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.
I cover a lot of different topics on this blog. It’s hard to write daily for a decade and not meander every now and then. But generally speaking, I do try and keep this forum focused on things that are related to city building — real estate, housing, design, transportation, etc. And I do try and share some of the things that I have learned (and the mistakes that I have made) since I started working in real estate development back in 2007.
But we all have limits, and different perspectives are vital for solving problems. So I’d really like to introduce more Q&A features on this blog, similar to this recent one that I did with structural engineer, James Cranford. If this sounds interesting to any of you, please reach out. I’m open to anyone who touches the built environment: architects, artists, planners (private or municipal), lenders, furniture designers, bollard manufactures … you name it!
This event poster has reminded me that, every now and then, I probably need to pull out a cooler headshot. In any event, next week I’m going to be a guest on SvNSpeaks, along with John Lorinc, talking about the obstacles that overly prescriptive and rigid development policies are creating for our climate goals. This is obviously a really important topic. Because if we were singularly focused on reducing carbon emissions, we wouldn’t be building the way we are building today.
For more information and to register for the virtual event, click here.
In this short video about the Harry and Penelope Seidler House in Sydney (which is a beautiful heritage-listed modernist house), Penelope talks about how her and her late husband, Harry, used to drive around looking for the ideal block of land in which to build their own home.
When she begins to talk about the property they ultimately chose (pictured above), she is about to call it a challenging lot, but then immediately corrects and says that it is “an architect’s block” — it’s steeply sloping. I thought this was interesting for two reasons.
One, there are countless examples of famous homes built into steep and sloping terrain. Think, for example, of the Douglas House by Richard Meier. A personal favorite. And two, I myself am drawn to these sorts of lots. Topography creates challenges, but also opportunities. It forces you to engage the site and also really study the section as you design.
I get that real estate developers don’t always have the best of reputations. We build buildings that cast shadows. We invest in (or gentrify) neighborhoods. And yes, like every other for-profit business, the goal is to make a bit of money along the way.
But believe it or not, there are developers out there who care deeply about the work that they do. They care about their craft. And they want to do the right thing.
Perhaps the best way for me to start to explain what I’m getting at here is to quote the late Steve Jobs. An obsessive perfectionist, Jobs was known for focusing on every little detail in the projects that he worked on. Here’s an excerpt from an interview he did for Playboy back in 1985:
“We just wanted to build the best thing we could build. When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.“
As a developer and a fake architect, this paragraph really resonates with me. But here’s the thing. One of the differences between making a beautiful chest of drawers (or a computer) and making a beautiful building, is that buildings have an inordinate amount of rules that tell you what you can build where and then how you need to build.
Some of these rules, of course, make a lot of sense. Life safety is no joke. But some of these rules also make no sense. And sometimes these rules — that don’t make sense — prevent you from putting what I would metaphorically consider to be that beautiful piece of wood on the back.
The beautiful piece of wood isn’t about money. In fact, it’s going to cost you more compared to just using a piece of plywood. It’s about giving a shit and caring about your craft, even if nobody else does. It’s so you can sleep well at night.
Architect Michael Green’s new house in Kits Point, Vancouver was recently featured in the Globe and Mail. He and his family went from a 3,500 square foot home in the suburbs to a 1,500 square foot semi-detached home in the city, close to downtown. The house is simple, sparsely decorated, and about 13-feet wide.
Here’s why he decided to do it: “I didn’t want to have to commute by car any more,” he says. “I wanted to be able to bike everywhere. I also wanted my kids to be able to bike everywhere. I wanted them to develop a sense of freedom, to have mobility, something too many kids don’t get these days.”
As we all know, there is typically a very real trade-off in cities between space and location. The further you move out from the core (a generalization), the more affordable space usually comes. But at the same time, your transportation costs also increase — both directly and indirectly if you factor your time and your quality of life.
Depending on how you value each of these items, you might be inclined to pursue more space or pursue more reasonable transportation costs. A 2,000 square foot reduction in space might seem like a lot. But if you’re heavily weighted toward freedom and mobility, as Green clearly is, it could be a perfectly rational decision.
