Tag: architecture

• From back of house to front of house

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  Daniel Foch, Daniel Clark, and Adam Darvay recently stopped by Mackay Laneway House to film a last-minute video tour before the new tenants move in. They had quite the rig setup (see above). There was also a drone flying around that is not pictured here. The full house tour should be available in about two weeks and I’ll be sure to share here on the blog.

  One of the things we talked about during the tour was the future of laneway housing in Toronto. Will we see strong adoption going forward and, if yes, what does that mean for Toronto’s laneways? I think we will continue to see a steady increase in the number of laneway suites that get built in Toronto each year. And so eventually this form of living will become a ubiquitous part of the urban landscape. It’s happening fast.

  Now consider what this could mean for Toronto’s laneways. As garages and parking spaces get slowly replaced by new housing, it will mean that our laneways could at some point flip from being vehicle first to pedestrian first. Mackay Laneway House does not have any vehicular parking. The front door is off the laneway. You enter on foot. That’s how you experience the lane. And Gabriel and I thought it should be celebrated.

  If or when this tipping point occurs, it will trigger a perception change. Slowly but surely we will start to think of our lanes not as back of house, but as front of house. And when that happens, it’ll almost certainly force us to rethink how we design them. Forget utilitarian. Our laneways have the potential to become some of the most pedestrian-friendly streets in the city, especially with a few streetscape and landscape improvements.

  Pushing this idea even further, could you imagine a world where our laneways not only become more front of house, but where the laneway side becomes the more desirable side of the property? If we gave people the option, how many would prefer to build their main house on what is today considered to be the backside? (Remember how things once flipped in Paris?)

  But for the fact that we have an entrenched built form that could make this “inversion” challenging, I think there are people who would prefer to have their front door on the quieter and more pedestrian-friendly side of their property. Either way, I continue to believe that we are in the early stages of an ADU/laneway housing revolution. And things are just getting started.

  2021.04.10

• Who should win the 2021 Pritzker Prize?

  

  The winner of the 2021 Pritzker Prize — which is often considered to be the highest honor in the world of architecture — is expected to be announced sometime in “early March.” In anticipation of that, ArchDaily is asking its readers to opine on who they think should win the prize. This is something they usually do each year. I just casted my vote (for someone who happens to be pictured above). If you’d like to do the same, click here. And if you’d like to see who the jury members are for this year, go here.

  Image: ArchDaily

  2021.03.07

• Heatherwick Studio’s first high-rise project in Canada

  A rezoning submission was recently filed with the City of Vancouver for two towers on Alberni Street in the West End. Designed by Heatherwick Studio for Bosa Properties and Kingswood Properties, this will be the design firm’s first high-rise project in the country when built.

  There are some incredible pieces of architecture in the pipeline in Vancouver and I would now add this one to the list. Below are a few renderings and massing studies taken from Vancouver’s Shape Your City website.

  

  

  

  

  

  It’s also worth noting that Vancouver’s Shape Your City website allows people to very easily comment on rezoning applications. And as part of that, you are asked to state your overall position on the proposal: Support, Opposed, or Mixed.

  This strikes me as a step in the right direction, as I think it’s important to reduce the friction associated with participating. Asking people to show up to a community meeting (whether IRL or online) is a level of commitment that is simply too great for most people.

  But I don’t think it solves the problem that opposition is usually a more powerful motivator than support. And so I’m not yet convinced that we have systems in place which accurately and broadly capture the way that cities and communities are feeling about certain proposed changes.

  2021.02.01

• 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.

  2021.01.23

• The war on beauty

  A recent essay by The School of Life asks: “Why is the Modern World So Ugly?” Here’s how it opens:

  “One of the great generalisations we can make about the modern world is that it is, to an extraordinary degree, an ugly world. If we were to show an ancestor from 250 years ago around our cities and suburbs, they would be amazed at our technology, impressed by our wealth, stunned by our medical advances – and shocked and disbelieving at the horrors we had managed to build. Societies that are, in most respects, hugely more advanced than those of the past have managed to construct urban environments more dispiriting, chaotic and distasteful than anything humanity has ever known.“

  Naturally, it turns out that this is, at least partially, the fault of greedy and unscrupulous real estate developers:

  “When property developers heard that the artistic avant-garde was now promoting a concept of functionalism, they rejoiced. From the most high brow quarters, the most mean minded motives had been given a seal of approval. No longer would these developers have to spend any money on anything to do with beauty. Out could go the symmetry, the flowers, the nice but slightly more expensive materials. It could all be as quick, ugly and cheap as possible; after all, isn’t that what the great minds of architecture had advised?“

  The author goes on:

  “Yet this nuance was lost on the property developers who came after them. Their constructions weren’t elegantly pared down with grace. They were something far worse: sloppy, mean-minded and ugly. Except that now, because of the words of the modernist masters, there was apparently nothing one could do to charge them with a dereliction of duty. The concept of beauty had been rendered old-fashioned, it smelt elitist and woolly. No one could any more complain that beauty was missing from the world without sounding soft-headed.“

  To be fair, the essay doesn’t entirely blame developers. It, more specifically, outlines six possible reasons for the ugliness of the modern world. And I do agree with some of them.

