I am a big fan of lights on buildings. Here is a photo of the Massey Tower (by MOD Developments and Hariri Pontarini Architects) that I quickly took on my walk home from the office this evening:

It's not a very good photo and it's not doing the project justice. So here's another shot of the mechanical penthouse lighting from their Instagram.

I've been noticing this lighting for a while now, and every time I see it I think to myself, "That's really well done." It's simple, elegant, and it reinforces the overall architectural intent of the building.

We are entering that time of the year, at least here in Toronto, where most of us will leave work and it will already be dark out. So the lighting on our buildings and in our public spaces can serve a particularly important function.

Lighting can, of course, be done poorly. And we do need to be mindful of migratory birds during the spring and fall. Artificial light disorients them at night.

But we all know how important lighting is to our interior spaces. The same is true for our urban spaces.

Parasitic architecture sounds like a bad thing because of the connotations, but you could make an argument that it is, in fact, the exact opposite. It is a way to better leverage existing structures and reclaim under-utilized urban spaces. Perhaps additive architecture would be a more appropriate name.

Here's one example. WARchitect recently completed this "skyscape apartment" on top of an existing 5 storey apartment building in Bangkok. It's about 1,600 square feet. And the entire space is organized according to the structural grid of the apartment building below.

Many/most structural systems have excess capacity because of a built in factor of safety. So for a small addition like this, I'm guessing that they probably just loaded up the existing column grid. It also looks like there were already stairs leading up to the roof of the building.

Years ago I looked at doing an addition on top of an existing apartment building here in Toronto and it ended up being a lot more complex than I may be making it out to be in this post. Mind you, we were looking at adding on a few floors, which triggered all sorts of issues.

But now that Toronto is allowing accessory dwelling units along its laneways, is it time that we also look at the rooftops of our existing buildings?

Photo: Rungkit Charoenwat

Here are a few photos from last night's sunset here in Malaga. (All unedited and straight from my iPhone.) It was one of the most beautiful sunsets that I have ever seen and seemed to go on for hours. But of course, the photos don't come close to doing it justice.