As Architect This City continues to grow in readership, I’m starting to get pitched more and more. People email me with something they want promoted and they try and convince me to write about it. Everybody is looking for distribution. I get it.
I have no qualms about people and companies reaching out. In fact, I welcome the suggestions. But the vast majority of these “pitches” don’t make it onto ATC.
When it comes to these sorts of things, I have two simple rules: (1) I have to like it myself. If I don’t think what you’re pitching is interesting or cool, I’m not going to write about it – even if you’re offering up money. (2) I need to be able to be transparent about it. More on this second point in the coming weeks.
Recently I was asked to do a post about the Fashion House Condos in Toronto’s King West neighborhood.
Here’s why I decided to do it:
I like that the existing Silverplate heritage building was preserved and integrated into the base of the condo. It’s now tenanted to The Keg, which has gone into the base of a number of new condo buildings in the city. They’re a successful chain.
Each elevator lobby within the building has a unique mural designed by a different fashion designer – most of which are Canadian. The whole Fashion House theme is meant to speak to the area’s history as Toronto’s Garment District.
Many of the residential suites have red curtains (which are white on the interior). They form a “common element” and have to stay in the condo. It gives the building a dramatic and unique feel, though it means you have to be a fan of curtains.
My good friend designed the Mexican restaurant at the base of the building (Wilbur Mexicana). His firm is called Reflect Architecture.
It’s also an example of cool startup businesses going into the base of a new development. As far as I know, Wilbur Mexicana is the group’s first venture.
There’s a rooftop pool that I’m hoping somebody will invite me to this summer.
And finally, because I think the King West neighborhood is such a great example of urban renewal.
To end off, here are some stats on the project:
Address: 560 King Street West, Toronto
Developer: Freed Developments
Architect: CORE Architects
Project Timeline: 2008-2014
Construction Costs: $60M (estimate)
Site Area: 4,887 square meters / 52,603 square feet
Gross Floor Area: 27,107 square meters / 291,777 square feet
Floors: 11 and 12 storeys
Building Heights: 33m and 39.7m
Residential Suites: 334
And here are the fashion designers responsible for each elevator lobby mural:
2nd Floor – Beckermans
3rd Floor – Dean Davidson
4th Floor – Jeremy Laing
5th Floor – Adrian Wu
6th Floor – Jenny Bird
7th Floor – Ashtiani
8th Floor – Peach Berserk
9th Floor – Smythe
10th Floor – Jay Godfrey
11th Floor – Bustle
Penthouse – Greta Constantine
What do you think of Fashion House?
Images: CORE Architects
Over the past few weeks I’ve been running a little experiment on Twitter where I tweet about a new development project in Toronto and I ask people to vote on it. If they like the project, I ask that they retweet (RT) it. And if they don’t like it, I ask that they favorite it (FAV).
Here’s what it looks like in tweet form:
https://twitter.com/AThisCity/status/575803932083032064
As you can see from this experiment, about 69% of the people who participated seemed to be in favor of this project (at least at the time of writing this post). That said, the discussion following this tweet was a lot more negative than I would have expected.
Somebody also pointed out that in my experiment I’ve created a bias towards supporting the project, since a retweet means the project gets shared, whereas a favorite doesn’t do that. I would argue that the more distribution the better for an accurate consensus, but point taken.
So today I thought I would do this same experiment here on Architect This City.
At the bottom of this post, I’ve featured a comment from myself asking if you support the 1 Bloor West project. If you like the project, I ask that you “up vote” my comment. And if you dislike the project, I ask that you “down vote” it. You can do so by using the up and down arrows towards the bottom left of the comment.
Hopefully this hack will create a more neutral voting framework. I hope you will participate. If you’re reading this via email, you’ll need to open up the post in your browser by clicking “read more” at the bottom.
If you’d like to learn more about the project before voting, check out this article from the Globe and Mail. Happy voting!
A reader recently shared with me an interesting article from Crain’s New York (2013) profiling three “architects as developers.” The three firms are DDG Partners (which I’ve mentioned before here on ATC), FLAnk, and Alloy.
I’ve written a lot about these emerging business models and I continue to think that we’re going to see more of them in the coming years. As evidence for that claim, I thought it was really interesting to read in the article that Vishaan Chakrabarti – who is director of the real estate program at Columbia University – made specific mention that there’s growing interest among his students to wear multiple hats. In other words, they don’t want to be just an architect or just a developer. They want do it all.
In a lot of cases, these firms are made up of partners who have those diverse skill sets. There’s only so much that one person can do. But that doesn’t negate the fact that vertically integrated companies are being formed that handle everything from design and construction to property management and development.
And if an increasing number of students today are interested and thinking about those models, then I think it’s a pretty safe bet that many of them will get out into the workforce and eventually create those companies in the future.
Ultimately, I think that’s a great thing for cities. Developers tend to have a bad reputation for thinking only about money. But when you bring design and other disciplines in-house, you create tensions in the process. And tension can be a great thing for innovation and creativity.
Image: 385 West 12th by Flank