Tag: architecture

• From art to framework

  Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena has just been awarded the prestigious Pritzker Prize – the highest honor in the world of architecture. 

  Alex Bozikovic of the Globe and Mail has a fantastic write up about it that focuses on how choosing Aravena – an architect known for his social housing – is quite a departure from the “starchitects” of prior years. 

  One of Aravena’s most famous works is known as the “half of a good house”, which I think is an incredibly clever project. The idea here was to literally provide half of a good house but then design in the flexibility for owners to expand as they have the means. 

  The rationale behind this was to get around the fact that poorer Chileans would not be able to afford a full good house, unless of course they went far out of the city. But rather than physically disconnect these people from the opportunities of the city, this was deemed as a better solution. I think that makes a lot of sense.

  But beyond being hyper practical, it also pushes architecture away from being a work of pure art that shouldn’t be meddled with, towards more of a housing framework that is supposed to altered and built upon. 

  Many architects wouldn’t like to give up this kind of control over their capital A, Architecture. But for Alejandro Aravena, he’s clearly about something quite different. 

  Congratulations on winning the Pritzker Prize!

  (I apologize for not having any links or images in this post. It’s because I wrote it from my phone on a flight.)

  2016.01.14

• Urbanism Online: #capital

  

  For those
  of you from Ottawa, I’m going to be in town this Thursday evening talking
  at an event put on by the National Capital Commission called Urbanism
  Online. It’s all about how blogging, social media, and online discussions can
  and are contributing to the betterment of cities.

  The other
  bloggers include:

  – Marc-André Carignan, Montreal, Kollectif.net

  – Jillian Glover, Vancouver, This City Life

  – Robert Smythe, Ottawa, UrbSite

  The event is
  now full, but email them or tweet me if you’d really like to come
  and I’ll certainly ask about space availability. I’m sure it’s going to be a great discussion.

  I have a bit of a soft spot for Ottawa. I used to spend a lot of time there when I was working on an office building at 150 Elgin Street. (Key tenants include The Canada Council for the Arts, KPMG, and Shopify.)

  I haven’t been back since the building was completed, so I’m excited to see how it turned out.

  Update: The event will also be streamed on Periscope, here.

  2016.01.11

• Urban infill case study: 1234 Howard Street in San Francisco

  Urban infill developments can be tough. The sites are often small and/or narrow and that creates a lot of design challenges. Access to light is a common problem.

  But constraints can also be beautiful, because they have a way of forcing creativity. 

  When I was in architecture school, I used to find it easier to work when I was given constraints and challenges. It gave me something to latch onto, as opposed to just starting with a blank canvas. A big part of design, at least for me, is about solving problems. So give me a problem to solve!

  One of the ways that architects and designers often deal with the access to light problem is by carving out lightwells or courtyards to bring light down into the building. This can be used when you have a deep site or when you’re building right up against the property line and you can’t have any windows.

  One project that I’ve always liked for this reason – as well as the fact that it’s beautifully designed – is 1234 Howard Street in San Francisco. It looks like this from above:

  

  The site is 50′ x 165′ and it spans an entire block. 

  In order to get lots of light into all of the units, the architects (Stanley Saitowitz | Natoma Architects) split the site up into 3 “bars”, each of which would be somewhere around 16′ x 165′. The middle “bar” was then dedicated to a courtyard that cuts through the entire building.

  

  The two flanking bars were then further subdivided into 2 units per bar, which translates into 4 units per floor x 4 floors. The ground floor is just common areas and parking.

  The advantage of this design strategy is that the apartments now have windows running the length of the courtyard, where as typically on narrow deep lots you would end up with “bowling alley” units and windows just on one end.

  The disadvantage of this design strategy is that you’re now just over 16′ away from seeing what your neighbor is eating for dinner, among other things. 

  But with the right window coverings, I’m sure we’d all survive in these apartments with their Bulthaup kitchens and Miele appliances.

