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.

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Tag: architecture school

  • Unlearning our biases

    I had coffee this morning with an engineer who is going back to business school in order to segue into real estate development. This is a fairly typical journey. Lots of people come into development from a related discipline. In my case, it was architecture (even though I never practiced architecture). It was also the case when I went to Rotman that something like a third of the class had a background in some sort of science or engineering field.

    However, one thing I did mention this morning was that he will likely find that he will need to unlearn certain things as he moves forward. Every discipline tends to indoctrinate us with a certain way of thinking about the world. Lawyers tend to be a certain way. Engineers tend to be a certain way. And architects tend to be a certain way.

    In my case, I found that architecture school taught me to be, among other things, an intense perfectionist. The modus operandi in design studios is that your project is never ever complete. The more you work on it, the better it will become. And as a result, you should feel a deep onus to work on it as much as humanly possible. But in business, this isn’t practical. In the vast majority of cases, speed over perfection will serve you better.

    I believe wholeheartedly in multi-disciplinary backgrounds, and maybe this is one of the reasons why. It shows you what you should unlearn. What would you say your biases are?

  • World’s largest asset manager now wants people in the office 4 days a week

    The trend continues. BlackRock — the world’s largest asset manager with about 20,000 employees in more than 30 countries — announced today that employees need to be in the office at least 4 days a week starting this September. This is an increase from the current 3 days a week.

    You can’t read the news today without seeing some sort of headline about the demise of downtowns. But what is clear from announcements like these is that we still have yet to reach an equilibrium. And it’s probably just taking a lot longer than most people initially anticipated.

    I know that this is a very divisive topic and that many of you think I’m old school for continuing to say this. But I fundamentally believe that there are irreplaceable benefits to in-person interactions among teams. I don’t know, maybe it’s because of my architecture background.

    In architecture school you’re expected to spend all of your time “working in studio.” And even though you’re often working and producing things on your own, you do it so that you can be around your peers, shout out questions when you need help, learn from their work, and go for burritos and beers together.

    And it was such a fun and creative experience for me that I can’t imagine what it would have been like had I been forced to work from my apartment. I probably would have had an equal number of burritos, but maybe a lot less beer?

  • Speed outweighs all else

    Rapid and high-volume decision making are fundamental to real estate development.

    In fact, it’s hard to think of anything being more important when it comes to executing on a project. This is not to say that being thoughtful and doing remarkable work aren’t important. You, of course, need to do those things as well. But it is to say that the benefits of moving as fast as you possibly can usually outweigh all else.

    What this means is that any decision is often far better than no decision. Because no decision can grind everything to a halt. You need to maintain momentum and the way to do that is to make a lot of high-quality decisions.

    As someone who was originally trained as an architect, this is something that I had to learn in the workplace. Because in architecture school, you’re basically taught to work on your projects for as long as humanly possible and then, when you’re done, you work on them some more. They’ll never be good enough and you certainly haven’t spent enough time “working in studio”.

    But in practice, you need to go. I would like to once again reiterate that this is not a license to do crappy work. I think the way to think about this is that speed and excellence reinforce each other. Our team always strives to do exceptional and remarkable work. And one of the ways to actually do that is by focusing on speed.

  • Frank Lloyd Wright hated tall people

    I have been in a few of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses and in every case it turned out like this:

    The Prairie School (of architecture), for which Wright was a pioneer, was all about horizontality. That typically meant flat roofs, deep overhangs and, in the case of Wright’s work, exceptionally low ceiling heights.

    I’m about 6’3”. Many of his clear heights were less than 7’ and I believe his doorways were often 6’2”. This clearly doesn’t work for me, but it mattered for what Wright was trying to do. And I don’t think he was the type to worry about small matters like the comfort of tall people.

    The above photos were taken at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona. Wright bought the land (495 acres) in 1937, and turned it into both his winter home and a teaching studio.

    Apparently Wright paid $3.50 per acre at the time, which feels like a pretty good deal to me. It shows you the power of just buying and holding things over long periods of time.

