Just look at these deep cantilevered balconies and this board-formed concrete. Let’s also not forget the fine-grain retail and small mid-block laneway. Designed by Woods Bagot for Komplete Construction, the “Short Lane” project was completed in the Surry Hills neighborhood of Sydney in 2018. It… Read More
Barcelona is one of the densest cities in Europe. And Márton Mogyorósy’s recent photo series, called Barcelona from above, does an excellent job of demonstrating that. My favorite photo is this one here, showing La Barceloneta neighborhood adjacent to the beach: None of the buildings… Read More
This morning I came across this drone photo of Hong Kong by @vnthota: I immediately thought it was a good example of the typical Hong Kong tower plan that I have been writing about on this blog. You can see the cruciform plan, the light/air cutouts,… Read More
This morning I presented and sat on a panel at BILD called “bringing laneway suites to Toronto.” The other participants were Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon, George Pantazis (Planner at the City of Toronto), Mike Collins-Williams (Director, Policy at OHBA), and Andrew Sorbara (co-founder of Lanescape). Here… Read More
On Tuesday night I attended a great industry event that Quadrangle Architects organized about mid-rise buildings. Mid-rise buildings (somewhere around 4-12 storeys) are all the rage in Toronto these days. But there are many challenges associated with this building typology and this was an event… Read More
As Architect This City continues to grow in readership, I’m starting to get pitched more and more. People email me with something they want promoted and they try and convince me to write about it. Everybody is looking for distribution. I get it. I have… Read More
Earlier this week, I wrote about the Charlotte Apartments in Berlin and tried to back into some of the numbers for the project. I wanted to compare the economics behind a mid-rise project in Berlin to one in Toronto. After I wrote that post I forwarded… Read More
Below was the scene at the DUKE Condos site in The Junction last Saturday morning at 7:00AM. Michael Bros. mobilized their equipment to begin site preparation so that shoring and excavation can begin. The plan is to be at the bottom of the hole by… Read More
A reader recently suggested that I do a post explaining why we aren’t seeing more midrise buildings going up in Toronto. Specifically, why are midrise buildings considered to be “too risky” for developers and what could be done to improve the situation? So today I’d… Read More
Over the long weekend I wrote a post called “On medium density development.” My argument was that Toronto has gotten exceptional at building infill towers, but not so great at midrise and other medium density infill solutions. Though to be fair, we are starting to… Read More
