Tag: ground floor

• Street-level offices

  

  One of the things that I have noticed while walking around Lyon is that there seems to be a lot of office space right at street level.

  And most of it does not seem to have a consumer-facing element where people just walk in off the street.

  There’s something nice about seeing beautiful spaces and people sitting at their desks (I walked past people sitting on exercise balls). It’s another way of animating the street.

  Personally, I’d love to have an office right at ground level, similar to the above. But it’s not usually where our minds immediately go. We usually default to retail. Or at least I do.

  So I’m going to work to remove this blind spot from my mental models. Office right on the street can clearly work really work.

  2024.01.26

• Ground-floor retail?

  I recently asked this on Twitter:

  You live in an apartment/condominium. If you could pick one ideal use/tenant for the ground floor of your building, what would it be?

  And a number of people responded.

  But I suppose I should also answer my own question.

  I lean more towards utility. My ideal use — assuming an urban storefront — is not a fancy restaurant or a super cool coffee shop. It would be some sort of quality bodega that:

  • Sells essential grocery needs (milk, eggs, toilet paper, etc.)
  • Sells wine & beer
  • Has a deli/food counter where you can buy a breakfast bagel, a sandwich for lunch, or a quick dinner when you’re in a pinch
  • And, yes, has pretty good coffee

  It would also need to be open early and late: 7am to 12am, please.

  What would you want?

  2023.07.16

• Floor numbering conventions

  

  One of the things that is common in Europe is that building floors often start with zero for the ground floor and then go both up and down from there.

  This is different than most of North America where the ground floor is usually floor number 1 (regardless of what it might be called) and then the floors go up from there.

  Using the pictured example (above), the key difference is that, with the ground floor as zero, you end up with the above-grade floors being off by 1 and the top floor being 6 instead of 7.

  There is a certain rationality to the European approach that I like, but I am curious how suites on ground floors get typically numbered. I will seek this out and report back.

  At Junction House, our ground floor residences follow 101, 102, 103, etc. Following the exact same logic, the European equivalent would be 001, 002, 003, etc. This, admittedly, feels a bit odd.

  Which floor convention do you find more intuitive?

  Either way, I’m thinking about adopting the European approach for no other reason than that height is a sensitive topic in the world of development, so one less “headline” floor could be helpful. (Half-joking)

  2022.04.29

• Building height isn’t everything

  We need to stop fixating so much on building height. I think some people believe that there’s a perfect correlation between building height and offensiveness. But in fact, I’ve been offended many a times by fairly squat buildings.

  Now, don’t get me wrong, I understand that height is an important part of urban design. But I’m starting to feel like we’re over emphasizing the importance of height and under estimating the myriad of other factors that constitute great architecture and city building.

  Massing is one. And the ground floor is another. Buildings that give nothing back to the street can be a real drain on a city, which is why if you’re trying to build a livable and exciting place where people want to be, you need to get the ground floor right.

  It’s important because as a pedestrian, it almost doesn’t matter what the building looks like 500 feet up in the air (unless of course you’re completely bathed in shadow). What matters is what you see right in front of you. The stuff happening on the street.

  What I worry about is not all the tall buildings we’re building in Toronto, it’s what we’re doing, or not doing, for our main streets. In some cases, a new development can be a welcome addition to a neighbourhood because it fills in what was previously a void (either physical or psychological).

  But in other cases it can be harmful, particularly if we’re destroying small scale retail and replacing it with something that sucks, or worse – nothing at all. So I would encourage you all – real estate folk and citizens – to think more about the ground floor the next time you evaluate a project. It’s an important one.

  2013.09.06