This evening I had a fascinating conversation with Subhi Alsayed of Tower Labs. If you haven’t yet heard of Tower Labs, I would encourage you to check them out. Here’s their mission statement:
Our mission is to facilitate the adoption of green building products, technologies and practices through pilot and demonstration projects in highrise buildings; and accelerate the evolution to a low-impact, sustainable urban environment.
What they do is test out new green building technologies in one-off condominium suites. And since they were founded by both MaRS and Tridel (which is one of, if not the largest condo developer in Toronto), they have plenty of opportunities to do just that.
This is important because the real estate industry is notoriously slow at innovating. I’ve written about this many times before. Whenever you try and introduce something new, there’s always a lot of change management that goes along with it. The construction trades, to use one example, need to get their heads around it. And until they do, they’re going to charge a premium for it.
So by creating a one-off test case, everybody gets to see how it works, how it is built, and, most importantly, how it actually performs in the real world.
One of the projects that they’re working on is something called NetZED, which stands for Net Zero Energy Dwelling. As the name suggests, it’s a condominium suite that produces as much energy as it consumes.
The way it works is by trading energy. At night when the sun isn’t out and the panels on the roof aren’t able to produce energy, the suite “borrows” electricity from the building. But during the day when the sun is out, the suite powers itself and then returns any borrowed electricity to the building. Click here to learn more about the suite. It’s being built in the Aqualina Condos on Toronto’s waterfront.
I find all of this incredibly exciting. Not only because they’re working towards a more sustainable future, but also because they’re applying their efforts towards the multi-family building typology (towers). Given that most of the world now lives in cities, this is an important building typology to make even more sustainable.
Image: Tower Labs
This October 8th and 9th (2015) in Toronto, CityAge will be hosting a summit at the MaRS Discovery District called, Build the Future. The goal is to explore the future of Canada’s economic powerhouse.
Here’s a little bit about CityAge:
CityAge is a platform for ideas and business development, designed to enable new partnerships among the business, government and societal leaders who are shaping the 21st Century.
Founded in 2012 in Vancouver, Canada, our events have taken place, or are scheduled, in New York City, Hong Kong, Toronto, London, Los Angeles, Seattle, Edmonton, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Ottawa, Vancouver and The Waterloo Region in Canada.
To date more than 4,000 leaders in business, government and society have attended a CityAge event.
I’ve seen the draft agenda and list of speakers for the event, and if you enjoy the content on this blog, I think you’ll also really enjoy this CityAge summit.
But even better is the fact that if you’re a young professional (under 35) and a reader of Architect This City, you can use the code YOUNGPRO to attend for just C$195.
You’re welcome. I hope to see you there :)
A Kickstarter project called The Wabash Lights has just reached its funding goal of $55,000 to implement what it is calling the beta version of its project.
The project is a site-specific and interactive LED light installation on the underside of the elevated train tracks that run along Wabash Avenue in Chicago.
The lights are completely customizable (color, patterns, pulses, and so on) and they will be controllable via web and mobile. So anyone walking down the street will be able to have some fun with the lights.
Here’s a video from the creators explaining more about the project:
[vimeo 131322692 w=500 h=281]
It’s a clever idea and I can see the lights becoming just as recognizable as Chicago’s bean.
But the true success measure will be whether or not it draws people to the area and it changes the composition of the street. Elevated structures aren’t great for street life. That’s why I fought (unsuccessfully) to have the elevated Gardiner Expressway East removed here in Toronto.
It’s interesting to hear the one woman in the above video talking about how Wabash isn’t really a street you go to. It’s just the street between Michigan and State that you have to pass through. That’s how I feel about most parts of Lake Shore Blvd in Toronto.
Here’s how CityLab described it in their writeup about the project:
“While the L tracks are as iconic to Chicago as some of its skyscrapers, their presence overhead doesn’t necessarily bring in the foot traffic compared to other nearby streets.”
But something like The Wabash Lights could really make a difference.