  

  I love seeing creative solutions to tight urban sites. And one of the things that I worry about, with things like the Mid-Rise Performance Standards here in Toronto, is that we’re reducing or even eliminating the possibility for these kinds of creative solutions.

  I recognize that 1234 Howard is not the same as an avenue mid-rise site in Toronto with low-rise residential behind it. But the thought still crossed my mind as I was writing this piece.

  All photos via Stanley Saitowitz | Natoma Architects Inc.

  2016.01.08

• Our urban history in 50 buildings

  At the time of writing this post, it’s still 2015 – at least here in Toronto. But by the time you (subscribers) get this post in your inbox, it will be 2016. So happy new year! I am thrilled about getting this year started and I hope you feel the same way.

  To kick things off, I thought I would share a great interactive post from Guardian Cities called, A history of cities in 50 buildings. It’s a look at our urban history through 50 important and pivotal buildings. Buildings such as Southdale Center, which was the first fully enclosed, climate-controlled shopping mall, and Chicago’s Home Insurance Building, which was a building that really set the stage for the modern skyscraper that we know today.

  Not all of these buildings have left a positive legacy on our cities. I am sure that some of you would argue that the creation of the suburban shopping mall, with its corresponding “sea of parking”, was not a step forward for cities, but a step backwards. The architect behind Southdale Center, Victor Gruen, has even gone on record saying that he refuses “to pay alimony for those bastard developments.” He hated the shopping mall.

  But like them or not, these buildings are part of our urban history, and I think it’s not only interesting but important to understand their impacts. If you want to see which important buildings were missed, at least according to Guardian readers, click here. I have to say that I was happy to see both Montréal and Toronto represented in the original list, as well as a few other buildings that I’ve written about here.

  On that note, happy new year to you all, again, and many thanks for reading Architect This City. If you have any suggestions for content you would like to see on this blog in 2016, please leave it in the comment section below. This may be my personal blog, but my goal is to make it valuable for all of you. Hopefully I achieve that sometimes.

  2016.01.01

• For the love of Brutalism

  Brutalism is an architectural movement that most people, other than architecture nerds, hate. Derived from the French words for raw concrete – béton brut – Brutalist architecture is characterized by its use of exposed concrete and its imposing fortress-like qualities.

  Most people find it too cold, sterile, and impersonal. But this 99% Invisible episode perfectly sums of where I think we sit with this era of building:

  “Back in the 1960s, Victorian style buildings were considered hideous and impossible to repair. We were tearing batches of Victorians down to erect big concrete buildings. But some Victorians were saved—and today, some of them are considered treasures.
  

  Concrete architecture now finds itself at an inflection point: too outdated to be modern, too young to be classic. And a small, but growing band of architects, architecture enthusiasts, and preservationists, would like us to just wait a bit and see.

  Maybe, with a little time, we’ll come around to love these hulking concrete brutes.”

  Concrete can be a wonderful building material all on its own. I mean, just look at the work of Tadao Ando. 

  But all concrete is not created equal. Here is a taxonomy of concrete textures that was also part of that same 99% Invisible episode:

  

  I say all this because if we believe that Brutalist architecture has no value then we are likely to believe that it doesn’t need to be preserved. And that may very well be the case for some Brutalist architecture. But if history is any indication, some or much of it may also be considered beautiful one day.

  Most cities have a rich history of demolishing (or almost demolishing) buildings and neighborhoods that today we would (or do) treasure. Which tells me that we’re not always very good at figuring out what has value or will have value in the future.

  So maybe some of those brutes are worth a second look.

  2015.12.23

• Coworking, coliving, and an old architecture school project

  Coworking spaces are big business.

  One of the biggest of those companies is WeWork. As of last month (November 2015), the company had raised close to a billion dollars from investors like JPMorgan Chase, Harvard Management, and Benchmark Capital, and was valued at $10 billion. (Remember though, this is in the private not public markets.)

  If you’re unfamiliar with coworking spaces, check out this post from The Spaces. It’s a great demonstration of how beautiful these spaces can be.

