Tag: georgian bay

• Woodhouse

  The Ontario Association of Architects recently announced its short-list of projects for their annual Design Excellence Award. (If you aren’t familiar with the OAA, here’s a bit of background.) There are so many excellent projects on their 2020 short-list, that I would encourage you to check them all out.

  However, as a developer, it is my duty to shamelessly plug the architects that we are working with. superkül, the firm behind Junction House, was short-listed for two projects — both of which are custom homes. One of them is in Toronto and the other is in Singhampton, Ontario, which is just south of Collingwood and the Georgian Bay.

  The second home — called Woodhouse — is located on a 90-acre site. And I love everything about it. I love the “breezeway” that separates the living areas from the more private sleeping areas, and I love how they incorporated an existing 19th century log cabin into the build.

  Here are a few photos:

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  Photos by Alex Fradkin and Kayla Rocca

  2020.03.26

• Tiny, prefabricated, and expensive

  This is not a new video (click here if you can’t see it embedded above). It’s from 2015. But I still very much like the simplicity of the Vipp Shelter. It’s only 55 square meters.

  One problem is that it cost USD 585,000 at the time it was prefabricated. It goes to show you that prefabrication and small don’t necessarily equate to affordability. For this reason, Lloyd Alter called it a “problematic prefab” back in 2015.

  Of course, there are ways to make a home like this much more cost effective. I’ve been looking, on and off, for over a year for a piece of land that would be suitable for a project like this. I’ll let you all know if I find something.

  2019.07.10

• Returning to photography

  I used to be more into photography. In architecture school, I had an old Canon Rebel and a photoblog where I posted one photo every day. Clearly I have a thing for daily routines.

  But that was the pre-social media era and before mobile phones had cameras. With the rise of those two things I eventually moved over to just taking photos on my phone and posting them to my Instagram. Today we are all photographers.

  However this week I decided that I want to start taking that creative outlet a bit more seriously again. So I asked my talented photography buddy (founder of DSCBRD) if he could recommend a reasonably priced camera for my purposes. 

  I then sifted through all of the reviews – because that’s what I do – and decided on the mirrorless Fuji X-T10. I love the retro design. It’s also compact enough that it’s easy to carry around. The best camera is the one you have on you.

  

  So I’m spending this afternoon at a cottage playing around with it. It’s a fun place to experiment. I hope you’re all having a great weekend. Talk to you tomorrow.

  2016.08.27

• Going swimming (and being transparent)

  I woke up this morning to this view:

  

  I then went for a swim. The water tends to be on the cooler side in the Georgian Bay, but with the weather we’ve been having it’s pretty perfect right now.

  At this point I’m thinking about a beer and some reading. I have Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty sitting in my car. It’s next in the queue.

  I am telling you all of this simply to be transparent. 

  Recently I had someone caution me that I should be careful about being too public and too open. I won’t get into specifics, but I was told that sometimes it’s better to just fly under the radar.

  I recognize that there have to be limits to transparency, but as a rule of thumb I subscribe to the opposite approach. When possible and when appropriate, I would rather be more, rather than less, transparent. 

  This blog is who I am. It’s indicative of how I think. And it discloses what I’m doing. So I don’t see a lot of downside. What you read is what you get. You’ll know if we should be friends and/or do business together.

  After I wrote about what I’m doing next I had a bunch of emails come in from various people telling me what they’re doing and, in some cases, suggesting that we work together. Some people had development sites that they thought I should take a look at. And some people immediately asked if I was hiring.

  I am grateful for each of those emails. But I also know that they’re an outcome of openness and transparency.

  2016.07.23

• Cottage weekend

  I just got home from a weekend up at a friend’s cottage. It’s an annual birthday tradition and it’s always a great time. A good cottage weekend can do wonders to reinvigorate yourself. I am ready for the week.

  But since the Pan Am Games closing ceremony fireworks are about to kick-off and I want to go watch them from my sun deck, I don’t have a lot of time to write a post. So instead, I thought I would share a few of my photos from the weekend.

  The first photo is near Shelburne, Ontario. The wind turbines are from the Amaranth Wind Farm, which is the largest wind energy installation in Canada.

  

  This is the Georgian Bay. I love swimming in this water.

  

  Cottage reading: Monocle.

  

  The wood shop. There’s a lot of creative talent at this particular cottage.

  

  Creemore = cottage.

  

  All of these photos were also posted to my Instagram if you’d like to follow me there. The last photo was from Snapchat (donnelly_b).

  Regular scheduled programming will resume tomorrow. I have a great guest post queued up on road pricing. I can’t wait to share it.

  2015.07.27