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

  • K-House

    My friend Nicolas Koff – who I went to architecture school with, twice – recently completed a house near Hamilton, Ontario. I think it’s stunning and so I wanted to share it with you all today. It was also featured in Dezeen Magazine this week. That’s where the photos are from.

    Beyond its good looks though, it’s also a great example of sustainable design. The walls were prefabricated and are 40cm thick in order to reduce energy consumption. There are also solar panels on the roof to offset some of the electrical loads. And this is just some of the sustainability strategies employed.

    Click here to see the rest of the photos at Dezeen. I hope you like it as much as I do.

  • Insecure cities

    Miami city by night by beatrice preve on 500px.com

    https://500px.com/embed.js

    I am back in Toronto and ready to resume my normal routines. I am definitely a creature of habit.

    But boy is Miami an incredible city.

    The interesting thing that I noticed about Miami though is that – despite its reputation as a global capital of glam – it still shares the same kinds of insecurities that many other cities experience.

    I was reading the December 2015 / January 2016 issue of Surface this past weekend and there was an interview with billionaire real estate developer Jorge Pérez. He’s the CEO of The Related Companies and worth somewhere over $3 billion. In the interview he said that his biggest focus these days is on “Miami becoming a world-class city.”

    I love that. Cities need strong proponents. And he is doing a lot. To give one example, he donated $40 million (half in cash and half in art) to create the new Pérez Art Museum Miami.

    But for the Torontonians reading this post, how many times have you also heard the words world-class? At this point it makes me cringe when I hear someone say it. Usually it accompanies a sentence such as: “If we do (insert thing here), we will then be world-class.”

    I also attended a talk at Design Miami, where some of the panelists were going on about how Miami’s restaurant scene was pretty pitiful about 10 years ago, but how that’s not the case today. Now, it is finally becoming remarkable.

    That struck home for me because I’ve said similar things about Toronto: “10 years ago Toronto was like that, but now we are like this.” Makes me think that I’ll be saying the same thing about Toronto 10 years from today.

    So it seems like many, or perhaps most, cities have an insecure side to them. And that can be a powerful motivator for driving growth and change. Cities, like people, need that fire in the belly.

    But at the same time, there’s something nice about being grateful for what you have. And Miami certainly has a lot going for it. See you soon, Miami.

  • A panelization system for precision homes

    I recently had the opportunity to visit the 200,000 square foot manufacturing facility of H+ME Technology here in Toronto.

    Here’s a photo of myself and Nick Zicaro:

    image

    H+ME (originally called Brockport Home Systems Ltd.) is a division of developer Great Gulf, but they were never intended to be just an in-house provider and much of their business is now with outside clients.

    What H+ME Technology does is manufacture and assemble factory-built wood panels for both low-rise and mid-rise new construction homes. That is, instead of the walls and floors being framed outside on the construction site, they are fabricated ahead of time in a controlled facility (see below) and then delivered to site. This allows for a single-family home to be framed in as little as 2 days on the job site.

    image

    What’s interesting about all of this is that architects have long been obsessed with the idea of shifting construction away from the actual job site. A great book on this topic is Refabricating Architecture by Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake. In it they talk about how inefficient our construction processes are and how we ought to move towards a fully integrated approach that brings together technology, materials, and production methods.

    And in 2006 they put their money where their mouth is and built a fully prefabricated house on Taylors Island in Maryland. Here’s an snippet from their website:

    “Most houses are built from thousands of parts, which are transported separately to the construction site and pieced together by hand—a process of extraordinary duration, cost, and environmental impact. With Loblolly House, by contrast, we wanted to use integrated assemblies of those parts, fabricated off site, to build a house in an entirely different way.”

    The big advantage of this entirely different way is that you’re able to dramatically improve efficiencies, quality, and performance by fabricating the components in a controlled environment, as opposed to on-site by hand.

    Despite all this, the industry has been incredibly slow to change and most houses are indeed not built this way. But H+ME is working to change that, which is why I was keen to check out their facility and learn about their business.

