Brandon Donnelly

Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

Day 1 in Quebec City

I just checked into the Chateau Laurier Quebec after a busy day touring the city. I don’t have a ton of time to write this post before dinner (though I have a few post ideas brewing). I did however want to share some of the day’s events and some of my photos.

After I landed I went straight to Île d’Orléans. I had never been there before so I’m glad I got the opportunity. It’s about twice the size of Manhattan and it has a population that hovers somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000 people depending on the season.

The first stop was a “sugar shack”, which is apparently a big deal in Quebec and in the springtime. The place was packed. Here I had a traditional Quebec lunch (which was great) and I learned that all of the Canadian stereotypes are actually true. We really do put maple syrup on everything.

After lunch I then asked if we could stop at a few of the local wineries. I love wine and I love wine culture.

I picked up one bottle of “wine” from Cassis Monna & Filles. It’s actually made from black currants though, which I was told was illegal to grow in North America for a long time. It’s far more popular in Europe.

The winery is run by a father and his two daughters. And I thought they did a great job with their brand story and their overall identity.

After leaving the island, I then went to the Montmorency Falls. I had no idea Quebec had falls, but they do. And the vertical drop is bigger than that of Niagara Falls.

Finally, I finished the afternoon with a quick tour of downtown and the OMA designed expansion to the fine arts museums. It has one aggressive cantilever.

Here’s a video of the project. Click here if you can’t see it below.

[vimeo 111133943 w=500 h=281]

If you’re interested, you can also follow my social posts on the Porter Escapes website by clicking here.

2015.03.28
Architect This City x Porter Escapes (in Québec City)

Towards the end of last year I received a one line email from a reader asking me what I thought about Porter (the airline that operates out of Toronto’s island airport downtown).

I followed suit and responded with one line: “I’m a big fan.” I then pasted a few links to posts I had written where I talked about Porter, the island airport, and why I think they are good for Toronto.

It turns out that was the right answer 😉

Because today I’m excited to announce a fun collaboration between Architect This City and Porter Escapes. This weekend I get to explore Québec City and do something I love to do, which is photograph cities, think about cities, and write about cities. (And eat poutine.)

Here are my travel essentials for the weekend (I wish it was a better photo):

The first thing I should tell you though is that Porter Escapes is different than simply Porter. Porter Escapes is their “packaged vacation” company, so it’s designed for people who want a simple way to book entire getaways (flight, hotel, activities, and so on).

In my case, I’m going to be staying at the Château Laurier. I also have a bunch of activities planned out for Saturday during the day. Stay tuned.

I had initially planned to squeeze in some snowboarding at Le Massif and try out the nicely branded train that goes from Québec City right to the mountain. But my back and shoulder are still tender from my spill in Banff.

Still, I hope you’ll follow along on Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, and using #PorterEscapes. And if you happen to be in Québec City this weekend, let’s grab a pint and poutine.

I’ve also been told that Porter Escapes will be launching a special promotion over the next few days for escapes specifically to Québec City.

Note: I’m supposed to tell you that it’ll be at a price point that you should never expect to see again (i.e. it’ll be a steal).

Happy Friday 🙂

2015.03.28
Morphosis proposes tallest building in Europe — in the Swiss Alps

A controversial design proposal for the tallest building in Europe has been making the rounds online over the past few days. Designed by Morphosis Architects, the 381 meter-tall tower is being proposed in Vals in the Swiss Alps.

And pretty much everyone seems to hate it.

When I first came across the design, I truthfully had to do a double take to see if it was actually a real proposal. But it seems to be. Everyone is writing about it.

Clearly there are some interesting tensions at play here. You have a hyper-urban building typology in a mountain town setting, but with materials that are intended to make it dematerialize into the landscape.

So I thought we could have a discussion about it in the comments.

Is a small mountain town the right place for the tallest building in Europe? Could it work as a one-off tower?

Image: Morphosis Architects via ArchDaily

2015.03.27
Towards more publicness

Back when the commercial internet first started to take off it was uncommon to use your real name online. Instead people relied on usernames and other pseudynoms to represent themselves. I honestly can’t remember what I used in those days, but I’m sure it was something ridiculous.

Over time though that started to change.

Blogging started to take off in the late 1990s. And we started to become more comfortable sharing personal information online. Perhaps the biggest shift though, came with the introduction of Facebook in 2004 (over 10 years ago!). All of a sudden people – young college students initially – started sharing lots of personal information online, including photos of themsleves and their friends.

But this wasn’t an overnight change. When Facebook first launched, privacy was an important component. It still is, but I would argue that it has become less central given how public a lot of other social media platforms are today. Twitter, for instance, is what it is today largely because of its publicness.

