A few weeks ago, Canadian developer Tridel unveiled its first “smart condominium” at Ten York – a recently completed 69 storey building in the South Core neighborhood of Toronto. Above is an archive photo of the building under construction. I chose this one because its siting between the Gardiner Expressway (left) and Harbour Street (right) is also noteworthy.
Smart anything is one of those tech buzzwords that is, I know, starting to feel vapid. But Tridel has done some interesting things here with their Tridel Connect platform (a collaboration with SmartONE Solutions). And if you happen to also be in the business of designing and constructing multi-family buildings, I think you’ll find it to be a useful case study.
At Ten York, you can now use your phone as a key fob. People buzzing up are shown to you on your wall pad so you can confirm identity. The suite entry doors use digital locks, which means you use an access code instead of a key. Additional codes can be created for family and friends or for service providers like dog walkers and cleaners. You’re also given a log of who has come and gone. And of course there’s an automated parcel delivery system.
If you’d like to see all of the features in the live, I suggest you take a look at the “b-roll video” that was included as part of their press release. Tridel is excellent at implementing new technologies and I know that they frequently reserve test suites in their projects to try some of them out. This is a great thing for the industry and for consumers.
Image: Tridel
Dutch architecture firm UNStudio has just launched a new company called UNSense, whose purpose is to explore and develop “new sensor-based technologies that are specifically designed to positively impact people’s physical, mental and social health.” They are calling the new business an “arch tech company” and it is their belief that, at some point, all architecture firms will become arch tech companies. You can learn more about UNSense,
This week I picked up the Philips Hue lighting system. For those of you aren’t familiar with it, it’s a connected home lighting system. All you need are a Philips Bridge (which hooks up to your wireless router); a smartphone; and whatever bulbs, lightstrips and fixtures you want to use with it. It also works seamlessly with the Apple Home app.
At first I was a bit nervous that it would turn my place into a cheesy nightclub. But as soon as I powered it on and started messing around with the Hue app, I was blown away by the quality of the light and the options. There are settings for reading, to simulate a sunset, and so on. You can schedule routines, such as a bedtime lighting scheme, and you can even color match a photo to find exactly the light you want.
After playing around a bit, I then sent out an obligatory tweet saying that I was now hooked on and obsessed with the Philips Hue lighting system. Trust me, it’s really cool. My friend Andrew then responded saying that he doesn’t get it. Why would anyone want a color of light besides “white?” To me, this is like asking: Why would anyone want to see a beautiful sunrise or sunset? The sun should just appear or disappear using one consistent color.
In a city like Toronto where most of us in the winter will wake up when it’s dark and come home from work when it’s dark, I have always believed that we should be more creative and daring with the way we light our city, our buildings, and our public spaces. We don’t want to be kitschy about it, but there’s an opportunity to maximize our darker months and enhance the overall urban experience.
The CN Tower is a perfect example. Its night lighting has completely changed how we view it and has become a beacon for what is going on in this city. I can see it clearly from my elevator lobby and I always look to see what color it is. I’m not great at picking out when it’s Rett Syndrome Awareness Month, but I can usually tell when there’s a game going on.
Now my place is certainly not the CN Tower. And there’s only one CN Tower in the world. But that doesn’t mean we can’t get fun and creative in other ways within the shared walls of the public realm. We should do that. Let’s not be so conservative.
If any of you have great examples of urban lighting, please share it in the comments below. Perhaps we can all use it as inspiration to make a change.
A few weeks ago, Canadian developer Tridel unveiled its first “smart condominium” at Ten York – a recently completed 69 storey building in the South Core neighborhood of Toronto. Above is an archive photo of the building under construction. I chose this one because its siting between the Gardiner Expressway (left) and Harbour Street (right) is also noteworthy.
Smart anything is one of those tech buzzwords that is, I know, starting to feel vapid. But Tridel has done some interesting things here with their Tridel Connect platform (a collaboration with SmartONE Solutions). And if you happen to also be in the business of designing and constructing multi-family buildings, I think you’ll find it to be a useful case study.
At Ten York, you can now use your phone as a key fob. People buzzing up are shown to you on your wall pad so you can confirm identity. The suite entry doors use digital locks, which means you use an access code instead of a key. Additional codes can be created for family and friends or for service providers like dog walkers and cleaners. You’re also given a log of who has come and gone. And of course there’s an automated parcel delivery system.
If you’d like to see all of the features in the live, I suggest you take a look at the “b-roll video” that was included as part of their press release. Tridel is excellent at implementing new technologies and I know that they frequently reserve test suites in their projects to try some of them out. This is a great thing for the industry and for consumers.
Image: Tridel
Dutch architecture firm UNStudio has just launched a new company called UNSense, whose purpose is to explore and develop “new sensor-based technologies that are specifically designed to positively impact people’s physical, mental and social health.” They are calling the new business an “arch tech company” and it is their belief that, at some point, all architecture firms will become arch tech companies. You can learn more about UNSense,
This week I picked up the Philips Hue lighting system. For those of you aren’t familiar with it, it’s a connected home lighting system. All you need are a Philips Bridge (which hooks up to your wireless router); a smartphone; and whatever bulbs, lightstrips and fixtures you want to use with it. It also works seamlessly with the Apple Home app.