    So here’s how it works:

    H+ME starts by modeling out the entire home in 3D CAD according to the project drawings. This allows them to catch any design coordination errors before they happen on-site. And it’s why their slogan is “Twice built. Assembled once.” They are literally building the entire house in 3D ahead of time.

    Once the house has been modeled, they then send the designs for the walls and floors to their factory and begin production. During this process, all of the rough-ins for electrical, plumbing, and so on, are provided, which makes it super easy for the trades on-site later on.

    Here’s what that looks like in the factory:

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    And here’s what the scene looks like on-site when the panels get delivered:

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    Ultimately, their vision is to be able to deliver fully closed walls to site. This would mean that all the plumbing, electrical, insulation, and so, would already be in the walls and be ready to get connected/assembled. All of this is a significant step forward.

    Because as Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake argued in their book, this is where the industry is headed. We are headed towards much closer integration across design, technology, materials, and production methods.

    And in the end this is a great thing for both the industry and for consumers. It will translate into less coordination errors. Less construction waste. Less environmental impact. Greater construction efficiency. And much higher quality homes. I can’t wait to see more of this.

    A big thanks to the folks at H+ME Technology for taking the time to speak with me and tour me around their facility. If you’re interested in this space, they will be hosting a Q&A session on Twitter this Wednesday, November 25th at 8pm eastern time. You can join here or using the hashtag #TalkHomeTech. I’ll be tuning in.

  • British stock brick

    On Tuesday night architect Jamie Fobert spoke at the Daniels Faculty at the University of Toronto. Fobert’s practice is based in London, but he is a graduate of the Daniels Faculty well before it was called that.

    I unfortunately wasn’t able to attend, but I did get on to looking at his work. And I want to share two of his projects that stood out for me. Both are in London.

    The first is the Luker House:

    imageimage

    And the second is the Levring House:

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    What I love is how subtle the detailing is in both projects. The Luker House uses a “British stock brick” to mimic its context. But at the same time, it is applied in such a minimal way that the project feels entirely contemporary.

    You can see that same philosophy in the Levring House, which was built to complete an historic mews house.

    Finding the right balance between old and new is not always easy. But I like how Jamie Fobert has done it with these two London homes.

  • The value equation

    On Tuesday night I attended a great industry event that Quadrangle Architects organized about mid-rise buildings. 

    Mid-rise buildings (somewhere around 4-12 storeys) are all the rage in Toronto these days. But there are many challenges associated with this building typology and this was an event to talk about them and hopefully push things forward.

    One of the speakers at the event was Jeanhy Shim of Housing Lab Toronto. And I’d like to share one of her slides here:

    It reads:

    Value = (rational benefit x emotional benefit) / price

    I believe she admitted to taking it from someone at Bruce Mau Design. But that’s okay. That’s how ideas build. What I really like about it is that it attaches a value to the things that are difficult and sometimes impossible to measure: the emotional stuff.

    As I mentioned in this post over the weekend, we are all obsessed with the quantitative side of our businesses. In the case of development, we look at prices, per square foot prices, apartment sizes, and the list goes on. And we often reduce our “products” to these sorts of key metrics.

    But if you’re competing just on numbers, then you’re missing a big and important part of the equation. People consume things – and housing is no different – for a number of different reasons. We buy things because of how it makes us feel, how it reinforces our sense of self, how it improves or promises to improve our lives, and so on. These are all harder to measure than square footage. 

    But we are living in a data driven world and more and more of this type of information will become available for city building. If you and your business can get your head around it first, you’ll have a huge advantage. 

  • The impact of Chinese buyers on Vancouver’s single family home market

    I have a new favorite blog that I think you might all enjoy as well. It’s called BT | A | Works and it is the “architectural and urban research and development division” of Bing Thom Architects in Vancouver. 

    I think it’s it’s important to have people in a firm who are researching and experimenting with ideas beyond the day-to-day tasks of a job. So I was excited to discover their work this morning.