  Click here for the full essay.

  2021.01.21

• Indian Institute of Management rethinks plans to demolish Louis Kahn-designed dormitories

  Last month the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad put out an “Expression of Interest” for the design of new student housing at its main campus. In it was the assumption that 14 of its existing dormitories would be demolished and replaced with something new.

  The problem with this assumption is that these dormitories were designed by one of America’s most noteworthy architects: Louis Kahn. And so there was immediate public outcry. Architectural historian William J.R. Curtis — who seems quite fond of real estate developers — had the following to say in this op-ed piece in The Architectural Review:

  Such is the smash-and-grab approach of developers in a world of astronomical land values and real-estate profiteering, especially in Modiland, the heartland of the Gujurat economic ‘model’. The price of everything, the value of nothing, quick returns on loans and investment above anything: such is the virus of neoliberalism as it spreads so quickly, far and wide across the globe. Timeless architecture has no role to play, and preservation is a pesky nuisance that gets in the way of profiteering. The public interest, social values and any long-range sense of history are thrown to the winds.

  The Architectural Review also started a petition to save Kahn’s IIMA’s dormitories. But just like that, the school came forward with an announcement that it had decided to pull its Expression of Interest and that it would go back and deliberate on what to do next. (The dorms were apparently built using “second class bricks” and are currently in a state of extreme disrepair.)

  As a developer and fake architect, I think I have a fairly good appreciation for both perspectives. Restoring old buildings is both difficult and expensive (the two usually go together). But I also grew up studying the work of Kahn. He happened to teach at the University of Pennsylvania until his death, though this was well before my time there.

  I’ve also visited a number of his projects including the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California and the National Parliament House in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Many credit Kahn with introducing modern architecture to Bangladesh with this project. It has unquestionable cultural significance.

  Some things are worth saving.

  2021.01.02

• More on Enhancement Zones — a follow-up to density transition zones

  

  Architect Michael Spaziani left a great comment on yesterday’s post about density transition zones and the Enhancement Zone concept that was first proposed as part of the St. Clair West Avenue Study. You can read it by clicking here. Michael was part of the consultant team that worked on this study and so they are the ones that came up with the idea. As we talked about yesterday, Enhancement Zones were ultimately struck from the study. The idea of applying a 60 degree angular plane to certain avenue mid-rise sites also didn’t make it through. This guideline was intended to be used on sites where the impacts to adjacent neighborhoods weren’t as great. For example, a site on the south side of St. Clair Avenue that wouldn’t be producing any shadow impacts on people’s backyards. These concepts and discussions are all over a decade old at this point. But it feels like it’s time to revisit them in a serious way. If you take a look at the Mid-Rise Buildings Performance Standards (available over here), you’ll find some “considerations for enhancement zones.” They’re all crossed out though.

  Image: Mid-Rise Building Performance Standards

  2020.12.20

• Sleeping well at night

  

  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.

  Photo by Michał Kubalczyk on Unsplash

  2020.12.02

• Latin American architecture and Miami’s influence

  Art Basel Miami Beach was cancelled this year for obvious reasons. It had originally been scheduled to kick off on December 3rd. But Design Miami is still hosting some physical exhibitions and naturally a lot of online programming. They also partnered up with Dezeen (and others) to host a series of online talks as part of the festival. Here is one about Latin American architecture and its symbiotic relationship with Miami. For some, Miami is known as “the capital of Latin America.” This talk explores that idea, but also how the relationship really runs both ways. It’s with architects Tatiana Bilbao and Carlos Zapata, and developer Joseph Schwarzkopf.

  If you can’t see the video, click here.

  2020.11.30

• The rooftops of Spanish architect Alberto Campo Baeza

  

  I love the contrast in this villa between the more private spaces, which are housed in a brutalist concrete structure, and the more public spaces, which sit on top and are housed in minimalist glass box that is reminiscent of the Farnsworth House.

  All of this was done in order to maximize views of the surrounding mountains from this upper floor. But it also creates a certain lightness within the next landscape. And I’m sure that the views out are that much better after emerging from such a contrasting space below.

  Located to the southwest of Madrid, the villa was designed by Spanish architect Alberto Campo Baeza in 2000. It’s called the Casa de Blas and it’s currently on the market for €850,000. Listing information over here.

  But I would also encourage you to check out some of the firm’s other work. It’s absolutely magical. One of my favourites is the House of the Infinite, which was designed in 2014 and, in my mind, shares some similarities with the above villa.

  In both the Blas House and the House of the Infinite, the rooftop spaces feel like everything. In some ways, they have been privileged over almost everything else. And so instead of wanting to be inside the houses, the architecture seems to pull you toward wanting to be on top of them.

  Image: ArchitectenWoning

  2020.11.29