Brandon Donnelly

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.

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Tag: globizen studio

  • A spectacular laneway retreat 11 years in the making

    The latest issue of Designlines magazine is about how Toronto is — finally — embracing laneway life. And one of the featured homes is none other than Mackay Laneway House. Pictured above is architect Gabriel Fain sitting on the front steps.

    As some of you will know, MLH took over a decade to get built. I first did a design for the house back in 2009. Laneway housing seemed like such an obvious opportunity, and so I designed a compact house that could fit neatly within the confines of my 25-foot-wide backyard.

    Technically, it was perfectly workable. But I could tell I was too early. After speaking with city staff, I immediately got the impression that this thing was not going to get approved. At least not now. So I shelved the project until 2017.

    By this time, it was clear that laneway housing was on its way to becoming a reality in Toronto. It was simply a matter of time. And so Gabriel Fain and I decided to come up with a new design and try our luck at the Committee of Adjustment (we needed, I think, over a dozen zoning variances).

    But it turns out that we were still too early. The project was immediately refused. After the decision, I had a few planning lawyers reach and offer to help me with a pro bono appeal. But I decided to wait until the new laneway policies came into force and the home could be built without any variances.

    And that’s exactly what we did. In the fall of 2020 we submitted for a building permit, and about 6 weeks later it arrived. The home was then built that winter and it went up on the market for rent in March 2021. It rented right away, even in the midst of intermittent COVID lockdowns.

    At this point, it’s hard to imagine that this form of housing was once illegal. Hundreds of permits have already been issued and this number is only going to increase. In fact, I believe that the humble laneway house is destined to become a defining characteristic of Toronto’s urban landscape.

    Toronto is finally embracing laneway life.

  • Schematic design phase complete for Parkview Mountain House

    Some of you may be aware that Globizen is working on a new project in Park City, Utah right now called the Parkview Mountain House.

    It was first announced on the Globizen Journal back in the summer and then a later announcement was made appointing New York-based Mattaforma as the project architect. It’s kind of a great story because Mattaforma is a relatively new firm that was formed by two architects who used to be at Studio Gang. So we have a long history of working together.

    The vision for the project is a creative retreat in the mountains. A place to unplug, be active, and hopefully a place to foster creative expression, whatever that may be for you. It was inspired by the trip that I have been making to the mountains each year where we try and do exactly this. It’s one of my favorite times of the year and one that I look forward to the minute the last one is over.

    The team has just finished the schematic design phase for the house (see above axonometric). And we are now working through some of the structural and geotechnical issues that come with building in the mountains on very steep terrain.

    To give you all one example, we had initially contemplated large multi-storey retaining walls to hold back the earth and embed the house into the side of the mountain. But that is now being changed to a stepped foundation that minimizes the amount of excavation and reduces each retaining wall to no more than a single storey. This move will also result in more wood and less concrete. It has been a fun learning process.

    The creative retreat concept has also been evolving and we recently decided to make digital NFT art an integral part of the experience. We have a few collections that we have been stocking up on, but if any of you have any recommendations we are, of course, all ears.

    Once the floor plans have been finalized, they’ll be posted up on the Globizen Journal. So make sure to e-mail subscribe and follow along on Instagram at @parkviewhousepc.

  • 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.

  • Weekly link roundup — laneway housing to SPACs

    Here’s a weekly round up of links and articles that you may find interesting. The topics cover the sorts of things that we usually talk about on this blog.

    • The latest Mackay Laneway House update is now live on the Globizen Journal. The ground floor steel is complete, with framing currently underway. The post has some background on the challenges faced in order to get to this stage.
    • Brick comparison. Here’s a recent tweet of mine. I’m curious if any of you can tell the difference between these two brick finishes and if you have a clear preference. One of them is stamped concrete and the other is real brick (precast concrete with brick slips).
    • Pools as art. Apparently this is a trend right now, but it’s not necessarily a new one. Pablo Picasso accidentally created one when he “signed” the bottom of one in Spain back in the early 1960s. A pool would be fun right now. [FT paywall]
    • Alley house in King’s Cross by architect David Adjaye is currently on the market for £6.5 million. Lots of black. I love the mint green room with the exposed concrete ceiling. Oh, and there’s a pool.
    • Nightclubs are, not surprisingly, really struggling. Most have been closed since March. Unlike restaurants, you can’t really hack together a solution with outdoor dining, heat lamps and takeout. They’re predicated on people being proximate to each other. [Sorry, another FT paywall]
    • SPACs are so hot right now, particularly in the world of Chamath Palihapitiya and Social Capital. A good follow-up to this week’s earlier post about $IPOB’s merger with real estate startup Opendoor.
    • Monocle has just published a new book about “gentle living.” It’s a guide to “slowing down, enjoying more and being happy.” I’m trying to do more of this, or at least be more mindful about it. It doesn’t always/usually work. Perhaps I need this book.
    • “Decade of the home.” Opinion piece about the current desire for suburban over urban locations. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that I am steadfast in my belief that urban life is going to prove to be incredibly resilient on the other side of this.
    • McKinsey report about the impact that lockdown is having on digital adoption, e-commerce penetration, and the overall customer experience. You’ll need to enter some information in order to download the PDF, but it’s free.

    Photo: Lost House by Adjaye Associates via The Modern House

  • Mackay Laneway House is now under construction

    Well, it only took 11 years.

    I still remember the first time I walked into Etobicoke Civic Centre and showed the lady at the counter my design for a laneway house. She didn’t know what a laneway house was and she couldn’t figure out where it fronted. “Wait, it’s behind the main house? It has no frontage. Where’s the street? Huh?” A lot has changed over the past decade, as I knew it would. All of the building permits are now in and Mackay Laneway House is under construction in Toronto’s Corso Italia neighborhood.

    Kilbarry Hill is overseeing the construction process. (Construction was supposed to start earlier this summer, but COVID-19 had something to say about that.) Regular updates will be posted on the Globizen blog and on the socials, with the goal of creating a kind of “how-to guide” for laneway suites. Expect detailed construction updates, a list of the individual trades that are being used, post-completion costing information, and probably a bunch more.

    The first order of business is the site servicing work, all of which has to be done via the existing house. No connections off the mains because, remember, these are intended to be secondary suites, similar to basement apartments. This raises the question of how best to submeter the utilities. Thankfully, the good folks over at Lanescape were kind enough to share how they have done it.

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  • Laneway house zoning variances

    We received the list of required zoning variances for Mackay Laneway House last week and they have been posted to the Globizen blog. 

    As is said in the post, we have requested clarification on a few items and we will be resubmitting the drawings to address some of the notices. 

    But I still think it’s great to get this information out in the public. It’s the sort of thing that usually doesn’t get published and I know there’s a lot of interest in laneway housing in the city right now. If you haven’t already, please consider signing your name at lanewaylove.com.

    It is, however, a fairly esoteric post. So if this is not your bag, ignore this post and check back tomorrow. Regular scheduled programming will resume then.