Later this month a new exhibition will open at the Guggenheim Museum called Countryside, The Future. Produced by architect Rem Koolhaas and Samir Bantal (Director of AMO), the focus of the exhibition is on non-urban areas — or, the 98% of the earth’s surface not occupied by cities. The 21st century is being called an urban century. But the argument here is that “the countryside is now the site where the most radical, modern components of our civilisation are taking place.” If you’re going to be in New York, this one should be worth checking out. It’s on my list. Here is a teaser video that was just released by the Guggenheim:
After I landed in Vancouver yesterday, I opened up my inbox and found a cease and desist letter on behalf of the Ontario Association of Architects. The OAA had an issue with me using the following text description on my blog: “I’m an architect-trained and tech-obsessed real estate developer based in Toronto.” More specifically, they had a problem with “architect-trained.” They were of the opinion that I was “holding myself out as an architect.”
When I wrote that text description many years ago, I was actually trying to be sensitive to the fact that, because I’m not licensed, I’m not allowed to refer to myself as an architect. I hold a professional master’s degree in architecture, but I do not hold a certificate of practice in Ontario. The text description I chose was actually meant to communicate that I’m a real estate developer who cares deeply about and sees the value in great design.
The OAA and their lawyers clearly read it differently. So I have removed the derivative “architect” language from this blog. Frankly, it’s not a big deal to me. And in the almost 6 years that I have been writing this blog, I don’t think anyone has ever reached out to me thinking that I was a practicing architect. To be clear: I am not an architect. In case any of you are curious, here is a copy of the letter that I received.
This is a terrific infill project by Bureau de Change (architect) for HGG London (developer). It’s a five-storey mixed-use development in London’s Fitzrovia neighborhood.
The design ambition was to respect the area’s history, materiality, and proportions, but also create something entirely new. The result is a blue clay (brick) facade that transforms and looks like this:
And it was done by inventing a collection of misshapen blocks — 44 of them to be exact. Over 5,000 blocks were ultimately used for the facade and it was assembled on site using a 1:1 printed template. Each block came with a set of instructions.
There’s something nice about working at this scale and being able to get into this level of detail. It’s 21st century craftsmanship (the entire facade was modeled in 3D before it was built).
Joshua Levine’s recent (WSJ Magazine) piece on John Pawson, — the architect who “elevated nothingness to an art” — is a good read.
It’s mostly about the country retreat that he recently completed for himself and his wife in the English countryside, but there’s also lots about his minimalist architecture, his career, his work with hotelier/developer Ian Schrager, and his passion for photography.
I like this bit about architectural simplicity. The great irony of minimalism, and the reason why brands such as Calvin Klein and Jil Sander began working with John Pawson to leverage his aesthetic, is that it’s often more difficult to do less. Getting the details right costs money. Hence this great line from the New Yorker:
As the New Yorker cartoon put it, “Only the rich can afford this much nothing.” Don’t expect a rebuttal from Pawson. “It is big, and it is expensive, you know. It’s sophisticated architectural simplicity. This isn’t a religious thing, and it isn’t as simple as you can go. You can go a lot simpler than this.”
I also like what the following says about labels and what it means to be defined as something:
Slowing down for Pawson isn’t all that slow. He takes photos constantly and has always used the camera as his third eye. In 2017, Phaidon published Spectrum, a book of his photos, many of them first posted on his Instagram (“I said, ‘Well, I’m not a photographer,’ and they said, ‘You are a photographer,’ so now I’m a photographer”).
Click here for the rest of the article from WSJ Magazine. And if you aren’t familiar with John Pawson, here is his minimal website.
Architect I.M. Pei died this week in New York City. He was 102. Being a centenarian is noteworthy enough. He was born in Hong Kong in 1917. I would love to join that club. Imagine how much change he experienced throughout his life. But, of course, Pei was also a celebrated Pritzker Prize winning architect.
For those of you in Toronto, you can look to Commerce Court West to see an example of his work (Page & Steele was the local architect). Completed in 1972, it was the tallest building in Canada until 1976. But perhaps his most well known project is the Louvre Pyramid in Paris (pictured above).
In reading some of his obituaries, I was intrigued — but in no way surprised — to learn that the Louvre Pyramid was deeply hated by Parisians at the time it was being proposed and built. Supposedly, for the first few years after completion, Pei couldn’t walk the streets of Paris without people berating him.
However, if you surveyed Parisians today, I would bet you that the approval rating of the Pyramid would be extremely high. And I would also argue that it has since become one of Paris’ most globally recognizable symbols. (Parisians, please weigh in below in the comments.)
All of this, once again, suggests to me that we’re often not very good at evaluating the merits of things that are new to us. Pei’s Pyramid, beyond being a new circulation strategy for the broader complex, was a radically different style of architecture.
Appreciating that sometimes requires a bit of time.
