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.
Today was my MBA convocation at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School. Though I actually finished my degree last year (with a bit of fast-tracking), I had to wait until today in order to formally graduate with the rest of my cohort. I did what’s called the 3-year morning MBA. What that means is that I took most of my classes at 7am.
The picture above is from our weekend retreat right before we started the program (I’m in the back row in the middle). It was taken in the summer of 2011. That feels like eons ago. It has been a tough slog.
So today I’m taking the day off from writing about cities. Instead, I’m just going to enjoy the day off and the closing of this chapter in my life. An MBA is something I had been planning on doing even while I was in architecture school–so it’s nice to be able to check it off. But as I told my parents today after convocation: you ain’t seen nothing yet.
In support of their commitment to city building (and as a way to offer the public a peek of Vancouver House), they recently staged an exhibition called Gesamtkunstwerk. I think this is great on so many levels. Not only was it probably a great sales tool, but it’s also introducing the public to a largely obscure and academic term, and showing off a deep commitment to design. Unless you studied art, architecture, or something like the philosophy of aesthetics, you probably haven’t come across this term before.
Gesamtkunstwerk is a German word, which literally translates into a “total work of art.” It was introduced in the 19th century by an opera composer by the name of Richard Wagner, who felt that opera represented a total, or complete work of art. Later, the term was picked up by architects. Some interpreted it to mean that architects should be responsible for everything from the building itself to the furniture and everything else that goes inside of it. Everything was art.
Westbank now wants to introduce the idea of gesamtkunstwerk into the real estate development business. They want to use it as a guiding philosophy for all of their projects. And what that means is that the building itself and its relationship to the greater city should be thought of as a “total work of art.” They seem to be reintroducing the term with an inherent city building tinge–one that I don’t think was ever there before.
Yesterday I had a really interesting conversation with somebody about the future of the architecture profession. We spoke about how Joshua Prince-Ramus of REX believes that architects have marginalized themselves as a result of shying away from liability. We spoke about how architecture schools need to teach more about about business and making money. And we spoke about why I decided to never practice architecture and instead become a developer.
At the end of it all, he came to more or less the same conclusion that I did in this post. He felt that as more and more trained architects choose to become developers, that maybe the future will be firms that vertically integrate both architecture and real estate development. For those of you not in the building industry, this is fairly uncommon practice today. Typically, developers retain the services of an architect to design their buildings and do not handle this in-house.
But there are firms that do. DDG out of New York and San Francisco is one example. Although there’s a subtlety worth mentioning. According to their website, they say that they often act as the “design architect” for their projects. This means that there would still need to be an “architect of record”, whose name would appear on the building permit and who would ultimately end up shouldering the liability for the design.
You see, a bifurcation has happened even within the architecture profession itself. You have “design architects” who may or may not be licensed, but do a lot of the fun design work upfront for a project. And you have production oriented firms that actually produce the technical drawings needed for construction. The fees are generally higher in the latter case (unless maybe you’re a starchitect), but the work is less creative.
The emergence of these two streams of architecture is precisely what Joshua Prince-Ramus is talking about when he says that architects have marginalized themselves by shying away from liability. He believes that architects are reducing themselves to designers and stylists, from master builders. So his argument is that architects need to reinsert themselves into more of the building process.
What I’ve been suggesting is that architects should become owners. They should insert themselves into the development process. And the reason I feel this way is because I worry about the tendency for production and construction to just be farmed out to the lowest bidder. Design and development, on the other hand, are high value creation items.
Truthfully though, I don’t really know which option is better for the profession in terms of relevance. I know which one I’m most interested in, but that could just be a personal preference. What do you think?
The “ground plane” is an important reference in architecture. The ground is typically where people walk. The ground is where our fabricated buildings meet the earth. And the ground is where our experience of the urban environment–however good or bad it may be–truly takes shape. Often times I feel that we, city dwellers, spend far too much time worrying about the height of buildings and not enough time worry about the ground floor.
But what if there were no clearly defined ground plane? This morning I stumbled upon an interesting book called, Cities Without Ground: A Hong Kong Guidebook. The authors call it “a manifesto for a new theory of urban form.” And the argument is that Hong Kong has developed a unique series of public/private spaces that allow it to function as a fully three-dimensional city.
Through underground tunnels, above ground walkways, escalators, and other connective infrastructure, Hong Kong is reinventing the way we typically think about cities–both from a user experience and a real estate standpoint. Here’s an excerpt from the Guardian architecture and design blog:
The phenomenon began in the 1960s, when the Hongkong Land company, one of the main developers in the region, built an elevated walkway to connect a luxury hotel to the second storey of an adjacent shopping mall. An insignificant move, perhaps, but it in fact had the effect of changing the rentable values within the building: suddenly the mall’s second floor units could be rented out for more than those at ground level. It entirely recalibrated the vertical logic of real estate value.
