When I was in graduate school, my plan was to create a vertically integrated design and development company. I loved designing things and wanted to remain close to those sorts of details, but I had already decided that I wasn't going to be an architect in the traditional sense and that I was going to be a developer. And so my objective was to figure out a way to combine everything under one roof. How could we be designers, but also be the entrepreneurs that make buildings happen?
In some ways, Mackay Laneway House is a manifestation of that model. Through a partnership with Gabriel Fain Architects, we (Globizen Studio) have been heavily involved on the design side. Gabriel did all of the drawings and the overall architecture, but we weighed in (more than your typical client), selected most of the FF&E, and even designed things like the kitchen (with Scavolini) and the exterior signage. I wouldn't call it true vertical integration, but we did start to blur the lines between architect/designer and developer.
One of the interesting things about this approach is that it begins to create some consistency and a bit of a branded product. The hope is that when Mackay Laneway House is fully complete, it will read as a Globizen project, which is not that dissimilar from what David Wex of Urban Capital was talking about in
When I was in graduate school, my plan was to create a vertically integrated design and development company. I loved designing things and wanted to remain close to those sorts of details, but I had already decided that I wasn't going to be an architect in the traditional sense and that I was going to be a developer. And so my objective was to figure out a way to combine everything under one roof. How could we be designers, but also be the entrepreneurs that make buildings happen?
In some ways, Mackay Laneway House is a manifestation of that model. Through a partnership with Gabriel Fain Architects, we (Globizen Studio) have been heavily involved on the design side. Gabriel did all of the drawings and the overall architecture, but we weighed in (more than your typical client), selected most of the FF&E, and even designed things like the kitchen (with Scavolini) and the exterior signage. I wouldn't call it true vertical integration, but we did start to blur the lines between architect/designer and developer.
One of the interesting things about this approach is that it begins to create some consistency and a bit of a branded product. The hope is that when Mackay Laneway House is fully complete, it will read as a Globizen project, which is not that dissimilar from what David Wex of Urban Capital was talking about in
. Their projects are a specific kind of product. They generally repeat it, and if that's not what you're interested in, then you don't buy an Urban Capital home.
But this also raises an important question: what is the role of architects and architecture in the case of buildings as very specific products? (This is something that we have discussed before on the blog.) Is the job of the architect to create an interesting exterior shell that then gets populated on the inside by a specific product offering? Or is it even worse, is architecture sometimes just an "empty vessel" that gets interior design and a brand slapped onto it? In some cases and with some projects, it does feel this way.
I am a firm believer in the value of architecture and design. An "empty vessel" is not architecture. It is, well, an empty vessel. And that is not what I aim for in any of the projects that I'm involved in. Creativity, function, thoughtfulness and, yes, beauty, are all important. At the same time, I think this is a valuable debate. These sorts of questions are helpful in dissecting the architecture/development value chain. And so I would be interested in hearing your thoughts in the comment section below.
Fred Wilson (venture capitalist) and Joanne Wilson (also an investor) have been working on a passive house apartment building in Brooklyn for the last five years. Their development company is called Frame Home. And this past week they received a pretty great Christmas gift in the form of a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy from NYC Buildings.
At 5 storeys and with only 10 two-bedroom units, you could classify this building as the kind "missing middle" housing that gets so much air time here in Toronto. And so not only have they managed to build relatively small, but they've done it using passive house design principles.
Here are some of the apartment building's features:
Cross-laminated timber (CLT) structure
Passive house design approach
Triple-pane windows
Interior polished and insulated concrete walls (presumably to act as a thermal mass to moderate heating/cooling throughout the year)
Solar panels installed on the upper facade and roof (passive house design should, in theory, allow these to supply a big chunk of the building's energy needs)
No fossil fuels used throughout the building -- everything is electrical
Fully sub-metered units
Outdoor circulation spaces/stairs, providing access to a shared rooftop courtyard (I'm assuming these also serve as required egress for the building)
Dedicated elevator entrance for every suite (i.e. no interior circulation/corridor spaces)
Composting facilities within the building
Bike room connected to the ground-floor lobby
There's also a co-working and community space planned for the ground floor called "Framework." Interestingly enough, they have already responded to the current pandemic. Instead of open-air desks, you rent fully enclosed 8' x 8' pods that are sound-proofed and come with their own HVAC systems.
Congratulations Fred and Joanne on such an exciting and pioneering project. (I would love to see the development pro forma!) If you'd like to learn more about Frame 283, here is their website and here is a profile that the New York Times did on the project back in January. Building with CLT is apparently prohibited in NYC. Frame 283 got an exemption.
. Their projects are a specific kind of product. They generally repeat it, and if that's not what you're interested in, then you don't buy an Urban Capital home.
But this also raises an important question: what is the role of architects and architecture in the case of buildings as very specific products? (This is something that we have discussed before on the blog.) Is the job of the architect to create an interesting exterior shell that then gets populated on the inside by a specific product offering? Or is it even worse, is architecture sometimes just an "empty vessel" that gets interior design and a brand slapped onto it? In some cases and with some projects, it does feel this way.
