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.
I love this article in Designlines Magazine about how Lawrence Blairs (owner of Atomic Design) has setup his 65 square meter one bedroom condo to serve as both a place to live and an art gallery.
The main living area is equipped with white vinyl screens that pull down to conceal the kitchen and other private areas, and make it feel like a white-walled gallery space. There’s naturally also a projector on the ceiling.
Supposedly it takes him about 30 minutes to prepare the space before an event. Here is a photo by Arash Moallemi via Designlines:
You don’t necessarily need a lot of space to do the things that you may want to do. You just need to be creative. Do you think that developers should offer more creative space solutions as part of their standard offering?
One of the projects that I’m most excited about here in Toronto is the renovation and addition to One Spadina Crescent. The building sits in the middle of a roundabout along Spadina Avenue and occupies what is easily one of the most ceremonial positions in the city.
But for as long as I can remember, the building hasn’t been living up to its full potential. So much so that in the 1960s it was going to be demolished in order to make way for the proposed Spadina Expressway. That would have been an absolute tragedy. Thankfully, our friend Jane Jacobs stopped that one.
Today, exciting things are happening at One Spadina Crescent. The Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto is in the midst of renovating and expanding the building, and will eventually relocate there from its current location on College Street.
When it’s all said and done, One Spadina Crescent will look something like this (via Daniels).
From the south:
From the west:
From the north:
What’s most exciting to me about this project are the following 3 things:
First, it’s an opportunity to connect One Spadina Crescent to the surrounding urban fabric. Today, it feels very much like an island in the middle of the street.
Second, it’s a wonderful example of the new layering on top of the old, which is something that I believe we should aspire to do in our cities. The University of Toronto has become quite good at doing that on campus.