On Friday evening, here in Toronto at the Aka Khan Museum, this year’s Pritzker Architecture Prize was awarded to Indian architect, Balkrishna Doshi. He is 90 and will receive US$100,000, as well as the honor of being the first Indian to receive architecture’s Nobel Prize. This year was also the first year it was awarded in Canada.
Alex Bozikovic of the Globe and Mail sat down with Doshi while he was in Toronto. Article here. Doshi also lectured at the Daniels Faculty at the University of Toronto earlier in the week.
Some of you will probably recognize the name because of his collaborations with Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn. But as Alex quoted in his article, this year’s prize is about, “expanding the scope of architecture’s usefulness.” Doshi’s architecture is less about objects and more about the public good it creates.
For more on Doshi, check here.
On a related note, I was happy to see worlds collide in my Instagram feed this morning with this photo from the event. It’s a picture of Jeanne Gang, Meg Graham, and Andre D’Elia of Studio Gang and Superkul, respectively.
We are thrilled to be working on projects here Toronto with both firms.
Photo via The Pritzker Architecture Prize
I just ordered a copy of Multi-Unit Housing in Urban Cities: From 1800 to Present Day by Katy Chey. I figured this was a book that we should have hanging around our office. I also like to support the Daniels Faculty.
The book covers the following multi-unit housing typologies:
Back-to-backs in Birmingham
Tenements in London
Haussmann apartments in Paris
Tenements in New York
Tong lau in Hong Kong
Perimeter block, linear block and block-edge in Berlin
Perimeter block and solitaire in Amsterdam
Space-enclosing structures in Beijing
Kyosho jutaku in Tokyo
High-rises in Toronto
In addition to each typology, the book analyzes the connection between the housing type and the city. Why did certain typologies flourish where they did and how have they helped to define their city?
It reminds me of what I was trying to do with some of my recent posts about Hong Kong’s typical tower plan, albeit with far less rigor than what I am sure has been applied to this book.
I am also curious to read what has been written about high-rises in Toronto. It goes to show you just how defining the current real estate cycle has been for this city. That’s our multi-unit housing typology.
Image: Daniels Faculty. My multi-unit home made the book.
Daniel Ibañez, Clare Lyster, Charles Waldheim, and Mason White have just published a book analyzing the Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence River. It’s called, Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a Plan.
The Great Lakes represent the world’s largest collection of freshwater; a feature that is likely to become only more valuable. Their coastline is longer than the Atlantic and the Pacific coastlines of the US, combined. Hence the name “Third Coast.”
The reason the book is called a “prelude to a plan” is that it doesn’t propose a plan or a path forward. Instead, it is focused on analyzing the current state. Here is an excerpt about the book taken from the Daniels Faculty:
Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a Plan describes the conditions for urbanization across the Great Lakes region. It assembles a multi-layered, empirical description of urbanization processes within the drainage basins of the five Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence River. This thick description encompasses a range of representational forms including maps, plans, diagrams, timelines, and photographs, as well as speculative design research projects and critical texts.
I find this topic fascinating and I suspect that many of you might as well. It’s also an important one. So I wanted to get it on your radar. If you happen to be in Toronto next week, the launch/book signing is happening this Tuesday, October 24, 2017.