For the past week or so I’ve been seeing the proposed Kettle Boffo Project in Vancouver make the rounds online. Here’s a rendering of the project, which is located at Commercial Drive and Venables Street:
It’s the same story: buy house; see opportunity to build low-cost well-designed backyard cottage (or laneway house); discover the countless obstacles in front of you; give up until the land use policies become more favorable.
Here’s the Seattle version of the story (via The Urbanist):
I bought my home in 2014 with the intent of building a backyard cottage on the property. The property is a mere 4,080 square feet, with a large flat backyard that is mostly wasted space. The plan was to buy a small, prefabricated, and super-insulated (to Passive House standards) house. We would install it and move into it while we brought the main house up to Passive House standards as well, adding insulation and ventilation. We would then move into the main house while my parents (who are currently living on the East Coast, and want to move closer to us) move into the backyard cottage.
For the past week or so I’ve been seeing the proposed Kettle Boffo Project in Vancouver make the rounds online. Here’s a rendering of the project, which is located at Commercial Drive and Venables Street:
It’s the same story: buy house; see opportunity to build low-cost well-designed backyard cottage (or laneway house); discover the countless obstacles in front of you; give up until the land use policies become more favorable.
Here’s the Seattle version of the story (via The Urbanist):
I bought my home in 2014 with the intent of building a backyard cottage on the property. The property is a mere 4,080 square feet, with a large flat backyard that is mostly wasted space. The plan was to buy a small, prefabricated, and super-insulated (to Passive House standards) house. We would install it and move into it while we brought the main house up to Passive House standards as well, adding insulation and ventilation. We would then move into the main house while my parents (who are currently living on the East Coast, and want to move closer to us) move into the backyard cottage.
The reason it has been making the rounds is that a community group called NO TOWER (written in all caps) has come out in fierce opposition of the 5 to 12-storey building. They have over 3,500 signatures.
As an outsider looking in, this is surprising. The scale of the project seems appropriate. The height roughly matches the existing building shown above to the right. It may even be lower. And the project will provide somewhere around 30 social housing units, as well as additional space for the Kettle Friendship Society non-profit, who are currently on the site. (Note: An application to the city hasn’t yet been made.)
What this has me thinking about is the push and pull between bottom-up and top-down planning.
When architect Bjarke Ingels talks about his Dryline project in New York, he likes to refer to it as the love child of Robert Moses (top-down planning) and Jane Jacobs (bottom-up planning). In the case of this project, it’s because it’s a large infrastructure project that they are trying to root into the local neighborhoods. Makes sense.
But this same thinking could also apply to overall city building. Local communities rightly have their own wants. But at the same time, cities need to be thinking about the overall. The challenge is finding that right balance.
I would be curious to hear your thoughts on the Kettle Boffo Project in the comment section below – especially if you’re from Vancouver.
Unfortunately, Seattle’s backyard cottage requirements proved too onerous for us to move forward with building one. The requirement of an additional parking space was a bit irritating (especially considering that my family lives car-free near the future Roosevelt light rail station), despite the fact that we do technically have two parking spaces. But more frustrating than that, it was the owner-occupancy requirement that made us scrap our backyard cottage plans.
What I find interesting about all of this is that the same narrative is happening in multiple cities, from Seattle to Toronto. That, again, suggests to me that change is likely inevitable. Especially since Seattle seems further ahead in this regard compared to Toronto. Change is happening.
Of course, there are differences between accessory dwelling units (what The Urbanist wrote about) and independent laneway housing (what I wrote about). But I would classify them as being in the same family of urban change.
Most North American cities are clinging to a specific kind of single family housing typology. I can appreciate why. But I believe that there will be a tipping point.
I’m not sure that this year will be the year. Which is why I didn’t include laneway housing in my list of 10 city building predictions for 2016. But I think it will happen in the shorter term.
When I was a kid growing up in the suburbs of Toronto, I never played in the backyard. I played in the streets. That’s where all the kids came together.
We would play baseball in somebody’s driveway, using one of the garage door “squares” as the strike zone. We would play football on corner lots, where it was tackle on the grass and “two-hand touch” on the street. And we would wax our curbs so that we could skateboard them.
None of these spaces were ever really intended for baseball, football, or skateboarding, but we kids repurposed them.
As people, including families, continue to move into urban centers around the world, I have no doubt that the next generation of children will once again repurpose spaces for play. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have work to do when it comes to properly preparing our communities for people of all shapes and sizes.