At first I was a bit nervous that it would turn my place into a cheesy nightclub. But as soon as I powered it on and started messing around with the Hue app, I was blown away by the quality of the light and the options. There are settings for reading, to simulate a sunset, and so on. You can schedule routines, such as a bedtime lighting scheme, and you can even color match a photo to find exactly the light you want.
After playing around a bit, I then sent out an obligatory tweet saying that I was now hooked on and obsessed with the Philips Hue lighting system. Trust me, it’s really cool. My friend Andrew then responded saying that he doesn’t get it. Why would anyone want a color of light besides “white?” To me, this is like asking: Why would anyone want to see a beautiful sunrise or sunset? The sun should just appear or disappear using one consistent color.
In a city like Toronto where most of us in the winter will wake up when it’s dark and come home from work when it’s dark, I have always believed that we should be more creative and daring with the way we light our city, our buildings, and our public spaces. We don’t want to be kitschy about it, but there’s an opportunity to maximize our darker months and enhance the overall urban experience.
The CN Tower is a perfect example. Its night lighting has completely changed how we view it and has become a beacon for what is going on in this city. I can see it clearly from my elevator lobby and I always look to see what color it is. I’m not great at picking out when it’s Rett Syndrome Awareness Month, but I can usually tell when there’s a game going on.
Now my place is certainly not the CN Tower. And there’s only one CN Tower in the world. But that doesn’t mean we can’t get fun and creative in other ways within the shared walls of the public realm. We should do that. Let’s not be so conservative.
If any of you have great examples of urban lighting, please share it in the comments below. Perhaps we can all use it as inspiration to make a change.
This announcement got me thinking about the state of smart home technologies, which, of course, is this massive buzzword that everyone is throwing around these days. Many of us have smart thermostats, voice assistants (that may be listening to our every word), wifi lights, and so on. And you can do some pretty neat things with software like IFTT, such as program your lights to come on at sunset or when you walk in the door.
But as cool as they may be, these smart home devices have always felt like patchwork add-ons to me. I understand that this is partially driven by what customers can easily adopt and I don’t mean to discredit the value that they bring, but today’s post is about reminding us to also think more fundamentally, as opposed to just incrementally.
Smart thermostats, for instance, give us the functionality to adjust our heating/cooling from our phone. But at the end of the day, they still control the same underlying system, which, by the way, is a fairly simple one. When it gets cold (because of our R-3 windows), the heat turns on. When it gets warm enough, the heat turns off. Zoned systems certainly add another layer of sophistication, but are we optimizing for the right variables?
UNSense works at three scales: Cities, Buildings, and Interiors. And if you look at what they are trying to do at the building scale, it is around the interface between inside and out. Designing transformable facade systems and buildings that can respond to their environment and our changing needs. These are not new ideas, but in today’s tech-driven world, the timing may just be right.
If you think about the climate we have here in Toronto, it is actually an incredibly difficult design problem. We have cold winters and hot humid summers, which means we have to solve for two different extremes. Mechanical systems have made that a lot easier to do, but if we’re going to meet the energy and greenhouse gas emission targets that we’re all talking about, we’re going to need a hell of a lot more than just smart thermostats.
Image: UNSense
This announcement got me thinking about the state of smart home technologies, which, of course, is this massive buzzword that everyone is throwing around these days. Many of us have smart thermostats, voice assistants (that may be listening to our every word), wifi lights, and so on. And you can do some pretty neat things with software like IFTT, such as program your lights to come on at sunset or when you walk in the door.
But as cool as they may be, these smart home devices have always felt like patchwork add-ons to me. I understand that this is partially driven by what customers can easily adopt and I don’t mean to discredit the value that they bring, but today’s post is about reminding us to also think more fundamentally, as opposed to just incrementally.
Smart thermostats, for instance, give us the functionality to adjust our heating/cooling from our phone. But at the end of the day, they still control the same underlying system, which, by the way, is a fairly simple one. When it gets cold (because of our R-3 windows), the heat turns on. When it gets warm enough, the heat turns off. Zoned systems certainly add another layer of sophistication, but are we optimizing for the right variables?
UNSense works at three scales: Cities, Buildings, and Interiors. And if you look at what they are trying to do at the building scale, it is around the interface between inside and out. Designing transformable facade systems and buildings that can respond to their environment and our changing needs. These are not new ideas, but in today’s tech-driven world, the timing may just be right.
If you think about the climate we have here in Toronto, it is actually an incredibly difficult design problem. We have cold winters and hot humid summers, which means we have to solve for two different extremes. Mechanical systems have made that a lot easier to do, but if we’re going to meet the energy and greenhouse gas emission targets that we’re all talking about, we’re going to need a hell of a lot more than just smart thermostats.
Image: UNSense
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