I stumbled upon this multi-unit housing project in Vienna because I thought it looked beautiful and I started thinking about the solid wall-to-window ratio on its facades. But it turns out that this project is far more than just a pretty face.

It's actually a social housing project on the outskirts of Vienna, where the city transitions into the countryside. And it incorporates a number of interesting design features:

• The complex is heated using groundwater heat pumps (geothermal) and domestic hot water is provided with the help of rooftop solar panels.

• The structural system consists of concrete slabs and columns (no shear walls) and was all poured in place. But the envelope consists of "prefabricated thermo-brick walls" which were craned into place (see below image). The curving balconies also look to be prefabricated elements.

• The suites have been designed with a saw tooth pattern and the circulation mirrors this through a zig zagging pattern. The result is units that are akin to what you will find at King Toronto (Bjarke Ingels), though on average the suites here look to be bigger than what we typically design in Toronto.

• The zig zagging corridors also incorporate skylights that let light down into the middle of the building. I think these run through multiple floors as well, and not just through the top floor of the building.

This certainly looks like a nice place to live.

Sources: Architecture by trans_city (Christian Aulinger, Mark Gilbert). Photography by Daniel Hawelka and David Schreyer. Both via ArchDaily.

Earlier this year, California joined Oregon to become the second state to pass policy that would allow additional housing density in single-family neighborhoods. Set to take effect on January 1, 2022, Senate Bill 9 requires that communities across California allow duplexes -- and in some cases four units if they sever their lot -- in most low-rise neighborhoods.

This is similar to what Toronto is looking at doing, though the details seem to be different. But as I mentioned before, sometimes you can have the broader permissions in place and yet very little building actually takes place because of other land use restrictions or market factors.

People in California seem to get this dynamic, because the Los Angeles Times just reported that some/many cities in California are now looking at local policies that would mitigate the effects of Senate Bill 9. In other words, they're looking at policies that would make it harder to build the housing that this new law was hoping to unlock.

Land use planning is a funny thing.

Toronto's chief planner Gregg Lintern (who you can follow over here on Twitter) was recently in the Toronto Star talking about the city's plans to allow more multi-unit dwellings in our low-rise single-family neighborhoods.

I was careful to say "more" because they are already permissible in some areas. The challenge is that they're not happening at any sort of meaningful scale, which is an obvious signal that some key ingredients are still missing.

Or perhaps there are too many required ingredients. For example, right now the zoning by-law requires one car parking space for every dwelling in a multi-unit building. This is, of course, dumb and the requirement should be completely eliminated.

Changes like this, as well as many others, are long overdue. Not just in Toronto, but in many other cities. And it is partially what I was getting at when I wrote about laneway housing this past weekend and hinted at the need for other solutions to increase housing supply.

So when you have a few minutes, I would encourage you to complete the city's survey on expanding permissions for multiplexes across the city. I just did it and voted to bring on the multiplexes.

Photo by Tiago Rodrigues on Unsplash