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Things are busy right now as we get ready to unveil Junction House this fall and so I’m a bit behind on my news and reading.
I just finished reading Alex Bozikovic’s Globe article on BIG’s new KING Toronto project (official name). It is an interesting piece about creating villages and a sense of community in new developments – something that Bjarke Ingels has been focused on for many years.
Below are a few renderings of the project. I’m excited for this one. And as I said before on the blog, I am sure it will be precedent setting in a number of ways.
One remark from the article that stood out for me is this one here:
Still: The design breaks a lot of rules. Which is why it took two years of difficult negotiations with city planners to reach approvals. “We wanted it to be quieter,” says Lynda MacDonald, a senior Toronto planner who was involved in overseeing the project. “It’s a very large project, and we wanted to make sure it respected the character of King Street.”
I am often asked why we don’t see more innovation in architecture and real estate. There are a number of reasons for that. One of them is risk. Development is in many ways a game of risk mitigation.
But another reason is that when you try and do something unconventional that disrupts the status quo, you also call into question the typical planning criteria used to evaluate projects. And that may slow you down.
Alex accurately points out in his article that we are used to doing things around here in one of two ways:
The King Street project is also an ambitious experiment with urban design. There are basically two species of tower in Toronto: a midrise slab of six to 10 storeys, which steps back at the top; and a “tower-and-podium,” a model borrowed from Vancouver that combines a fat, squared-off base (or “podium”) with a tall, skinny residential tower. Both can work, but can also create the big-box blandness that many people dislike about new urban housing.
None of this is to suggest that we should ignore the character of a particular area. It is critical and I believe that KING Toronto has been mindful of that.
But I also firmly believe in ambitious city building and I think there’s no question that KING Toronto is doing exactly that.
Images: Hayes Davison via Dezeen and courtesy of Westbank
Dezeen, the architecture and design magazine, has a documentary out called Elevation - How Drones Will Change Cities. It premiered in Hong Kong in March and is supposed to be widely available this month. I’m not exactly sure when that is happening, but below is a trailer. If you can’t see it below click here.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSlep5XCpaw&w=560&h=315]
Included in the trailer is footage of a delivery drone concept by design consultancy PriestmanGoode called Dragonfly. Norman Foster also talks about the development of “aerial highways.” It’s 2018 and we were promised flying cars by this point. But flying drones, similar to what’s in the above trailer, seem more probable right now.
Architect Rem Koolhaas recently unveiled a backpack that he designed for Prada’s autumn winter 2018 menswear collection.
It looks like this:
Things are busy right now as we get ready to unveil Junction House this fall and so I’m a bit behind on my news and reading.
I just finished reading Alex Bozikovic’s Globe article on BIG’s new KING Toronto project (official name). It is an interesting piece about creating villages and a sense of community in new developments – something that Bjarke Ingels has been focused on for many years.
Below are a few renderings of the project. I’m excited for this one. And as I said before on the blog, I am sure it will be precedent setting in a number of ways.
One remark from the article that stood out for me is this one here:
Still: The design breaks a lot of rules. Which is why it took two years of difficult negotiations with city planners to reach approvals. “We wanted it to be quieter,” says Lynda MacDonald, a senior Toronto planner who was involved in overseeing the project. “It’s a very large project, and we wanted to make sure it respected the character of King Street.”
I am often asked why we don’t see more innovation in architecture and real estate. There are a number of reasons for that. One of them is risk. Development is in many ways a game of risk mitigation.
But another reason is that when you try and do something unconventional that disrupts the status quo, you also call into question the typical planning criteria used to evaluate projects. And that may slow you down.
Alex accurately points out in his article that we are used to doing things around here in one of two ways:
The King Street project is also an ambitious experiment with urban design. There are basically two species of tower in Toronto: a midrise slab of six to 10 storeys, which steps back at the top; and a “tower-and-podium,” a model borrowed from Vancouver that combines a fat, squared-off base (or “podium”) with a tall, skinny residential tower. Both can work, but can also create the big-box blandness that many people dislike about new urban housing.
None of this is to suggest that we should ignore the character of a particular area. It is critical and I believe that KING Toronto has been mindful of that.
But I also firmly believe in ambitious city building and I think there’s no question that KING Toronto is doing exactly that.
Images: Hayes Davison via Dezeen and courtesy of Westbank
Dezeen, the architecture and design magazine, has a documentary out called Elevation - How Drones Will Change Cities. It premiered in Hong Kong in March and is supposed to be widely available this month. I’m not exactly sure when that is happening, but below is a trailer. If you can’t see it below click here.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSlep5XCpaw&w=560&h=315]
Included in the trailer is footage of a delivery drone concept by design consultancy PriestmanGoode called Dragonfly. Norman Foster also talks about the development of “aerial highways.” It’s 2018 and we were promised flying cars by this point. But flying drones, similar to what’s in the above trailer, seem more probable right now.
Architect Rem Koolhaas recently unveiled a backpack that he designed for Prada’s autumn winter 2018 menswear collection.
It looks like this:
It’s more of a frontpack. Actually, maybe the right name is chestpack.
What stood out for me, though – perhaps more than its frontality – was the way that Rem Koolhaas described his reasoning behind the design.
Here is an excerpt from Dezeen:
“Today, waiting in line for a typical airport check of carry-on luggage, it is surprising to note how the shapeless container of the backpack, is inhabited by strict, orthogonal devices like the laptop, the charger, books, toilet bag, and how awkward it is to liberate these objects from their containment in the backpack,” he said.
“This project proposes a reinterpretation of the backpack, more suitable to the contemporary urban citizen,” he continued. “The frontal position gives a more intimate sense of ownership – a better control of movement, avoiding the chain of oblivious collisions that the backpack inadvertently generates.”
Leave it to an architect to talk about a backpack like the wearer is about to go to war.
P.S. I’m a fan of Koolhaas. I just found this funny.
Image: Prada
It’s more of a frontpack. Actually, maybe the right name is chestpack.
What stood out for me, though – perhaps more than its frontality – was the way that Rem Koolhaas described his reasoning behind the design.
Here is an excerpt from Dezeen:
“Today, waiting in line for a typical airport check of carry-on luggage, it is surprising to note how the shapeless container of the backpack, is inhabited by strict, orthogonal devices like the laptop, the charger, books, toilet bag, and how awkward it is to liberate these objects from their containment in the backpack,” he said.
“This project proposes a reinterpretation of the backpack, more suitable to the contemporary urban citizen,” he continued. “The frontal position gives a more intimate sense of ownership – a better control of movement, avoiding the chain of oblivious collisions that the backpack inadvertently generates.”
Leave it to an architect to talk about a backpack like the wearer is about to go to war.
P.S. I’m a fan of Koolhaas. I just found this funny.
Image: Prada
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