I was recently having a discussion on Twitter about midrise buildings and architect Dermot Sweeny raised the important distinction between creating "spines" and creating "districts."

What he was referring to with "spines" was the way in which Toronto is intensifying its "Avenues" with midrise buildings. It is a kind of linear form of intensification which almost always means that each building must transition in some way to the low-rise housing that typically abuts our Avenues. This is far less relevant in districts.

We have started to increase housing supply in our "Neighborhoods" through things like laneway houses and garden suites, but in most cases, we are arguably not creating urban districts.

This is of course a touchy subject. But I think it's an important discussion to be having for a number reasons:

• Increasing housing supply is a good thing

• Angular planes and other transition measures make housing more expensive

• Urban places are, I would argue, better defined through districts rather than spines

• Mixed-use (employment) becomes more viable with districts

• Transit infrastructure is better utilized with radial density around its stations

Can you think of any others?

Photo: Old Montrêal (Shot on iPhone)

Laneway housing is back in the news here in Toronto. Last week the University of Toronto reported that they would like to build 50 laneway houses within the Huron-Sussex neighborhood and that they are aiming to start a 2 house pilot project some time in 2018.

Here is a drawing from their Planning Study:

What you see is mid-rise infill (orange) along the main streets and low-rise infill (purple) along the secondary streets and laneways. There’s also a “living lane” that runs north-south through the neighborhood. 

I know we’ve talked a lot about laneway housing and neighborhood intensification on this blog, but I hadn’t seen the above plan before. And I wonder if we aren’t going to look back at this neighborhood plan as a prototype for low-rise intensification.

In yesterday’s post about the 3 stages of intensification, I mentioned a project in Vancouver called Union Street EcoHeritage by SHAPE Architecture. I used it as an example for sensitive low-rise intensification.

Since it’s a very cool project (and most of you probably didn’t click through), I thought I would dedicate today’s post to explaining the project.

The picture at the top of this post is what it looks like today (the front elevation). If you were to pass by it, I suspect most of you would just think it was a pair of renovated single family homes. But there’s much more to it. What started out as only 2 dwellings, ended up as a site for 7 dwellings.

Here’s the before shot:

The homes were moved and actually raised up in order to accommodate additional density. Here’s a section that better explains what was done (black is existing; green is new):

The 2 existing homes were raised up so that an additional dwelling unit could be placed beneath each one. At the same time, additional units were added in the rear, both attached to the existing homes and at the back of the site facing the laneway. And so this project is actually one part laneway house.

Here’s a photo of what that rear interior space looks like (it’s stunning):

Not surprisingly, this project won a bunch of awards and has been widely celebrated as an affordable housing solution. It’s exciting to see Vancouver take the lead on low-rise intensification. It’s one of the reasons that I think it’s only a matter of time before Toronto starts to look towards similar solutions.

Images: SHAPE Architecture Inc.