Alistair Vaz

Parking, Garbage and the Decline of Toronto's Small Businesses Kelly Alvarez Doran and Mithcell May examine how parking and Type G loading regulations lead to lacklustre retail in new buildings.

Why urban design standards shouldn't be based on the turning radius of a massive truck. A great piece by Mitchell May and @kellyalvarezdoran.bsky.social — a Toronto focus but applies to many cities across North America.

Accurate. #ClimateCrisis

To which I would say, you must visit the Tommy Thompson Park Entrance Pavilion (curious to hear Shawn's review of it). It's (theoretically) always open, so not part of DoorsOpen per se.

New documents reinforce that Science Centre closure was not supported by engineers The Ontario Science Centre was shuttered on June 21, 2024, with the Ontario government claiming that a structural roof issue made it unsafe. New documents suggest that the engineers inspecting the roo...

Elsa Lam continues to prove & document how corrupt & full of lies the Doug Ford closure of the science centre was & is. Read & share widely - not that it matters in Ontario, a province that seems ok w a high level of this.

www.canadianarchitect.com/draft-engine...

An absolute rollercoaster of emotions during that match. The fury, agony, despair, incredulity and the ecstasy. To score 3 goals in 6 mins of extra time to win it. Football, bloody hell. We don't do it the easy way at United, do we? #MUFC #Believe #EuropaLeague

European Spa Company Therme Misrepresented Itself in an Effort to Expand Into Canada A Times investigation shows Therme, a European firm, exaggerated its track record in securing a deal with Ontario, and government auditors found that the process had been unfair and opaque.

Unbelievable. The @nytimes.com reports that Therme was misrepresenting basic aspects of its business - they copied the name of another company and claimed to own its properties.

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/w...

And the passive shading. Essential for the future climate.

It’s time your government got back in the business of building affordable homes.

Embodied Greenhouse Gas Symposium 2025 Come join us at the Embodied Greenhouse Gas Symposium 2025 to learn about the environmental impact on building more housing & infrastructure

Interested in how to build the housing we need without screwing the environment? Join us May 7th for the second Embodied GHG Symposium. www.eventbrite.ca/e/embodied-g...

Some pretty nice designs in here. Kudos to the consultant team that led the work. The federal government has unveiled its new Housing Design Catalogue with 50 housing designs for rowhouses, fourplexes, sixplexes, and accessory dwelling units www.housingcatalogue.cmhc-schl.gc.ca

Dates us both, but that reference is gold. Watching Dallas, probably a season or two behind on local telly in Dubai, never did I think that would be a relevant cultural reference 30 years later.

Climate change is an environmental issue – but it’s not only an environmental issue.

It affects our health, and the economy. It impacts food, water, and resources. It contributes to geopolitical instability and even conflict.

Here are the Canadian scientists who study this.

How Canada's planning, design and construction industries can adapt to the Trump tariffs We are on our own now. We are changing what we buy; now we have to change what we build.

Nobody in Canada asked for this economic war, but we have it now. We should use this time to not only stop using products from the USA, but also the tired, high-carbon planning and development patterns we copied from them. We can build, instead, a walkable, wooden world.

You're saying the silver lining is that material passports may finally take off?

WHAT?! I'd happily have taken you around. Some of the changes are better than the others. I'm on campus on Thursday; if you have time for a coffee lmk. Enjoy!

Small Single-Stairway Apartment Buildings Have Strong Safety Record Policymakers could increase the supply of multifamily housing in their states and localities by revising outdated building codes that require more than one stairway in small apartment buildings. If en...

Important research by the Pew Trusts shows that 4-6 storey apartments with a single fire stair do not put residents at any greater fire risk (as compared to 2 stairs)

Single stairs are also cheaper, and could allow much more housing to be built!

www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-...

Get out and vote him out!

Building a Planetary Solution: Regenerative Architectural Strategies for a Planet in Crisis - Yale Architecture Please register for the Thursday, February 20, tours and workshops individually, through the "Sign Up Here" links listed in the Tours and Workshops section below. Please register for in-person or l...

Attended as much as I could of this today. A stellar lineup of speakers gathered by Alan Organschi of GOA and Yale. Hope they publish the recording. It's essential viewing and should be part of the discourse at every architecture school on the planet. www.architecture.yale.edu/calendar/152...

Yeah, exactly. Artificially lit amenity space around the core? Maybe a floor or two. Curious. I'm all for the conversions though, great to see this happening.

DSR should know better than to design something clad in so much glass in a place that's facing an overheating climate crisis. Therme just cut down 800 trees to build their glass behemoth on our waterfront in Toronto while our spineless leaders looked on. Parasitic and irresponsible. So, on brand.

Anyone got plans? How'd they solve the skin to core depth so we don't end up with skinny long units with poor daylighting?

For self-sufficiency and sustainability, we need more renovation and restoration The best way to fight the Trump tariffs is to go local and fix what we have.

Canada is being threatened with 25% tariffs on our exports to the USA. Many are retaliating by buying local. The building industry has to think about this, too; 30% of our building materials come from the USA. The best way to fight the Trump tariffs is to go local and fix what we have.

Great to see this project that I toured a couple weeks ago with the architects Jana Levitt and Dan Goodman featured in the latest issue of Canadian Architect!
@canadianarchitect.bsky.social www.canadianarchitect.com/building-in-...

Can architecture save the world? It’s worth a try Vishaan Chakrabarti, who founded the New York-based Practice for Architecture and Urbanism, argues that the design professions need to deliver mass quantities of new buildings, mostly housing

“This crisis is not about a lack of money: it’s about a lack of imagination.” I talk with the inimitable @vishaan.bsky.social about architecture’s power to tackle climate mitigation and global urbanization. www.theglobeandmail.com/life/home-an...

This is one way to reuse the existing structure at the very least by 3XN in Sydney; I'm sure someone as sophisticated as Hines has explored this...right? 3xn.com/project/quay...

Paris has developed a 16-storey timber tower, with 132 apartments, that could be a prototype for future high-rise housing far and wide

By LAN Architecture

www.ribaj.com/buildings/la...

Really well put together and (so far) executed. Excited to visit again when it's done next year. #masstimber #constructiontour #buildingtour #buildingwithwood #zerocarbon #trinitycollegetoronto #universityoftoronto #uoft

A stellar benchmark for a 4-storey student housing and institutional project with ample community space throughout including an ambitious rooftop urban farm. Designed to achieve both CaGBC Zero Carbon and LEED Platinum certification.

Toured the under construction Lawson Centre for Sustainability at Trinity College at @uoft.bsky.social today. Designed by Mecanoo & RDHA with structural design by Blackwell and facade by RDH BldgSci, mass timber by Element5 and CM/GC services by Graham.