The Ontario Association of Architects recently announced its short-list of projects for their annual Design Excellence Award. (If you aren't familiar with the OAA, here's a bit of background.) There are so many excellent projects on their 2020 short-list, that I would encourage you to check them all out.

However, as a developer, it is my duty to shamelessly plug the architects that we are working with. superkül, the firm behind Junction House, was short-listed for two projects -- both of which are custom homes. One of them is in Toronto and the other is in Singhampton, Ontario, which is just south of Collingwood and the Georgian Bay.

The second home -- called Woodhouse -- is located on a 90-acre site. And I love everything about it. I love the "breezeway" that separates the living areas from the more private sleeping areas, and I love how they incorporated an existing 19th century log cabin into the build.

Here are a few photos:

Photos by Alex Fradkin and Kayla Rocca

This is not a new video (click here if you can't see it embedded above). It's from 2015. But I still very much like the simplicity of the Vipp Shelter. It's only 55 square meters.

One problem is that it cost USD 585,000 at the time it was prefabricated. It goes to show you that prefabrication and small don't necessarily equate to affordability. For this reason, Lloyd Alter called it a "problematic prefab" back in 2015.

Of course, there are ways to make a home like this much more cost effective. I've been looking, on and off, for over a year for a piece of land that would be suitable for a project like this. I'll let you all know if I find something.

I used to be more into photography. In architecture school, I had an old Canon Rebel and a photoblog where I posted one photo every day. Clearly I have a thing for daily routines.

But that was the pre-social media era and before mobile phones had cameras. With the rise of those two things I eventually moved over to just taking photos on my phone and posting them to my Instagram. Today we are all photographers.

However this week I decided that I want to start taking that creative outlet a bit more seriously again. So I asked my talented photography buddy (founder of DSCBRD) if he could recommend a reasonably priced camera for my purposes. 

I then sifted through all of the reviews – because that’s what I do – and decided on the mirrorless Fuji X-T10. I love the retro design. It’s also compact enough that it’s easy to carry around. The best camera is the one you have on you.

So I’m spending this afternoon at a cottage playing around with it. It’s a fun place to experiment. I hope you’re all having a great weekend. Talk to you tomorrow.