Now, you could argue that Hong Kong is a unique place. And it is. Other, less dense cities, have found above and below grade walkways to be a destroyer of urban vibrancy. But in Hong Kong it works and, as many other cities around the world focus their energies on urban intensification, we may find that Hong Kong is indeed a new model for urban form.
The journey of Architect This City has been an organic one. When I first started blogging regularly in September 2013, I had no plan in mind other than that I wanted to write about cities. I had just come off working full-time on my startup, Dirt, where I had gotten into the habit of writing and I enjoyed it immensely. So I wanted to continue.
Cities seemed like the perfect umbrella to capture all of my passions: architecture, design, planning, real estate, and even technology. And so I rebranded brandondonnelly.com—which I had already been using as a microblog—and slapped the title “Cities” on it. (That personal microblog has since become brandondonnelly.me.)
Then, after a few months of blogging, I was having drinks with a good friend of mine and telling her about my new daily discipline. She immediately asked me what it was called and, when I replied by saying that I didn’t really have a name for it, she insisted that I create one immediately. Since she’s one of the brightest people I know, I gave it some serious thought. A few days later, Architect This City was born.
I liked the idea of having a distinct brand, because then it meant it could grow beyond just a personal blog. It could become a real community of people passionate and committed to building better cities. And that ultimately became the goal as I got deeper and deeper into writing.
Since that time last year, I’ve had friends guest blog on ATC. It has gone on to become syndicated on Mobility Lab and Urban Times. And it has been featured by the Guardian in the UK has one of the big city blogs in the world. But even more exciting are the moments when somebody tells me, either face-to-face or through a quick message, that they’re really enjoying ATC and that they read it daily. That’s what keeps me going.
Lately though, I’ve been thinking about what’s next. What’s the purpose of ATC? What’s the why? I thought about writing a manifesto of sorts, but that just seemed unnecessarily onerous. So I sat down, primarily on the subway, with Evernote, and I wrote a purpose statement for ATC:
To promote the building of beautiful and environmentally sustainable cities that offer strong economic opportunities and a high quality of life.
That’s really what I believe cities should do. They should be enjoyable and beautiful places to live life and they should empower people to get richer. At the same time, we need to be aware that as more and more of the world’s 7 billion people move into cities, the need for environmentally sustainable solutions is only going to increase.
So those are the kinds of discussions I hope we can have on ATC. Regular scheduled programming will continue as usual, but hopefully now the why is clearer. If you have any feedback on the above statement, I would love to hear from you in the comment section below.
I say “just”, not to belittle the profession in any way, but rather because that was my original plan–to become an architect. That’s what I was studying to become and I was loving the ride.
But along the way, as I’ve mentioned before, I became somewhat disillusioned with the profession and I became a real estate developer. It’s not that I didn’t and don’t love architecture. I still do. It’s that I felt the profession had been marginalized. Architects were no longer the “master builders.”
But I’m often asked by people if I miss architecture and design. And to be perfectly honest, I do sometimes. Every now and then I’ll read something about architecture or I’ll come across an interesting design and think to myself: “Should I have just become an architect?” This morning was one of those moments. I opened up my phone while still in bed and, for whatever reason, I just wanted to look at cool architecture in my inbox.
But I never regret the deliberate decision I made. Developers are very much entrepreneurs and I believe wholeheartedly in the power of entrepreneurship to disrupt, improve, and move the world forward. I just love architecture. And that will never change.
On the left is a picture of some crowded and dense city at, I presume, the turn of the 20th century. And on the right is a picture, today, of your generic suburban city with lots of cars, a broad street and auto-oriented signage everywhere.
As the captions say, the city on the left is what modernist architects like Le Corbusier and powerful city builders like Robert Moses were trying to fix. What we ended up with, as a result of these efforts, is the city on the right. Now, today, we–architects, planners and urbanists–are all trying to correct what we see as a huge misstep in the way we designed and built cities.
But is it really an anomalous misstep or is it simply a preferential pendulum that swings back and forth from generation to generation? One generation thinks cities are dirty and evil and that they need to be evacuated. And then the next generation loves them and wants to move back into them, which is what’s happening today.
Dogma–particularly when it comes to cities–takes a long time to percolate through the system. Le Corbusier was espousing his city building ideals of “towers in parks” in the 1920s. That’s when he proposed to demolish 2 square miles of Paris (Plan Voisin) and turn it into what most people today would think looks like a New York public housing project.
But for these new ideas to take hold, young architects, planners and builders first need to become indoctrinated in school or wherever they’re learning the ropes. Then, they need to get out and start practicing and mature to a point where they’re starting to influence and control substantial city building decisions. That’s why, I think, Le Corbusier’s ideas of the 20s really only became widely accepted as planning principles in the post-war years.
Because of this though, I sometimes wonder if I too am just following the natural cycle of changing tastes. When I went to architecture school, we were taught that public transit is more efficient than private cars, density is good for the environment and for economic development, and that Le Corbusier was generally a crappy city builder. And if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that that is generally the view I take here.