    Today, Taliesin West is the home base of Wright’s foundation and also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I’m glad I was able to finally visit it after reading about it for so many years in architecture school.

  • Toilet seat heights in Amsterdam

    I am in Amsterdam right now for the very first time. And after I took in all the bicycles, the beautifully tilting buildings, and its iconic canals, the first thing that struck me was — get this — the height of its toilet seats.

    Now don’t get me wrong, I am a reasonably tall guy. So it’s not that the bowl in my hotel room isn’t comfortable or anything like that. It actually feels quite luxurious. I just know that this thing has got to be taller than your average bowl.

    A typical toilet seat height can be anywhere from 15 to 19” when measuring from the floor to the top of the seat. But I think 17-19” is the most typical range. So how much taller is my Dutch bowl?

    Sadly, I forgot to pack my tape measure on this trip. So I instead used the tallest book I could find in the room as a measuring stick. It happenend to be the above book by Hollywood photographer Matthew Rolston.

    Matthew’s book is 36cm tall and so, by using everything I ever learned in architecture school, I am now fairly confident that my seat is currently sitting at around 21-22” off the ground.

    Dutch people are tall. And so too are the bowls, it would seem.

  • Do, and then theorize

    Architecture school has a way of indoctrinating you with an appreciation for the past. One of the ways that is done is through architecture history and theory classes.

    In my case, I was taught to appreciate the work of Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Louis Kahn, Adolf Loos, and many other influential architects from the 20th century.

    It was okay to disagree with their ideas, but you at least had to learn about all of the important stuff that they had done and/or thought about. It’s a standing on the shoulders of giants kind of thing.

    But as Witold Rybczynski argues in this recent post, it’s important to keep in mind that history and theories are written after the fact:

    “Some buildings are, in a sense, experiments, and when something works, and is taken up by others, it eventually becomes a rule of thumb, perhaps even a theory.”

    For me, this is yet another reminder that the world moves forward as a result of doing, creating, and making new things happen.

    Sometimes you’ll get it wrong and do the wrong things. But sometimes you’ll do something wonderful that nobody else has thought of before.

    And when then happens, the world will have moved forward such that it’s then possible to look back at what happened and make sense of it all.

    As Witold puts it, “first you build a flying machine, and later you discover the aerodynamic theory that supports flight.”

  • The development value chain

    When I was in graduate school, my plan was to create a vertically integrated design and development company. I loved designing things and wanted to remain close to those sorts of details, but I had already decided that I wasn’t going to be an architect in the traditional sense and that I was going to be a developer. And so my objective was to figure out a way to combine everything under one roof. How could we be designers, but also be the entrepreneurs that make buildings happen?

    In some ways, Mackay Laneway House is a manifestation of that model. Through a partnership with Gabriel Fain Architects, we (Globizen Studio) have been heavily involved on the design side. Gabriel did all of the drawings and the overall architecture, but we weighed in (more than your typical client), selected most of the FF&E, and even designed things like the kitchen (with Scavolini) and the exterior signage. I wouldn’t call it true vertical integration, but we did start to blur the lines between architect/designer and developer.

    One of the interesting things about this approach is that it begins to create some consistency and a bit of a branded product. The hope is that when Mackay Laneway House is fully complete, it will read as a Globizen project, which is not that dissimilar from what David Wex of Urban Capital was talking about in this recent podcast. Their projects are a specific kind of product. They generally repeat it, and if that’s not what you’re interested in, then you don’t buy an Urban Capital home.

    But this also raises an important question: what is the role of architects and architecture in the case of buildings as very specific products? (This is something that we have discussed before on the blog.) Is the job of the architect to create an interesting exterior shell that then gets populated on the inside by a specific product offering? Or is it even worse, is architecture sometimes just an “empty vessel” that gets interior design and a brand slapped onto it? In some cases and with some projects, it does feel this way.