    Their most recent post is a look at ownership patterns of single family homes sold in 3 west end neighborhoods in Vancouver from September 2014 to February 2015 (a 6 month period). These are some of the most expensive areas in the city and, collectively, they found 172 properties sold with an aggregate value of around $520 million.

    Given the presence of foreign buyers in Vancouver’s real estate market, one of the things they then did was identify “non-anglicized Chinese names” on the title records. This means names like “Li Xian”, but not names like “Andrew Shui-Him Yan”, because the anglicized first name suggests that they are probably not a new immigrant or probably not living abroad.

    Here’s what they found:

    In total, 66% of the properties in the sample (172 properties) were associated with a non-anglicized Chinese name. And for properties over $5 million, the percentage jumps to 88%. The other interesting thing worth noting is that 23% of the registered owners declared their occupation as “homemaker/housewife.”

    I thought this would serve as an interesting follow-up to the post I wrote about a month ago called, Is Hongcouver better off than Vancouver? If you’d like to see the full BT | A | Works presentation, click here.

  • City-to-country colonization

    Lately I’ve been feeling that we’ve been having some pretty serious conversations here on Architect This City. Everything from condominium reserve funds to housing/tax policy. So today I thought we could change it up and talk about something a bit more fun: farmhouses.

    Last weekend when I was in Prince Edward County, one of the places that I visited was the Drake Devonshire Inn. It’s been on my list for awhile, so I’m glad I finally got to experience it. It’s an outpost of the Toronto-based Drake Hotel (no relationship to Hotline Bling Drake) and they refer to it as their “contemporary farmhouse.” 

    It was stunning.

    As soon as I walked on the grounds, I couldn’t stop looking around, taking pictures, and examining all the art that they have sprinkled around the inn. Those are the sorts of things I do when I get excited by a building or place. I’m like a kid in a candy store.

    I was so impressed that after I left I had to message my friend – who worked on the project and who I went to architecture school with – to tell her that she did an amazing job. Want to see for yourself? Click here for photos of the farmhouse. And click here for information on the design firm behind the farmhouse (+tongtong).

    But beyond just a great space, the Drake Devonshire is also symbolic of something greater than seems to be taking place. Almost everybody I met in PEC seemed to be a Toronto transplant. They were done with life in the city and decided take off for the country. But along with them is coming pieces of the city. (The Hayloft Dancehall is another example.)

    I used to think that this kind of city-to-country colonization was bound to happen in Niagara-on-the-Lake, which is only about an hour west of the city. But it turns out I was wrong. It seems to be happening to the east of the city in Prince Edward County.

  • Somewhereness

    For over 10 years I have been a big
    supporter and proponent of Ontario wines. It’s almost the only kind of wine I
    buy. When I go to a restaurant I will always look to see what wines they have
    from Ontario, because I would much rather support a local winemaker.

    This past weekend I was in Prince Edward County visiting Norman Hardie. They are one of my
    favorite wineries in Ontario and if you haven’t yet tried their wines, I would
    encourage you to give them a go. They also have a great wood pizza oven if you
    decide to visit them in person.

    One of the things I appreciate about Norman Hardie’s wines –
    besides obviously the wines themselves, though the two aren’t mutually exclusive – is his philosophy behind the wines.
    Here’s a snippet from the website:

    I’ve chosen Southern
    Ontario to grow and vinify cool climate varietals, because I truly feel that
    these soils are unlike any other in the New World. As the worldwide market
    grows, the majority of wines available to us have been carefully manufactured to
    fit a flavour profile as opposed to smell and taste like the region they came
    from. I strongly believe in the importance of crafting wines that tastes of the
    place they came from. The French know this notion as “terroir”. Matt Kramer
    (Wine Spectator) calls it “Somewhereness”.

    I like this approach because I feel exactly the same way
    about architecture and cities. Who wants a city that looks and feels like every
    other city in the world? That’s boring, bland, and banal (couldn’t resist the
    alliteration).

