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.

Tag: photos

  • Photos of the built environment

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    One of my absolute favorite things to do is travel to cities, explore, and take lots of pictures. When I’m in a new place, I can’t help but examine everything about the built environment. That’s the architect in me and it’ll never go away.

    When I was in undergrad I had a refurbished digital SLR camera that I used to use. But now I just use my iPhone. As the saying goes: the best camera is the one you have on you.

    Seeing how I was just in Philadelphia, I’ve been posting a lot of new city related photos to my Instagram. And since about 10x more people follow this blog than follow my Instagram, I’m going to plug it here: follow me on Instagram 🙂

  • 1 bedroom condo for sale

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    I’m hijacking Architect This City today to help my mother out and try something new.

    She is looking to sell her 1 bedroom condo in the Radiocity Condominiums, located at 285 Mutual Street in Toronto. It’s called Radiocity, not because the developers thought New York was cool (my pet peeve), but because the site used to be the headquarters of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) way back when.

    The 2-tower complex is located north of Carlton Street, between Church Street and Jarvis Street, and is adjacent to Canada’s National Ballet School (designed by KPMB Architects). It’s close to College Park and Yonge & College.

    It was completed/registered in 2005 and won a number of design awards, including one from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. Notable about the design is the way it integrates townhouses at the base, a public courtyard (with public art) between both towers, and the Ballet School. (A deal struck with the developer and the CBC allowed the school to buy their portion of the land for $1). 

    The buildings were developed by Context Development and designed by architectsAlliance, which is actually the same developer-architect duo behind the building I currently live and own in. I’m clearly a big fan.

    The suite is about 560 square feet. It has 9’ exposed concrete ceilings. It has one full bathroom (tub), with a stacked washer and dryer. The bedroom is about 10’ x 10’ and is setback from the outside windows and enclosed with 3 x translucent sliding doors from C-Living. (I had them installed myself and they’re much better quality than the sliding doors you’ll find in most new builds.) The kitchen and living area is open concept, and there’s a north facing balcony that overlooks a quiet private courtyard. You basically get a view of trees, greenery, and the city. The suite is located on the 7th floor.

    Here’s the floor plan:

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    And here are a few photos. They are all the right proportions and haven’t been stretched to make the space look bigger 🙂

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    The building has 24-hour concierge, visitor parking, and 3 floors of amenities. The amenities include a gym, aerobics room, party room, saunas, media room, boardroom, multiple lounges, 2 x guest suites, a party room, and a billiard room. 

    College subway station is a 7 minute walk (600m).

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    The Loblaws grocery store at Maple Leaf Gardens (which is awesome and also includes an LCBO) is a 5 minute walk (400m). Though I’m fairly certain you could do it in 4 minutes.

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    And you’re a 6 minute walk to Ryerson University (500m).

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    The asking price is C$349,900. The maintenance fee is $426.64 per month and the property taxes are $2,039.19 per year.

    It’s a private sale, but she is willing to cooperate with buyer’s agents (2.5% commission). It’s currently furnished, but you can have it either way you want (unfurnished or furnished).

    If you have any questions or would like to book a viewing, please send her or me an email. If you’re an agent just looking for a listing, please don’t. Thanks for reading. Regularly scheduled programming will resume tomorrow.

    Image at the top of this post is from architectsAlliance.

  • 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.

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

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    Cottage reading: Monocle.

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

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    Creemore = cottage.

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    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.

  • A look at One Spadina Crescent

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    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:

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    From the west:

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    From the north:

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    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.

    And finally, the intent is for this building and site to include a number of research centers and public facing functions devoted to architecture, design, and city building. And so One Spadina could become quite the hub in the city. That’s exciting.

    If you’d like to take a look inside the building (pre-renovation), check out these great photos by Peter MacCallum. The picture at the top of this post is his.

  • Assembled realities of the New York landscape

    New York photographer Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao has an upcoming solo exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York next month called Assembled Realities. I just heard about it through CityLab.

    Here’s a bit of background on his work:

    Pushing the boundaries of traditional documentary photography, Liao (b. 1977) creates large-scale panoramas by combining multiple exposures of the same location taken over the course of several hours. The resulting composite photographs are often fantastical; complex, hyper-real views that no single shot—or the eye—could capture.

    And here’s two more of his photos:

    For higher resolution versions, click here.

    I love how his photos begin to distort reality and how they focus your attention – in many cases – on New York’s vibrant street life. I thought you might all enjoy them as well.

  • Pools and gardens of New York

    Right now, I’m sitting on the sun deck at my friend’s cottage and looking out at the Georgian Bay. So this is going to be a short post. The New York Times just published a stunning photo series of hidden rooftop pools and gardens in New York. All of the photos were taken from a helicopter. If you’re as fascinated by cities as I am, I think you’ll really like them.

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