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In case you missed it, Google released Gemini 3 this past week. And boy is it awesome. The images it creates — see the tweet above — are completely undetectable as the work of AI, and this is just one particular use case. From an overall sentiment standpoint, it is also amazing to see how quickly things have changed for Google. This past summer, the narrative was that AI was going to kill Google's golden goose — its search business. But now all of a sudden, it feels like Google is the king of AI.
I know we all know this, but it's hard not to keep thinking about how profoundly this is all going to change the global economy. Let's take real estate development. Development is a future-oriented business. It's about imagining what the future could be, and then going out and trying to create it. Because of this, I think you could also describe it as an industry of visual persuasion. Renderings, photos, diagrams, and many other tools are used to sell a specific kind of future.
In the olden days, these tools used to cost a lot of money, especially if you were preparing for something like a condominium sales launch. When it came to renderings, we used to have to book the best companies months in advance, and then once work actually started, it would take several weeks of iteration before the final renderings were ready. In parallel to this, you'd also be working on your photography. And because no developer wants to photograph dormant winter trees and sidewalks shellacked in road salt, you also needed to carefully plan ahead for when you'd be taking these.
Then, once you had all your visuals ready, you sent them off to the printers, so that sales brochures and other marketing collateral could be physically printed. It's a long and expensive process. Of course, AI collapses this entire workflow. It dramatically reduces both time and cost (down to an almost zero marginal cost), and opens up a world of unlimited visual possibilities. Want a photograph of a couple walking in New York City in the snow during Christmas? Done.
So what does this mean for development and all of the service providers who help to visualize projects into existence? In my view, it means the low-value-add ones go away. AI easily replaces them. But for the high-value ones who bring incredible creative direction to projects, I think they get better and become even more important. AI is creative rocket fuel. But you still need someone who can direct, who has taste, and who can decide what story the project should tell.
Cover photo by Serhii Hanushchak on Unsplash
Alex Bozikovic (architecture critic for the Globe and Mail) is one of the most vocal proponents of more housing and more density within Toronto's low-rise neighborhoods. Last year, he organized an international design competition where he asked firms to come up with innovative, yet sensible, solutions for how this could be done. I'm a little late getting to this, but today I'd like to walk you through this immensely clever solution by Batay-Csorba Architects, called Triplex Duplex.
In case you missed it, Google released Gemini 3 this past week. And boy is it awesome. The images it creates — see the tweet above — are completely undetectable as the work of AI, and this is just one particular use case. From an overall sentiment standpoint, it is also amazing to see how quickly things have changed for Google. This past summer, the narrative was that AI was going to kill Google's golden goose — its search business. But now all of a sudden, it feels like Google is the king of AI.
I know we all know this, but it's hard not to keep thinking about how profoundly this is all going to change the global economy. Let's take real estate development. Development is a future-oriented business. It's about imagining what the future could be, and then going out and trying to create it. Because of this, I think you could also describe it as an industry of visual persuasion. Renderings, photos, diagrams, and many other tools are used to sell a specific kind of future.
In the olden days, these tools used to cost a lot of money, especially if you were preparing for something like a condominium sales launch. When it came to renderings, we used to have to book the best companies months in advance, and then once work actually started, it would take several weeks of iteration before the final renderings were ready. In parallel to this, you'd also be working on your photography. And because no developer wants to photograph dormant winter trees and sidewalks shellacked in road salt, you also needed to carefully plan ahead for when you'd be taking these.
Then, once you had all your visuals ready, you sent them off to the printers, so that sales brochures and other marketing collateral could be physically printed. It's a long and expensive process. Of course, AI collapses this entire workflow. It dramatically reduces both time and cost (down to an almost zero marginal cost), and opens up a world of unlimited visual possibilities. Want a photograph of a couple walking in New York City in the snow during Christmas? Done.
So what does this mean for development and all of the service providers who help to visualize projects into existence? In my view, it means the low-value-add ones go away. AI easily replaces them. But for the high-value ones who bring incredible creative direction to projects, I think they get better and become even more important. AI is creative rocket fuel. But you still need someone who can direct, who has taste, and who can decide what story the project should tell.
