We all know what value engineering is when it comes to buildings. Generally speaking, it is the process of trying to identify high-cost items with relatively low perceived value. Once you identify these items, you then remove them (if you can), replace them with alternatives, or find other creative solutions. All projects have to do this at one point or another because, well, money doesn't grow on trees.
One way to think about this is in terms of the following four-quadrant chart:
Low-value and low-cost items aren't expensive, so you will probably just leave them alone. But if you can move them up to the next quadrant, that's even better.
High-value and low-cost items are the ideal place to be. One example might be a low-cost material that gets applied in a creative way so as to create high perceived value. This is where design really becomes alpha.
Low-value and high-cost items are the fertile ground for value engineering exercises. If the perceived value is low, why spend the money on it? Surely there must be other options.
High-value and high-cost items, on the other hand, require the most thought and debate. How high value is it? Do we really need or want to spend the money on it? One example of this would be the architectural facade lighting at One Delisle. Sadly, it was not free.
Years ago, the team presented it as a possible value-engineering option. But ultimately, we viewed it as being fundamental to the overall design. Its perceived value was off the charts. I mean, why invest so much in the architecture only to cut the very thing that helps prominently display it? So a decision was made to keep it and, boy, am I glad we did.
There's nothing else going up in Toronto like it.
Globalization typically reduces local differences. Shake Shack in Toronto is a lot like the Shake Shack in Dubai. But does this also apply to the inside of our homes?
This is a question that was recently asked by researchers at the MIT Senseable City Lab. And to answer it, they used AI to analyze over 400,000 interior images across 80 global cities. The images were taken from Airbnb, but they did also do a "robustness check" and pull images from Craigslist, Zillow, Zigbang, and Ohou.
What they discovered was that geography still matters. Local customs persist, and when two cities are close to each other, they tend to share visual similarities — both in terms of the objects that show up and how they look. So much so that their model was able to predict a city with an accuracy of about 45% just by looking at interior photos.
This is somewhat surprising to me as I thought that Airbnb listings might have skewed toward homogeneity. There can also be an Airbnb aesthetic. But local tastes and traditions still exist. For example, the study found that Turkey seems to place a high level of importance on curtains. Big drapery people over there, apparently.
At the same time, globalization is doing things. One of their findings was that cities with high flight volumes tend to exhibit more visual similarities. This says something about the value of physical connectivity. We're, of course, all connected digitally, but apparently that's not the same as getting on a plane and physically being somewhere.
"The same, but different" feels like an accurate description. To download a copy of the study, click here.
Cover photo from the MIT Senseable City Lab
CoStar recently published an article titled “Architectural stars appear on the skyline of Canada's largest city — Toronto reaches a new level of global reach and ambition.”
What the article is talking about is a slew of iconic, under-construction projects designed by some of the world's most celebrated living architects. Namely, Forma by Frank Gehry (Los Angeles), One Delisle by Jeanne Gang (Chicago), KING Toronto by Bjarke Ingels (Copenhagen), as well as a handful of other noteworthy projects by some of the best local firms in Toronto.
It is no doubt an exciting moment. These are projects that, I think, the world will come to associate with our great city. They will strengthen the global brand of Toronto.
But let me also state the obvious: These projects are the result of a particular moment in time and a particular point in the last real estate cycle. They wouldn't exist today, irrespective of our level of ambition.
This is not to say that this calibre of project won't exist again in the future — it will. But for right now, these are special and differentiated architectural treasures that truly stand alone, showing us what is possible when we bet on the unknowable future.