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

The City of Toronto is currently studying ways to increase housing options/supply and planning permissions in areas of the city that are designated as Neighbourhoods in the Official Plan.

These are areas that are sometimes referred to as the "Yellowbelt", because they are seeing very little intensification and, in a number of cases, actually losing population. (They're also colored yellow in Toronto's land use map.)

Ultimately, the goal is to encourage more "missing middle" type housing forms; housing that is denser than single-family homes but smaller in scale than say mid-rise housing like Junction House.

Here are a couple of interesting charts from the City. Based on Toronto's Official Plan, "Neighbourhoods" make up 35.4% of the city's land area.

In Toronto's Zoning By-law, the "Residential" category makes up 47.1% of the city's land area.

Digging deeper, 31.3% of Toronto's total area is zoned for only detached houses -- which would mean no missing middle type housing. But 15.8% of the city's total area is already zoned to permit other types of low-rise residential buildings, such as duplexes and triplexes.

So why isn't more of that happening?

As we've talked about before on the blog, the problem is that it is exceedingly difficult to make the math work on projects of this scale, which is why most developers don't want to do them. The web of bureaucracy that you need to navigate in order to build anything in the city is also imposing for non-developers (and developers really).

But to be a developer, I think you need to be an optimist. So I am going to remain hopeful that this study -- and the pilot they want to do in Ward 19 -- will result in a streamlined solution for housing of this scale.

Images: City of Toronto

Designlines Magazine is out with its annual "Designer of the Year" issue and this year's winner for best overall designer is Superkül -- the award-winning architecture firm behind Junction House. Pictured above are Andrea D'Elia, Meg Graham and the team. (The JH project team spends a lot of time in the boardroom that you see in this picture.)

Other winners for this year include Omar Gandhi, Paolo Ferrari, and LGA Architectural Partners. They were awarded best restaurant, best product, and best public space, respectively. If you aren't familiar with the work of these four firms, I would encourage you to check them all out. They are truly some of the best in the city. Congrats everyone.

If you'd like to buy a copy of Designlines, you can do that here. We will also make copies available at our temporary Junction House showroom, which is located at 2843 Dundas St W.