I am a firm believer in the value of architecture and design. An "empty vessel" is not architecture. It is, well, an empty vessel. And that is not what I aim for in any of the projects that I'm involved in. Creativity, function, thoughtfulness and, yes, beauty, are all important. At the same time, I think this is a valuable debate. These sorts of questions are helpful in dissecting the architecture/development value chain. And so I would be interested in hearing your thoughts in the comment section below.
Fred Wilson (venture capitalist) and Joanne Wilson (also an investor) have been working on a passive house apartment building in Brooklyn for the last five years. Their development company is called Frame Home. And this past week they received a pretty great Christmas gift in the form of a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy from NYC Buildings.
At 5 storeys and with only 10 two-bedroom units, you could classify this building as the kind "missing middle" housing that gets so much air time here in Toronto. And so not only have they managed to build relatively small, but they've done it using passive house design principles.
Here are some of the apartment building's features:
Cross-laminated timber (CLT) structure
Passive house design approach
Triple-pane windows
Interior polished and insulated concrete walls (presumably to act as a thermal mass to moderate heating/cooling throughout the year)
Solar panels installed on the upper facade and roof (passive house design should, in theory, allow these to supply a big chunk of the building's energy needs)
No fossil fuels used throughout the building -- everything is electrical
Fully sub-metered units
Outdoor circulation spaces/stairs, providing access to a shared rooftop courtyard (I'm assuming these also serve as required egress for the building)
Dedicated elevator entrance for every suite (i.e. no interior circulation/corridor spaces)
Composting facilities within the building
Bike room connected to the ground-floor lobby
There's also a co-working and community space planned for the ground floor called "Framework." Interestingly enough, they have already responded to the current pandemic. Instead of open-air desks, you rent fully enclosed 8' x 8' pods that are sound-proofed and come with their own HVAC systems.
Congratulations Fred and Joanne on such an exciting and pioneering project. (I would love to see the development pro forma!) If you'd like to learn more about Frame 283, here is their website and here is a profile that the New York Times did on the project back in January. Building with CLT is apparently prohibited in NYC. Frame 283 got an exemption.
Toto announced a new product this month at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) called the Wellness Toilet. It won't be available to consumers for at least several years, but the plan is for it to do two key things to improve overall health and wellness. It will scan your body when you sit on it and it will analyze your poop. (Not urine?) It will then make recommendations via your smartphone about how you might start to make better life decisions. Presumably this will include being more active and eating better. This, to me, feels like an obvious way to innovate around the toilet. If it were available today and it actually worked, I would likely be an early adopter. Either way, I look forward to hopefully including this in future development projects.
The WELLNESS TOILET uses multiple cutting-edge sensing technologies to support consumers' wellness by tracking and analyzing their mental and physical status. Each time the individual sits on the WELLNESS TOILET, it scans their body and its key outputs, then provides recommendations to improve their wellness. There is no additional action needed, so people can easily check their wellness throughout their daily routine, every time they take a bathroom break. They will see their current wellness status and receive wellness-improvement recommendations on a dashboard in an app on their smartphones.
The residential bathroom is the perfect place to support people's wellness for a variety of reasons. First, although there are a number of other products that track individuals' wellness (e.g., wearable devices), it is more convenient to monitor and analyze the body as a part of the everyday routine act of using the WELLNESS TOILET, to which individuals are accustomed. Second, toilets and people have two unique touchpoints that cannot be found elsewhere – the skin and human waste. The WELLNESS TOILET is in direct contact with individuals' skin when they are sitting on it, and it analyzes the waste they deposit -- a wealth of wellness data can be collected from fecal matter.
Image: Toto
Toto announced a new product this month at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) called the Wellness Toilet. It won't be available to consumers for at least several years, but the plan is for it to do two key things to improve overall health and wellness. It will scan your body when you sit on it and it will analyze your poop. (Not urine?) It will then make recommendations via your smartphone about how you might start to make better life decisions. Presumably this will include being more active and eating better. This, to me, feels like an obvious way to innovate around the toilet. If it were available today and it actually worked, I would likely be an early adopter. Either way, I look forward to hopefully including this in future development projects.
The WELLNESS TOILET uses multiple cutting-edge sensing technologies to support consumers' wellness by tracking and analyzing their mental and physical status. Each time the individual sits on the WELLNESS TOILET, it scans their body and its key outputs, then provides recommendations to improve their wellness. There is no additional action needed, so people can easily check their wellness throughout their daily routine, every time they take a bathroom break. They will see their current wellness status and receive wellness-improvement recommendations on a dashboard in an app on their smartphones.
The residential bathroom is the perfect place to support people's wellness for a variety of reasons. First, although there are a number of other products that track individuals' wellness (e.g., wearable devices), it is more convenient to monitor and analyze the body as a part of the everyday routine act of using the WELLNESS TOILET, to which individuals are accustomed. Second, toilets and people have two unique touchpoints that cannot be found elsewhere – the skin and human waste. The WELLNESS TOILET is in direct contact with individuals' skin when they are sitting on it, and it analyzes the waste they deposit -- a wealth of wellness data can be collected from fecal matter.