But when I ask myself this question, I think of a few things. First, if you look at the urbanization of ancient cities, they were always organized around strong public spaces. The desire for human beings to be able to walk around, conduct business and socialize with each other is not a new phenomenon. And our post-war planning ideals put a strain on that.
Second, take a look at the world and what’s happening. The majority of people now live in cities and we’re continuing to urbanize at a frenetic pace. Shenzhen in China went from a population of just over 300,000 people in 1979 to over 10.5 million people today. That is the pace of urbanization that city builders need to deal with. It’s unprecedented.
And to even begin to make that manageable, I don’t think we can continue to build cities like the ones on the right side of the picture, above. It’s unsustainable both environmentally and from a mere space planning standpoint. There simply isn’t enough room.
So call me a product of the times, but I just don’t see our current planning goals as one side of a swinging pendulum. I see them as a return to what cities have always been about: a place for people to interact, socialize and generate wealth.
Late last month it was announced that the 30 St. Mary Axe tower in London–also affectionately known as the Gherkin–had gone into receivership. The reason was a mismatch of assets and liabilities, specifically currency losses:
A fund managed by IVG Immobilien AG, once Germany’s biggest real estate company, and London-based Evans Randall Ltd. bought the Foster + Partners-designed tower from reinsurer Swiss Re Ltd. for 600 million pounds ($1 billion) in 2007. Part of the IVG fund’s loan was in Swiss francs, which have gained about 63 percent against the pound over the last seven years, increasing the amount owed to the point that it breached rules on how much debt could be held against the property.
But what I found interesting while reading Bloomberg and Monocle, and learning about the loan default, is that there seems to be a lot of people in London that really don’t like this tower. Shaped like a giant pickle, it’s been the brunt of many lewd jokes, I’m sure.
However, within the architectural community, the Gherkin tower is generally revered as a pretty awesome piece of architecture. It’s a highly sustainable building that employs a number of natural ventilation and passive heating and cool techniques. It’s estimated to consume half the energy of a “typical” office building.
And certainly, I hear lots of people criticize the building here in the city. Often, they mention how much wasted space the angular walls generate, which makes me wonder why we have so many people living in the suburbs when there are so many space conservationists among us.
Personally, I love the Crystal. And I also love the Gherkin. They’re big and bold and they piss a lot of people off. Good, I say.
Earlier this week I received a message from an undergraduate architecture student interested in moving into real estate development after school. That was his 10 year plan. And he had clearly read my blog post, “Transitioning from architecture to development.”
In his message, he asked me if there were any books I would recommend he read to improve his real estate and finance knowledge, and, if I could have a “redo”, if I would still do a M.Arch (Master of Architecture) or just go straight to the MBA?
After responding to his message, I thought: “This would make a good blog post, as well as an opportunity to talk about the current state of real estate education in Canada.” So here goes.
If you’re looking for a good real estate book to get you started, I recommend checking out “Real Estate Finance and Investments: Risks and Opportunities" by Peter Linneman. It’s a much easier read and way more casual compared to most textbooks. When I was in grad school, people referred to this book as the "blue bible.” The cover on the previous edition was less purple and more blue. Unfortunately, he has also changed his glasses since the photo below.
To his second question, if I were to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing about my education. I loved architecture school and combining it with business school classes and a real estate concentration was the best thing for me. I never wanted to be just a “numbers guy”, but I also never wanted to be a fanciful artist type who didn’t know how to build and manage a pro forma.
Now, let’s talk about real estate education in Canada.
I think we’re way behind. In the US, you can do a Master of Science in Real Estate Development, a Master of Real Estate Development, and all sorts of other real estate degrees. In Canada, you’re probably doing a MBA with a few elective real estate classes. Real estate is the largest asset class in the world. Does that not justify a dedicated degree?
Part of the reason for this, I think, is because real estate development is still very much an entrepreneur’s business–though it has become more institutionalized in recent years. Because of this, people get into development from a variety of different professions. They just need that entrepreneurial hutzpah. And that’s all fine, but I still think that the profession, the economy and our cities would benefit from University trained developers.
Earlier today I stumbled upon a documentary called “The Human Scale.” I haven’t watched it yet, but I’m planning to rent it from iTunes later this weekend. Here’s the trailer. Click here if you can’t see it below.
One of the things that’s so fascinating about studying cities right now, is that it feels as if we’re at a major turning point with respect to how we think about them. We’re coming off a long period (decades) of infatuation with the car, where planners and engineers predominately cared about one thing and one thing only: efficiently moving cars in and around cities.
But having now fully built out cities around the car, we’ve come to realize two important things. First, that it’s virtually impossible to keep up with the demands of the car. No matter how many highways and roads you build, there always seems to be gridlock. And second, by focusing so closely on the car, we’ve built cities that aren’t great places for people.
If you take a look at this short clip from The Human Scale (featuring Siena, Italy), I think you’ll immediately see how differently we used to build our cities and how disruptive the car has been to them.
