I have written a lot about Opendoor over the past few years because it is one of the most promising “proptech” startups in operation today and I am obviously very interested in the impact of tech on the real estate industry.
I also have a fascination with online marketplaces. From the Greek agora to today’s mobile apps, the exchange of goods and services is a fundamental human activity. Uber, Alibaba, Instacart, Airbnb, Amazon, and Kickstarter are all marketplaces. I think sometimes people forget that.
Andrew Chen, who is a general partner with the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, recently published an essay on the future of online marketplaces, where he argued that what’s next is a reinvention of the $10 trillion service economy.
Andrew posits that the internet has brought about 4 eras of marketplaces. They are:
The Listings Era (1990s)
The Unbundled Craigslist Era (2000s)
The “Uber for X” Era (2009-)
The Managed Marketplace Era (Mid-2010s)
The listing era birthed marketplaces that were essentially online versions of the things that already existed offline. Craigslist, for example, simply took the classified section and put it on the internet.
Over time, these online marketplaces began to focus on specific verticals (the unbundling of Craiglist) and they started to introduce services and features that were native to the internet and later to mobile. Uber obviously only works when everyone has a smartphone.
Today we are living in the era of what Andrew calls the managed marketplace. Opendoor – to get back to the first paragraph of this post – is a managed marketplace. Instead of just connecting homeowners with buyers, they take on specific steps of the value chain. They buy and fix up the homes themselves.
So what’s next?
Supposedly it is regulated services (2018-?). As of 2015, it was estimated that about 26% of employed people in the US carried some sort of license. These are healthcare practitioners, architects, engineers, real estate agents, financial advisors, trades people, and so on.
And the argument is that a lot of how we regulate services today is a result of us creating them before the internet. We needed licenses and certifications to signal to us who was qualified and who was not. But now we have technology to help us do that, which is why this could be the next great era of online marketplaces.
This is not exactly a new project. The hotel, pictured above, opened in 2016 and was the brand’s second location (their first opened in São Paulo in 2001). But I like the story and how it was executed.
Hotel Emiliano is the work of husband and wife team Gustavo Filgueiras and Andrea Colli Filgueiras. He is a hotelier. And she is a jewelry designer. Both wanted to pay homage to the glory days of Rio’s Copacabana Beach.
Designed by Arthus Casas and Chad Oppenheim – who, by the way, recently built himself a stunning home in the Bahamas – the 90-room hotel is clad in white shutters that can be used to modulate the Brazilian sun.
On the roof is an infinity pool with a glazed side. Here is a screen grab from the hotel’s website:
And here is an aerial view of the pool taken from Dezeen:
The uniforms for the hotel were designed by Barbara Casasola and a custom jewelry collection was created by Andrea Colli.
For more photos, check out Dezeen and Wallpaper.
Architectural photography: Fernando Guerra
I really like what has been put forward for Block 8 in the newly developing West Don Lands neighborhood of Toronto. Here is a rendering looking east from the Distillery District toward the proposed westernmost tower:
It feels like an extension of the Distillery District, which was clearly the intent. The materiality also reminds me of Junction House. Red brick at the base to fit within its context, and a more modern material palette on the upper floors.
I also like how, in this instance, the building steps out on its south side, as opposed to in. It’s something different. Not every building has to look like a wedding cake, right?
The architecture is by COBE Architects and architectsAlliance. The developers are Dream, Kilmer Group, and Tricon. And the plan is for 756 rental apartments, of which 225 will be affordable and integrated throughout the 3 towers.
For more information, check out Urban Toronto.