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.
This is an incredibly well done video by Pablo Casals Aguirre of BIG’s recently completed IQON tower in Quito, Ecuador. What’s great is that it both showcases the building’s architecture and gives you a sense of what it might be like to live in a tower like this. And it does this beautifully.
If you can’t see the embedded video above, click here.
BIG just announced its first project in South America. It is a 33 storey residential building in Quito, Ecuador. When completed, it will be the tallest building in the city. The developer is Uribe and Schwarzkopf.
Here are a couple of other images:
The building is made up of “concrete boxes” that, when rotated, create terraces for the apartments. On one corner of the building the apartments are “through-units”, meaning they have two exposures. In this case, it is north and south.
While different, we are starting to see some similarities across BIG’s projects, which isn’t meant as a criticism. I am thinking of Telus Sky, Vancouver House, and even KING Toronto.
They are, at least partially, about expressing the individual apartments and creating opportunities for outdoor spaces. This also serves to break down the overall scale of the building.
What do you think of the project?
Images: BIG
Things are busy right now as we get ready to unveil Junction House this fall and so I’m a bit behind on my news and reading.
I just finished reading Alex Bozikovic’s Globe article on BIG’s new KING Toronto project (official name). It is an interesting piece about creating villages and a sense of community in new developments – something that Bjarke Ingels has been focused on for many years.
Below are a few renderings of the project. I’m excited for this one. And as I said before on the blog, I am sure it will be precedent setting in a number of ways.
One remark from the article that stood out for me is this one here:
Still: The design breaks a lot of rules. Which is why it took two years of difficult negotiations with city planners to reach approvals. “We wanted it to be quieter,” says Lynda MacDonald, a senior Toronto planner who was involved in overseeing the project. “It’s a very large project, and we wanted to make sure it respected the character of King Street.”
I am often asked why we don’t see more innovation in architecture and real estate. There are a number of reasons for that. One of them is risk. Development is in many ways a game of risk mitigation.
But another reason is that when you try and do something unconventional that disrupts the status quo, you also call into question the typical planning criteria used to evaluate projects. And that may slow you down.
Alex accurately points out in his article that we are used to doing things around here in one of two ways:
The King Street project is also an ambitious experiment with urban design. There are basically two species of tower in Toronto: a midrise slab of six to 10 storeys, which steps back at the top; and a “tower-and-podium,” a model borrowed from Vancouver that combines a fat, squared-off base (or “podium”) with a tall, skinny residential tower. Both can work, but can also create the big-box blandness that many people dislike about new urban housing.
None of this is to suggest that we should ignore the character of a particular area. It is critical and I believe that KING Toronto has been mindful of that.
But I also firmly believe in ambitious city building and I think there’s no question that KING Toronto is doing exactly that.
Images: Hayes Davison via Dezeen and courtesy of Westbank
Last night I checked out the Unzipped Toronto exhibition, which is the relocated Serpentine Pavilion (pictured above) that was designed by Bjarke Ingels Group in 2016.
It was initially housed in Hyde Park London, but it’s now on King Street West Toronto. Westbank purchased the “unzipped wall” after it was installed in London and supposedly it will eventually find a permanent home in Vancouver.
The official opening of Unzipped Toronto is September 15th, 2018. It will be free and open to the public. If you’d like to get a complimentary ticket, you can do that here.
The timing of all this lines up with condo sales for Bjarke Ingels’ first project in Toronto. I believe that will be starting this fall. And I am sure they will end up setting some new records for the King West submarket.
I have about 15 minutes before I need to head out for dinner, so I’m afraid that there won’t be much of an ATC post today. It has been a busy week.
But given that this week was Bjarke Ingels’ talk in Toronto and many of us are pretty excited about his King West project, I thought I would share a video where he sketches and talks about architecture. Click here if you can’t see it below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIsIKv1lFZw?rel=0&w=560&h=315]
I love the idea that architecture is about imagining how things could be. That’s how I feel about both architecture and real estate development.
Yesterday was an exciting day for Toronto city building announcements.
Firstly, Alex Bozikovic of the Globe and Mail published an exclusive preview of architect Bjarke Ingel’s plan for King Street West. Here’s a photo of the architectural model (it’s by Landon Speers):
My favorite quote from the article is this one from Bjarke:
“It would be sad if the most diverse city in the world had the most homogenous real estate.”
It’s true.
For those of you who emailed me about the details of his talk next week (there were a lot of you!), I believe I emailed you all back. But in case I missed some of you, you can click here for the event details. I should have included it in my original post about BIG, but I thought the event was already oversubscribed.
Secondly, a private company called Bullwheel International Cable Car Corp. has just proposed to build a $20 to $25 million gondola running from Danforth Avenue (near Broadview subway station) to the Evergreen Brickworks. The total length would be almost 1 km and it, allegedly, wouldn’t require any public money. Here is their website.
The timing of this proposal feels a bit serendipitous to me. When I was in Park City, Utah a few weeks ago, snowboarding right into the town and then taking their “town lifts” back up to traverse the mountain, I remember thinking to myself: what a wonderful form of transportation this is.
