Last week I went for a tour of Sidewalk Labs’ “307” workshop here in Toronto. In it they have a generative urban design tool that allows you to toggle things like density, building shape, building height, the amount of green space, the distribution of green… Read More
With all of the spring rain we’ve been having here in Toronto, I think it has been a few days since I’ve seen the sun. But Places Journal’s recent long-form essay about the inequality of shade in Los Angeles is a reminder that the sun… Read More
As I wrote about last month in this pithy post, the relationship between building height and density are often misunderstood. They mean different things and so the implications for our cities can also be vastly different. I woke up this morning to a couple of… Read More
This Planetizen article (2014) by Brent Toderian surfaced over the weekend. It is about tall buildings and why we should be focused more on how they are designed, as opposed to just how tall they are. Brent talks about this in terms of “density done… Read More
This morning Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang published an op-ed in Fast Company detailing how her architecture and urban design practice closed the gender wage gap. It is also a call to action and an example of something the firm calls “actionable idealism.” Here is an… Read More
This evening Slate hosted a pre-application community meeting in Corktown, Hamilton, where we presented our proposed design for the redevelopment of Corktown Plaza. There was a short presentation by Slate, GSP Group, CORE Architects, and Janet Rosenberg and Studio, and then we shifted to an… 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
One of the things that I noticed yesterday morning on my walkabout from Wan Chai to Causeway Bay is that some/many of the buildings in Hong Kong actually step-in, as opposed to step-back, once you get above the base or “podium.” In many cases the… Read More
NXT City and Pavilion Project are hosting an event on March 23, 2017 here in Toronto (at the Drake Hotel) called Short Term, Lasting Impact. It’s all about how “temporary, low-cost and scalable [urban] interventions” can bring about lasting / meaningful change within our cities. Here’s… Read More
I’ve been reading the blog 5 Kids 1 Condo for, I think, about a year now. It’s written by Adrian Crook who is a single dad of 5 kids, living in a 2 bedroom condo in downtown Vancouver. And his blog is about just that.… Read More
