One of the many arguments that Brian Potter makes in this recent article called "Why Skyscrapers Became Glass Boxes" is that most people don't really care about the exterior of buildings. Hence one of the reasons why the market moved toward ever-greater architectural simplicity.

He quotes the late Chicago-based developer James Loewenberg:

“The person who looks to buy or rent a unit in a high-rise,” says Loewenberg, “only cares about three things: the location of the building, the layout of their unit, and the view from their unit. They don’t care as much about the physical appearance of the building and it is my contention that they never really look above the third floor…”

But I don't think this is exactly true. Also, Loewenberg was the founder of Magellan Development, which is responsible for developing two Studio Gang-designed towers: the Aqua Tower and the Vista Tower (now the St. Regis Chicago). Both of these buildings are designed for people who might look above the third floor.

For more on this topic, here and here are two related posts.

This morning I was on site at One Delisle with WZMH Architects (AOR) and Studio Gang (design architect). I aim to visit site at least once a week, but lately it's been more than that. What's exciting to see right now is that the geometry of the tower is starting to come through in the slab edges. (The architects also made sure to remind me today that they had to draw each and every one of these.) The above photos were taken from the level 2 retail terrace. We always imagined this space becoming an amazing restaurant overlooking Yonge Street -- but we'll see what happens.

Expect to see a lot more of these fun slab edges over the next few months.

Sometime next month we're going to be pouring a large concrete transfer slab at the second floor of One Delisle. Its function is to take the loads coming down from the entire tower above it and "transfer" them onto new structural elements, before being brought down to our mat foundation at the bottom of the parking garage.

Put differently -- and, as always, I should warn you that I'm not a structural engineer -- a transfer is used whenever you have a change in your structural grid and the loads don't have a straight path down to your foundations. Because whenever this happens, you're now introducing moment forces and those need to be dealt with structurally.

Transfer slabs are relatively common here in Toronto (which isn't the case in every market), but they are expensive and they consume a lot of depth. In the case of One Delisle, our level two transfer slab is 1.8 meters deep and it's going to contain about 1,200 m3 of concrete. (Some of you might also recall that One Delisle's mat foundation is over 4m deep.)

We were reviewing this with the team today and we think that we'll be able to pour about 100 m3 of concrete per hour. That means that this slab will take about 12 hours to pour! This requires a lot of coordination. Neighbors need to be notified, pumps need to be on standby in case of a breakdown, and so on.

Another major consideration is heat. When concrete cures it generates a lot of it. And with a thick slab like this one, I am told that we run the risk of the middle starting to overheat (especially with the hot weather that we've been having lately). The guideline limit is 60 degrees Celsius, so we'll be monitoring it for probably about 1-2 weeks following the pour.

I find these details fascinating. Maybe some of you do too. So once it's poured, I'll share a few photos.