  All of this is interesting because it speaks to the changing nature of work. There are a lot of people freelancing, participating in the “online gig economy” and working on new ideas. And in many of these cases, they don’t want or need traditional office space and/or they want the community that many of these coworking spaces afford – both offline and online.

  But it’s not just the office that is changing. It’s also potentially living spaces. Since 2014, WeWork has been talking about their new coliving concept, WeLive. The idea here is to combine smaller living spaces with larger common areas and create an overall live-work community. And they are not the only ones thinking about this.

  Below is a building section of what this might look. It’s from a Vornado Realty presentation. They are working with WeWork to deliver their new WeLive concept in Crystal City, Virginia.

  

  It’s so interesting to see this concept come to fruition. Back in 2008 when I was in architecture school, I worked with a classmate of mine and designed a modular coliving apartment building. It was called the Philly Flex Dwelling and it worked like this:

  

  The idea here was to start with standard floor plates and use a structural exoskeleton to minimize interior columns. This way you could insert whatever prefabricated modules you wanted and also re-purpose the structure should you want to change the building’s use in the future. 

  This is not that dissimilar from what was originally proposed for One Bloor West here in Toronto. Though the goal there was column-free retail spaces. 

  The yellow spaces are the shared common areas and the remaining spaces are the residential living “pods.” We also designed a “solar skin” that was perfectly tuned to the building’s orientation and location in Philadelphia. The idea here was to maximize winter sun (for heating) and minimize summer sun (to keep the building cool).

  That was a fun project to work on.

  2015.12.21

• The highs and lows of mid-rise

  Last week
  was developer Urban Capital’s 5th annual “Naughty or Nice” party. It’s obviously a holiday tradition of theirs and it has become a tradition of mine to attend. Judging by my vast collection of photo booth photos, there’s a chance I may have been to all of them. It’s easily one of the best holiday parties in the business.

  One of the things that Urban Capital does at its annual party is release its annual magazine. And this year I was fortunate enough to be invited to write a piece for it on the highs and lows of mid-rise development. Put differently, it’s about the challenges facing developers who want to build mid-rise, but also why they’re pretty great for cities.

  

  If you’d like to have a read, you can do that online by clicking here. And if you’d like to receive a hard copy of the magazine, I can make that happen as well. Tweet at me. Alternatively, you can also pick up the magazine at any Urban Capital sales office.

  I deliberately tried to make it so it wasn’t your typical real estate puff piece: condos are great, yada, yada, you should buy one from us. I tried to make it an intelligent piece on some of the real challenges facing mid-rise developers. And that’s what Urban Capital wanted as well. I hope you enjoy it 🙂

  2015.12.17

• [Video] The Skyline Forum: Architect or Developer?

  I recently had a discussion with Ben Stevens about architecture and real estate development for his video blog, The Skyline Forum. I’ve posted about his blog before because I think it’s a great idea and a great forum for the industry. I sure hope he keeps it up.

  Here’s what we talked about in Ben’s words:

  “In Episode 6, I caught up with Brandon Donnelly of the very popular blog Architect This City. Brandon has degrees in both architecture and real estate development and as such has a unique perspective on the two disciplines. In this episode, I was interested to hear about the rationale behind his decision to pursue development over architecture, his definition of “real estate developer,” and his suggestions for pursuing the kind of work in real estate development which he does (currently in Toronto). It was a great conversation and confirmed for me a lot of things I’d learned through reading his fantastic blog.”

  And here’s the video discussion:

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-o_gT9czfM&w=560&h=315]

  A big thanks to Ben for inviting me to participate – he has chatted with some big names. As a published author himself, I also appreciated him encouraging me to write a book. I’ve been thinking about doing that. Oh, and a big thanks to my mom for providing the Christmas poinsettia that ended up being prominently featured in the background 😉

  I haven’t watched the full video yet, but one thing is clear: I’m quite the hand talker.

  2015.12.14

• 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.

  2015.12.11

• Insecure cities

  

  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.

  2015.12.06