Of course, Park City has giant mountains and Toronto, unfortunately, does not. But we do have spectacular ravines and a spectacular institution known as the Evergreen Brickworks.
But one of the challenges with our ravines is that they can be a bit hidden – particularly for visitors to the city. Part of this is because we are trying to figure out the right balance between natural preservation and active use. But that’s one of the things that makes this proposal so intriguing. It’s a way to celebrate our ravines and natural landscape, without physically encroaching it.
Here’s a map of the proposed gondola path:
What do you think about these announcements?
Architect Bjarke Ingels will be in Toronto next week to talk about how architecture can create communities and about a new project that he is working on with developers Westbank and Allied REIT here in the city.
The last time I heard Bjarke speak was when I was in undergrad and he had recently started a firm called PLOT with Julien De Smedt. That was over 10 years ago. So I am looking forward to this talk. If you’re also going to be attending, tweet me and let’s try and connect at the event.
In anticipation of that, I thought I would share a book that his firm published about a year ago called, BIG, HOT TO COLD: An Odyssey of Architectural Adaptation.
What’s interesting about the book is that all of the projects are organized according to climatic location – literally hot to cold. That’s why the pages themselves start as red and end up in dark blue.
It’s a direct response to the fact that modern architecture and modern building systems largely did away with regional and climatic variations. Buildings were designed, no matter their location, to look exactly the same.
To a certain extent, globalization makes this somewhat inevitable. But climate is climate. And I believe that architecture is stronger when it responds to local context.
If you were in Toronto this past weekend – perhaps for the NBA All Star Game – you’re probably well aware that Toronto sometimes gets cold. So it will be interesting to see what kind of strategies they employ for their upcoming project.
If you want to hear Bjarke talk about this book and some of their projects, check out this video from the Architectural Association in London.
Earlier this week a press release went out announcing that Allied Properties REIT (TSX:AP.UN) had established a joint venture with Westbank to redevelop 489 – 539 King Street West here in Toronto.
“What is so exciting here is that Allied has over time assembled 620 feet of frontage on what is fast becoming one of the most interesting streets in Toronto,” said Ian Gillespie of Westbank. “With this scale, we have a unique opportunity for world-class city building.”
Westbank is relatively new to the Toronto market. Their first project was the Shangri-La Toronto in 2012. But since then they’ve entered the city in a big way with high profile projects like the redevelopment of Honest Ed’s at Bloor and Bathurst.
But what excites me the most about this King Street project is that they’ve selected Bjarke Ingels Group as the design architect. I’ve written about BIG a few times before and I’m a huge fan of their/his work. So I’m pumped to see what gets proposed here. It will not be typical.
There are a few heritage buildings on the site. And it looks like some (but not all?) will be preserved.
Based on this post and discussion on UrbanToronto.ca, it’s not clear whether 489 King Street West will be preserved and incorporated into the new build (as was the case with a previous design). I sure hope it is though.
Google wants to build a new campus in Mountain View, California. Their objective is to create a space where “people, nature and ideas” can thrive. The architects on the project are Bjarke Ingels and Thomas Heatherwick.
Last week Google released a video talking about the ambitious project. It is a good watch and only 10 minutes. Click here if you can’t see the video below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3v4rIG8kQA?rel=0&w=560&h=315]
Last night I was out for drinks with a friend of mine who runs an architecture firm in the city called Reflect Architecture. We started talking about the importance of marketing and storytelling in city building and then got onto the topic of Danish architect Bjarke Ingels and his firm BIG.
At only 39, Bjarke Ingels has become a celebrity architect at a relatively young age. He’s working on projects all over the world from Vancouver to New York to Shenzhen. And he describes his work as a combination of “shrewd analysis, playful experimentation, social responsibility and humour.” But what has always interested me about BIG is their use of dead, simple, diagrams (see above for an example).
A diagram is just a graphic way of communicating information. And lots of architects use them as a design tool. But what BIG does is use them to create a narrative around each and every project. If you look at their website you’ll see that every project is presented using a series of diagrams that outline the process used to arrive at the final design. You’ll never just see the final product. You always see the steps involved. Click here for an example from Vancouver.
What’s powerful about this approach is that it demonstrates that there’s a logic behind every design outcome (even if sometimes it might be contrived or done after the fact). It’s not form for the sake of form; it’s form as a result of the uses in the building, the urban context, and so on.
But at the same time, I think it taps into a deeper psychological phenomenon: people love stories. In fact, research shows that when we’re told stories, our brains actually become more active. We pay closer attention.
I mean, just think about how much people enjoy hearing about rags-to-riches stories. Nobody likes to talk about some rich person who was born rich. That’s not an exciting or interesting story. And it changes how we perceive that person. We want to hear about that guy or girl who came over from a war torn country and built an empire from nothing. Now that’s a good story.
What I’m getting at is that I think a big part of Bjarke’s success has come from his ability to masterfully storytell and market both himself and his projects. Architecture schools don’t usually teach you how to market and sell; they teach you how to design. But the reality is that you need to sell. And storytelling is a great way to do that.
If you liked this post, I recommend you check out this TED talk by Bjarke Ingels and this short interview with marketer Gary Vaynerchuk where he talks about how he used storytelling to sell wine.