Cover photo by Serhii Hanushchak on Unsplash
Alex Bozikovic (architecture critic for the Globe and Mail) is one of the most vocal proponents of more housing and more density within Toronto's low-rise neighborhoods. Last year, he organized an international design competition where he asked firms to come up with innovative, yet sensible, solutions for how this could be done. I'm a little late getting to this, but today I'd like to walk you through this immensely clever solution by Batay-Csorba Architects, called Triplex Duplex.
The project uses two prototypical, but random, semi-detached lots from the Christie & Bloor area of the city. Each one is 18' wide x 100' deep. So your typical long and narrow lots. From the street (see above image), it looks highly contextual. But in plan, you begin to see the 3 main volumes of the project emerge. Here's a ground floor plan from the architect:
Each volume is around 2,500 square feet. I presume that includes the basement. If you exclude the basement area and the vertical voids throughout the project, which you're allowed to do in your calculation of gross floor area in residential zones, I suspect we'd arrive at an FSI (density) number that isn't that much more than what already exist in these sorts of areas.
At the front of the house (right side of the above plan) is a set of stairs (and a patio) leading down to the front basement unit and a set of stairs leading up to the main front unit. An inset patio also forms part of this main entrance (image below), which is a great way of adding outdoor space while at the same time maintaining privacy across the units. These strategy is one of my favorite aspects of the project.
The rear units are similarly accessed at the back of the building. And the two middle units are accessed along the side of the house. All in all, this housing typology has the ability to accommodate up to 6 units: 3 main suites and 3 secondary type suites. By the architect's own estimate, this could result in 147,000 new housing units across the city if every lot occupied by a semi-detached house were to be redeveloped in this way.
But I wonder if any consideration was given to the secondary (basement) suites that may already exist in these zones. Because in some cases, and as beautiful as these homes may be, we may only be talking about 2 additional suites. Triplexes are also already allowed in some areas of the city. So does this ultimately achieve its intended goal, which is the creation of more "missing middle" housing in order to ease overall housing pressures? Or do we need to be thinking bigger?
As a follow-up to this post (subscribe to stay connected), I am going to look at what a development pro forma might look like for a project of this scale. The numbers have a way of answering a lot of questions. That said, kudos to Alex for taking on this initiative and kudos to the design team for a pretty spectacular architectural solution.
All renderings by the talented Norm Li.
The project uses two prototypical, but random, semi-detached lots from the Christie & Bloor area of the city. Each one is 18' wide x 100' deep. So your typical long and narrow lots. From the street (see above image), it looks highly contextual. But in plan, you begin to see the 3 main volumes of the project emerge. Here's a ground floor plan from the architect:
Each volume is around 2,500 square feet. I presume that includes the basement. If you exclude the basement area and the vertical voids throughout the project, which you're allowed to do in your calculation of gross floor area in residential zones, I suspect we'd arrive at an FSI (density) number that isn't that much more than what already exist in these sorts of areas.
At the front of the house (right side of the above plan) is a set of stairs (and a patio) leading down to the front basement unit and a set of stairs leading up to the main front unit. An inset patio also forms part of this main entrance (image below), which is a great way of adding outdoor space while at the same time maintaining privacy across the units. These strategy is one of my favorite aspects of the project.
The rear units are similarly accessed at the back of the building. And the two middle units are accessed along the side of the house. All in all, this housing typology has the ability to accommodate up to 6 units: 3 main suites and 3 secondary type suites. By the architect's own estimate, this could result in 147,000 new housing units across the city if every lot occupied by a semi-detached house were to be redeveloped in this way.
But I wonder if any consideration was given to the secondary (basement) suites that may already exist in these zones. Because in some cases, and as beautiful as these homes may be, we may only be talking about 2 additional suites. Triplexes are also already allowed in some areas of the city. So does this ultimately achieve its intended goal, which is the creation of more "missing middle" housing in order to ease overall housing pressures? Or do we need to be thinking bigger?
As a follow-up to this post (subscribe to stay connected), I am going to look at what a development pro forma might look like for a project of this scale. The numbers have a way of answering a lot of questions. That said, kudos to Alex for taking on this initiative and kudos to the design team for a pretty spectacular architectural solution.
All renderings by the talented Norm Li.
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