Condo for, I think, about a year now. It’s written by Adrian Crook who is a single dad of 5 kids, living in a 2 bedroom condo in downtown Vancouver. And his blog is about just that.
A few days ago he posted a video of himself speaking at a public meeting in support of a new purpose-built rental building at 18th and Commercial Drive in Vancouver. The proposal includes 110 secured market rental units; 37% of which will be 2 or 3 bedroom apartments. (More information on the project, here.)
It’s rare to see people come out in support of a project at a public meeting. Usually people only show up when they’re grouchy and upset. So today I’d like to share his speech (click here if you can’t see the video below).
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-ENWu__HdM?rel=0&w=560&h=315]
I’m curious to know what was shouted right at the beginning after he said that he was in favor of the proposal. I listened a few times but couldn’t figure it out.
In any event, Adrian’s speech touches on a number of important points that transcend this specific development proposal and that are relevant to many of the topics that we discuss here on this blog.
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