I’ve been writing about the hypocrisy of parking minimums for years now. Some posts here, here, and here.
To me, it doesn’t make sense to try and promote more sustainable forms of urban mobility while at the same time mandating a minimum number of parking stalls in every new development.
Do you want people driving or not driving? Pick one.
That’s why I was happy to see the following action item in the province of Ontario’s five year plan to transition to a low-carbon economy and fight climate change (thank you Ken Wilcox for bringing it to my attention):
I haven’t gone through the entire action plan and so this post is not a commentary on that. It is, however, a commentary on subsection 1.4. I believe it is the right thing to do and I’m stoked to see it in the plan.
Earlier today my friend Saadat sent me the following tweet:
@donnelly_b you need to apply to this: https://t.co/NrYmO1D1ge
— Saadat Qadri (@saadatqadri)
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It’s a link to a new research project by Y Combinator – the famed Silicon Valley seed accelerator. They want to explore the possibility of building new and better cities.
I don’t have the time for something like this, but if any of you are city experts (I know a lot of you are) and you’re based in or willing to be based in San Francisco (I think they are flexible on this), you should absolutely consider applying to be their full time “Cities Researcher.” The deadline is July 30, 2016.
Here’s a taste of what they are thinking about…
There are many high-level questions we want to think through, for example:
- What should a city optimize for?
- How should we measure the effectiveness of a city (what are its KPIs)?
- What values should (or should not) be embedded in a city’s culture?
- How can cities help more of their residents be happy and reach their potential?
- How can we encourage a diverse range of people to live and work in the city?
- How should citizens guide and participate in government?
- How can we make sure a city is constantly evolving and always open to change?
And there are tactical questions we want to dig into, for example:
- How can we make and keep housing affordable? This is critical to us; the cost of housing affects everything else in a city.
- How can we lay out the public and private spaces (and roads) to make a great place to live?
- Can we figure out better zoning laws?
- What is the right role for vehicles in a city?
- Should we have human-driven cars at all?
- How can we have affordable high-speed transit to and from other cities?
- How can we make rules and regulations that are comprehensive while also being easily understandable?
- Can we fit all rules for the city in 100 pages of text?
- What effects will the new city have on the surrounding community?
The convergence of city building and tech is something that I’m deeply interested in. I also think it’s inevitable. And I think that Toronto – thanks to our robust real estate industry – is in an ideal position to be a leader in this space. So I would love to see someone from here take on this job.
But even if you’re not from Toronto, you should still apply because it’s an exciting initiative :)
New York architecture firm REX is working on a new office building in Washington DC that will incorporate a beautiful fluted glass facade. Here’s a rendering of what it is intended to look like:
Here’s what that looks like in plan (it’s a GIF that should show typical curtain wall vs. proposed fluted glass):
Here’s a photo of the 1:1 mockup:
And here’s a description from the architect:
The façade’s approximately nine hundred identical, insulated-glass panels—3.2 m tall by 1.5 m wide (11’-6” tall by 5’-0” wide)—are subtly curved to a 2.9 m (9’-6”) radius through a heat roller tempering process. The curve yields structural efficiency, which meets wind load requirements and enables a thinner monolithic outer lite than normal, providing greater transparency.
Because of the curve’s inherent rigidity in compression, only the top and bottom edges of the panels are supported from the floor slabs, while the mullionless vertical edges are flush-glazed for a minimalist aesthetic that improves sight lines, while gaining usable floor area.
They are working in collaboration with Front Inc., which if you haven’t heard of, you should check out. They are a design/engineering consultancy that specializes in facades and building envelopes. They work with many of the big name starchitects. The developer of the project is Tishman Speyer.
It’s worth noting that part of the impetus for the fluted glass facade was to try and innovate within the confines of DC’s draconian zoning – which mandates that no building can be taller than 130 feet. Because of this, developers and architects are usually forced to build out to the allowable area, leaving little room for architectural variation.
But in this case, the fluted glass removed the need for thick mullions and also allowed them to extend out beyond the lot area by 4 inches every 5 feet (the curves are considered “architectural features”). So this move has created both architectural variation and more rentable area.
It doesn’t appear that the building will have any operable windows, but other than that, I think it promises to be quite beautiful. What do you think?
All images from REX.