For my own social media accounts, I have made every single one of them completely public. From Twitter to Facebook to Instagram to Snapchat, nothing I post to social media is restricted in any way. And I do that because I believe we are headed towards a world with more – not less – openness, transparency and publicness.

Of course, I’m not just talking about social media and tech. I’m talking about open data in general.

Earlier this year, the Toronto Real Estate Board clamped down on real estate brokers who were publishing historical sales data online. Citing privacy concerns, TREB ordered them to stop or lose their access to the MLS system.

For those of you not from familiar with the Toronto real estate market, historical sales data for homes is not open and published online. You generally need to go through a realtor to get access to this data. Some think this is the right approach. And others think it is antiquated.

But as I explained above, our conception of what should be private can, and will, evolve over time.

Here are the details on my home:

I purchased it in September 2012 for exactly $400,000 (Canadian). It’s a 650 square foot condo in the St. Lawrence Market neighborhood of Toronto. It has one bedroom, a 400 square foot terrace, one parking spot, and 10′ ceilings.

Sooner or later, I believe this information will be freely available online. But since that’s not the case today, I figured I would just tell you. Sharing this information is not a big deal for me.

2015.03.25
I’m giving away a free Architect This City t-shirt
I’m giving away a free t-shirt on April 1st, 2015 exclusively to Architect This City subscribers. There’s no catch. And no this is not an April Fool’s joke! I just want to say thanks to the people who read ATC on a regular basis. It’s that simple.

So how does it work?
1. You need to be an Architect This City email subscriber (either daily or weekly). If you’re not yet a subscriber, you have until midnight on Tuesday, March 31st, 2015 to make that happen. You can do that by clicking here. It’s free.
2. You need to visit architectthiscity.com and pick the t-shirt you want. There are currently 5 different ones to chose from (the original ATC tee comes in both ATC orange and black).
3. Finally, you need to leave a comment at the bottom of this post telling the community 2 things: which t-shirt you want and your favorite thing about your own city. That’s it.
On April 1st I will randomly select somebody from the comments, check to see if they’re a subscriber, and then send them a free t-shirt.

Simple, right? I’m really looking forward to giving away a t-shirt.
2015.03.24
Cities without people

Some people believe that cities are all about bricks and mortar. While other people believe that they are first and foremost about people. Though I wholeheartedly believe that our built environment has a profound affect on our lives, I am in the latter camp.

Real estate to me is an outcome. It is the result of people needing space. A new condominium is built because people need a place to live. A new office building is built because somebody built a great company and it needs to house its growing workforce. So at the end of the day, what is a city without people?

Perhaps the best way to demonstrate this point is to show you what cities look like without them. This morning I stumbled upon an interesting series of city photographs where almost all of the people have been removed. They are by artists Lucie & Simon and the project is called Silent world.

The top image is Times Square and the bottom image is Queensbridge in New York.

Images: Lucie & Simon

2015.03.23
John Maeda’s #DesignInTech Report from SXSW

One of the most interesting talks that I attended while I was in graduate school at Penn was by John Maeda.

John operates at the intersection of design, technology, and business, and I find his work fascinating. He’s probably best described as a graphic designer, visual artist, computer scientist, academic, and author. And when I heard him speak in 2008, he was also President of the Rhode Island School of Design.

More recently though, John has entered the world of venture capital by becoming a “Design Partner” at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) in Silicon Valley. But what’s really interesting about this move is that when he joined KPCB in January 2014, he was the first designer to arrive on Silicon Valley’s legendary Sand Hill Road. No other VC firm had a designer in-house.

And that’s because design hasn’t, at least historically, been considered that important. In fact, in some cases it was seen as being detrimental. Brian Chesky – cofounder of Airbnb – has gone on record saying that when they were first starting out, Silicon Valley didn’t think that a bunch of designers from RISD could build and run a company. Boy were they wrong.

So that’s changing. As of this month (March 2015), there are now 6 other designers on Sand Hill Road. The venture capital community has seemingly woken up to the value of great design.

John Maeda has branded this shift, #DesignInTech. And he recently gave a presentation on the topic at SXSW. It’s a great read, particularly if you’re somebody who cares about design. Click here if you can’t see it below.

//www.slideshare.net/fullscreen/kleinerperkins/design-in-tech-report-2015

Design in Tech Report 2015 from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

2015.03.22
Reading between the lines of a midtown triplex

A few days I retweeted the above home from Dwell Magazine. Then yesterday I was driving through midtown Toronto and I stumbled upon it. And that got me thinking more about this kind of project.