    In my opinion, the best buildings respond to their local
    context and the best cities create a unique sense of place. They create
    somewhereness.  

  • How small is too small?

    I was up early on Sunday morning and I tweeted this out:

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    It’s a link to a Dwell article about a New York family of four that lives in a 620 square foot apartment. It’s technically a one-bedroom apartment but the way they have it set up is that the two kids share the bedroom and the parents sleep in the living room similar to as if it were a studio apartment.

    And my question in the tweet was, could you do it?

    Part of the reason the article caught my attention was because I currently live in a 640 square foot apartment – but as a family of one. And not surprisingly it’s more than enough space for me. Would I still feel the same way if it were a family of two? I believe so. But what about if it were a family of 3 or 4? I suspect it wouldn’t be as effortless, though certainly not impossible.

    I love the idea of distilling one’s life down to only what is absolutely necessary. And if you happen to live in a city, like New York, where the median price of a one-bedroom apartment is somewhere around $3,400 per month, there can certainly be lifestyle advantages to doing more with less.

    So I’d like to re-ask the question here to the Architect This City community: Could you do it? How minimalist could you go?

  • Pre-sales, shear walls, and condos, oh my

    Work In Progress 2 by bryan simpson on 500px.com

    Pre-sales are a big part of many condominium markets. The way it typically works is that developers sell suites in their building before construction has even started and then uses those purchaser deposits (which are held in trust) to obtain a construction loan to actually build the building. Part of the reason this is done is that it, in theory, reduces speculative overbuilding.

    Nobody really knows the exact number, but here in Toronto many suites within a new building often end up getting sold to investors. And in some locations and some buildings, it could be most suites.

    On the one hand this is a good thing. Because in a way they provide the short-term money that gets new projects off the ground. And if they end up holding onto their suites, they also become landlords for new rental housing. Here in Toronto condos have been almost the only new rental stock built in this city for decades. (Purpose-built rental is now starting to come back though.)

    But one of the potential negatives is that buildings could be getting designed more around investor needs as opposed to end user needs. And that is happening because many end users – particularly when it comes to larger suites – find it difficult to make such a big life decision 3-5 years out. Doing that means saying to yourself: Okay, I’m going to buy this 3 bedroom condo today because 4.5 years from now when it’s complete I expect to be married and have 1.5 kids. Life doesn’t always work that way.

    We also have antiquated tax policies in Ontario that encourage the building of smaller suites. And I believe they should be modernized. (This topic deserves a dedicated post.)

    So if we are to think of these condo suites as products, then you could say that there are two broad customer segments: the investor and the end user. There are obviously sub-segments within each, but let’s assume that those are the top of the funnel.

    The challenge now facing developers creating new product is that the system we have put in place arguably privileges one customer segment over the other. And it’s a problem that is somewhat unique to the real estate industry because it takes so damn long to bring new supply to the market. (If you sell jets or yachts, maybe you have a similar problem.)

    Now one way to solve this might be to create lots of flexibility in the product. That is, you could allow people to adjust and combine suites to fit their current needs. And that’s what great products do: they meet specific needs and solve problems. In this scenario, perhaps the single person could “add-on” to their suite as they enter a new life phase. And indeed, this is something people are experimenting with by way of things like “knockout panels.”

    But the problems with this are twofold. 

    Firstly, this requires an adjacent and suitable suite to come on the market so that you can buy it. And that may not happen 6 months before the baby comes. 

    Secondly, most Toronto condominiums are built using something called shear walls. These are structural reinforced concrete walls that cannot be removed without compromising the integrity of the entire building. And most purchasers like these walls between them and their neighbors because they’re worried about noise. So combing suites isn’t always as straightforward as we might think. There are many constraints.

    One way to mitigate these problems is through smaller projects. That reduces the lead time between purchase and occupancy. But I am sure there are probably other creative solutions that we could come up with to better align product and customer needs.