My friend Christopher Bibby sent me this article over the weekend. It’s by Brian Potter — who writes an excellent newsletter on Substack about construction things — and it’s about why it’s so hard to innovate in construction. To explain this, he starts by showing… Read More
The typical way to build buildings is through a design-bid-build approach. The way this works is that you first design stuff and create drawings. You then ask people to price the stuff that you have drawn. And then you proceed to build what is on… Read More
This 12-meter 3D-printed stainless steel bridge was recently erected in Amsterdam. As is par for the course, some people hate it and some people love it. I’m in the latter camp. Designed by Joris Laarman Lab in collaboration with MX3D and Arup (engineering), the bridge… Read More
Building things, as we all know, is a risky endeavor. I think of myself as an optimist, but the reality is that there are countless things that can go wrong. There’s approvals risk, political risk, market risk, construction risk, design risk, and many other kinds… Read More
What happened in Surfside, Florida this week with the partial collapse of a 12 storey building is a horrible tragedy. My heart goes out to everybody who has been affected. I can’t imagine how this must feel. The New York Times is reporting that some… Read More
I often hear people lamenting about all of the construction that is taking place right now at Yonge & Eglinton in midtown Toronto. But that’s kind of what happens when you build a new subway line (okay, a partially buried light rail transit line). Above… Read More
Many of you are probably acutely aware that the cost of lumber has risen dramatically over the last year. Builders are building and many people seem interested in renovating their home right now — so demand is outstripping supply. But here is a chart from… Read More
Today was an important milestone for Junction House: The construction crane was erected! The crew started early in the morning and we ended up having a perfect bluebird day (I don’t know where this expression comes from but it’s used all the time by skiers… Read More
Here are a few interesting stats from a brief report that New York City published this month about their supply of new housing units: From January 1, 2010 to June 30, 2020, New York City delivered 205,994 net new housing units across the five boroughs.… Read More
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… Read More