The house is a triplex with, presumably, one unit in the basement, one unit on the main floor, and one unit across the 2nd and 3rd floor. The existing detached house was only 2 storeys and so a third floor was added to create what is likely the “owner’s suite.”

It’s not uncommon for many of the houses in central areas of Toronto to be converted into duplexes and triplexes or to flip back into single family homes after being subdivided for rentals. It goes to show how adaptable the single family house can be.

But it’s not everyday that you see such a high end triplex being built as, what seems to be, a permanent residence and kind of dream home for the owners. Historically, when people built their dream home it has meant a single family home.

This might not seem like an important distinction, but I think it demonstrates a growing acceptance of intensification within low-rise single family neighborhoods.

Part of this I’m sure has to do with rising housing costs. But I think it also has to do with valuing location over raw space and with an acceptance of urban density.

I don’t know about you, but I would have no concerns with permanently laying down roots in a house like this. It’s beautiful.

Image: Dwell

2015.03.21
5 designs (and my pick) for Jack Layton Ferry Terminal in Toronto
Earlier this week, 5 design proposals were unveiled for Jack Layton Ferry Terminal & Harbour Square Park along Toronto’s waterfront. They are part of an international design competition being organized by Waterfront Toronto – the arm’s length agency in charge of revitalizing this city’s waterfront.

The first proposal – called Cloud Park – was submitted by Stoss Landscape Urbanism, nARCHITECTS, and ZAS Architects.

I really like how they integrated water features, pools, and hot tubs into the park and lake. Their proposal made me realize how great it would be to have these functions along the water. It has been done in many other cities around the world. And I think a hot tub could be a big draw during the winter.

The second proposal was submitted by Clement Blanchet Architecture, RVTR and Batlle i Roig.

The big ideas here are a grand staircase (”social carpet”) that runs in line with Bay Street and an elevated east-west platform that runs from York Street in the west all the way across the Yonge Street slip in the east.

When I first saw this proposal I thought it was by Rem Koolhaas (OMA) and I doubt I’m the only one with that feeling. That’s not a criticism though. I like the work of OMA. But I think that many Torontonians have an intrinsic aversion to things that are elevated near our waterfront. (We’re currently pontificating about whether we should tear down a portion of our elevated urban highway.)

That said, I think the connection over the Yonge Street slip is an important one. The larger opportunity with this project is to use it as a mechanism to better stitch together our waterfront. I hope we take advantage of that.

The third proposal – called Civic Canopy – is by Diller Scofidio+Renfro, architectsAlliance, and Hood Design.

This proposal immediately caught my eye. It’s one of the more sculptural designs and it reminds me of something you might find in Barcelona or Madrid. It also includes a beach (#10 on the site plan shown below).

The fourth proposal – called Harbour Landing – was submitted by KPMB Architects, West 8, and Greenberg Consultants.

It consists of an undulating green roof terminal building and a more natural surrounding at the foot of Bay Street.

Finally, the fifth proposal was submitted by Quadrangle Architects, aLL Design (Will Alsop), and Janet Rosenberg & Studio.

This proposal consists of a hot pink terminal building running east-west along the water (shown above) and many other features that will strike you as being quintessentially Will Alsop.

My favorite part of this proposal though is the patterning of the surrounding urban park and the pool located towards the bottom left of the site plan shown below. Can you tell that I would really like to see usable water features along the lake?

When I first set out to write this post I was determined to pick one design to recommend. And if I were asked to do that I would pick Civic Canopy by Diller Scofidio+Renfro, architectsAlliance, and Hood Design.

However, as I was going through the designs, I instead found myself taking from all of the proposals and mentally accumulating a list of things that I would love to see happen on this site.
- Connections to the surrounding area (such as across the Yonge Street slip)
- Usable water features along and in the lake (pools, hot tubs, fountains, and so on)
- An iconic terminal building that you can see when you’re out in the lake and on the Toronto Islands
- Urban spaces that could be truly used and programmed in all seasons
Do you have a favorite proposal? What are the most important design elements in your opinion?

Images via Waterfront Toronto
2015.03.20
Why brick-and-mortar stores should be scared of same hour delivery

Venture capitalist Fred Wilson wrote a post on his blog today called, Same Day/Same Hour Delivery.

The post is about why he believes that Walmart could get the “most disrupted by the Internet.” And it has to do with the rapid rise of same day and even same hour delivery from ecommerce companies. If you can order it online and receive it within an hour, why bother going to a brick-and-mortar store?

His post reminded me of one I wrote towards the end of last year called, The threat to big box retailing. But since Fred is in the business of making bets on technology companies and he has accumulated a significant amount of wealth doing that, I thought you might like to also hear it from him.

2015.03.19