One of the most interesting design challenges facing us today has to do with our towers.
Architects have long been obsessed with the idea of vertical villages. Le Corbusier’s Unité d'habitation in Marseille had two shopping streets embedded within the tower that were intended to act as public spines. I don’t know how well they did, but it was a highly progressive idea for the time.
Following on this idea, I was recently watching a TED talk with architect Ole Scheeren (thanks Mariane) and I was fascinated by his obsession with breaking down the raw verticality of towers.
His belief was that, yes, cities are and will continue to become more dense through tall buildings, but that most towers isolate rather than connect people. His work strives to do the opposite.
And this one of the big trends that I think we will see more of in our cites. We will see new forms of urban connectedness and a blurring of private, public, and semi-public spaces. Screw Euclidean zoning.
On that note, I am reminded that I owe the ATC community a post on my predictions for 2016. I hope to get that out shortly.
The reason it has been making the rounds is that a community group called NO TOWER (written in all caps) has come out in fierce opposition of the 5 to 12-storey building. They have over 3,500 signatures.
As an outsider looking in, this is surprising. The scale of the project seems appropriate. The height roughly matches the existing building shown above to the right. It may even be lower. And the project will provide somewhere around 30 social housing units, as well as additional space for the Kettle Friendship Society non-profit, who are currently on the site. (Note: An application to the city hasn’t yet been made.)
What this has me thinking about is the push and pull between bottom-up and top-down planning.
When architect Bjarke Ingels talks about his Dryline project in New York, he likes to refer to it as the love child of Robert Moses (top-down planning) and Jane Jacobs (bottom-up planning). In the case of this project, it’s because it’s a large infrastructure project that they are trying to root into the local neighborhoods. Makes sense.
But this same thinking could also apply to overall city building. Local communities rightly have their own wants. But at the same time, cities need to be thinking about the overall. The challenge is finding that right balance.
I would be curious to hear your thoughts on the Kettle Boffo Project in the comment section below – especially if you’re from Vancouver.
Unfortunately, Seattle’s backyard cottage requirements proved too onerous for us to move forward with building one. The requirement of an additional parking space was a bit irritating (especially considering that my family lives car-free near the future Roosevelt light rail station), despite the fact that we do technically have two parking spaces. But more frustrating than that, it was the owner-occupancy requirement that made us scrap our backyard cottage plans.
What I find interesting about all of this is that the same narrative is happening in multiple cities, from Seattle to Toronto. That, again, suggests to me that change is likely inevitable. Especially since Seattle seems further ahead in this regard compared to Toronto. Change is happening.
Of course, there are differences between accessory dwelling units (what The Urbanist wrote about) and independent laneway housing (what I wrote about). But I would classify them as being in the same family of urban change.
Most North American cities are clinging to a specific kind of single family housing typology. I can appreciate why. But I believe that there will be a tipping point.
I’m not sure that this year will be the year. Which is why I didn’t include laneway housing in my list of 10 city building predictions for 2016. But I think it will happen in the shorter term.
When I was a kid growing up in the suburbs of Toronto, I never played in the backyard. I played in the streets. That’s where all the kids came together.
We would play baseball in somebody’s driveway, using one of the garage door “squares” as the strike zone. We would play football on corner lots, where it was tackle on the grass and “two-hand touch” on the street. And we would wax our curbs so that we could skateboard them.
None of these spaces were ever really intended for baseball, football, or skateboarding, but we kids repurposed them.
As people, including families, continue to move into urban centers around the world, I have no doubt that the next generation of children will once again repurpose spaces for play. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have work to do when it comes to properly preparing our communities for people of all shapes and sizes.
One of the most interesting design challenges facing us today has to do with our towers.
Architects have long been obsessed with the idea of vertical villages. Le Corbusier’s Unité d'habitation in Marseille had two shopping streets embedded within the tower that were intended to act as public spines. I don’t know how well they did, but it was a highly progressive idea for the time.
Following on this idea, I was recently watching a TED talk with architect Ole Scheeren (thanks Mariane) and I was fascinated by his obsession with breaking down the raw verticality of towers.
His belief was that, yes, cities are and will continue to become more dense through tall buildings, but that most towers isolate rather than connect people. His work strives to do the opposite.
And this one of the big trends that I think we will see more of in our cites. We will see new forms of urban connectedness and a blurring of private, public, and semi-public spaces. Screw Euclidean zoning.
On that note, I am reminded that I owe the ATC community a post on my predictions for 2016. I hope to get that out shortly.