    I am a firm believer in the value of architecture and design. An “empty vessel” is not architecture. It is, well, an empty vessel. And that is not what I aim for in any of the projects that I’m involved in. Creativity, function, thoughtfulness and, yes, beauty, are all important. At the same time, I think this is a valuable debate. These sorts of questions are helpful in dissecting the architecture/development value chain. And so I would be interested in hearing your thoughts in the comment section below.

  • How to get rich (and why talking about money is okay)

    I’ve written about this before on the blog, but one of my qualms about architecture school was that it was too often taboo to talk about business and money. Why? Talking about and understanding the realities of the world doesn’t have to mean that you’re compromising on good design. Constraints are often good for design innovation. Similarly, I’ve always felt that personal finance should feature more prominently in schools at an early age. It should be considered a basic life skill.

    In any event, I came across this tweet thread last night by Naval Ravikant talking about how to get rich (without getting lucky). It’s from 2018, but the lessons — and there are many — obviously haven’t changed. (For those of you who may not be familiar, Naval was the co-founder of AngelList and was an early stage investor in companies like Uber, Twitter, and Opendoor.)

    When you see a headline like this it’s perfectly normal for your bullshit radar to go off. (In fact, it is one of his points.) But this thread is not bullshit. It’s about building wealth. Owning equity instead of renting out your time. Working hard. Taking a long view. Leveraging your time and skills. Understanding compound interest. Partnering with people of integrity. Being accountable. And becoming the best at what you do because you’re pursuing genuine curiosity (among many other great points).

    Here are a couple of his tweets. But I would encourage you to have a full read.

  • In support of simplicity

    “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” I’m not exactly sure who this quote is attributed to — maybe Einstein — but regardless, I love it. I’m a big fan of simplicity.

    I have a cookbook in my kitchen by Jamie Oliver where each recipe contains no more than 5 main ingredients. There’s a picture of the 5 ingredients, a picture of the final product, and a short explanation about how to make it. It’s my favorite cookbook (and also my only cookbook).

    When I go to a restaurant I prefer to see a short menu rather than a long menu. Not only because it’s easier to make decisions that way, but because I have little confidence that a restaurant with an interminable menu can make that many terrific dishes all at once.

    And in architecture school, I remember being taught that every design project should really only have one principal idea. If you have two ideas, that’s probably one too many. Distill it down. Clarify the idea that you’re trying to communicate.

    Because here’s the thing about simplicity: it’s usually more work to make things as simple as possible, but not simpler. It takes effort. It takes iterations. Whether that be in cooking, design, or in writing.

    But once you’ve got it, simplicity is a beautiful thing. And it also greatly increases the chance that somebody will actually remember the message that you’re trying to get across. Five ingredients. A short menu. And one architectural idea. That’s all it might take.

    Photo by Jakub Dziubak on Unsplash

  • Form follows what?

    Late 19th century and early 20th century architecture and industrial design is known for the axiom, “form follows function.” I think of the German Bauhaus School when I hear this, but supposedly it can be attributed to American architect Louis Sullivan. Either way, it was meant to represent a functionalist approach to architecture and design, which was, as is often the case, a reaction to what had come before it.

    It was Modernist architects eschewing decorative elements or what was referred to at the time as “ornament.” If it didn’t serve a functional purpose, it was to be removed. Nothing was to be superfluous. And similarly, if the function of something didn’t change, there was no need to change its form.

    Of course, if it was truly all about function, one could argue that there should have been a great deal of variation in the resulting forms. But instead, the designs that emerged out of schools, such as the Bauhaus, are some of the most recognizable in the world. That is true even to this day.

    Which is why I think this is a great line from Witold Rybczynski (taken from a recent post about the book iBauhaus): “It is also a quintessentially Bauhaus example of form follows predetermined aesthetics rather than form follows function.” Ouch. The difference here is that Witold obviously isn’t a fan of the Bauhaus or of Modernism, whereas this period of time is what inspired me the most as a student of architecture.

    Photo by Marina Reich on Unsplash