Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1020

Albert Wenger recently published a post on his blog about architecture and basic income . Albert is a venture capitalist and is currently working on a book called World After Capital, which I have mentioned before on this blog. He is also an advocate of basic income as a solution to the growing inequality that the modern economy seems to be producing.

In this latest post he wades into the world of architecture with two assertions that I would like to respond to today. The first is that with basic income the current trend of everyone piling up in large cities will end. We will decentralize in search of cheaper land on the outskirts of cities. And the second is that affordable housing could perhaps be produced with a more open source approach to architectural drawings and new construction.

In terms of his first point, I’m not entirely clear why someone earning a basic income would suddenly decentralize. In the comments there is some discussion about how retirees, on a fixed income, often move outward in search of more affordable housing. I understand that phenomenon, but I am not convinced in this scenario. 

There has been lots of talk about the demise of cities because of new technologies and other factors. But agglomeration economies have proved, again and again, to be a powerful centralizing force. Let’s also not forget about the environmental impacts of large scale decentralization, which would only be partially mitigated by the widespread adoption of electric vehicles. 

Secondly, you can build a house without an architect. The issue isn’t that good bathroom details are hard to come by. Some of the bigger issues are likely the availability of land (decentralization, I guess, is supposed to solve this); construction costs (it’s a highly inefficient process that generates copious amounts of waste); and the immense regulatory burdens imposed on new construction (process, time, and costs).

All of this stemmed from a visit that Albert did with a group of architecture students who are researching the relationship between architecture and basic income. I would be very curious to see what they produce.

What are your thoughts?

Photo by Mathyas Kurmann on Unsplash

I still have every passport that I have ever owned. The older ones are far more interesting because I was younger and always looking for creative ways to travel around the world. The older I get the less interesting my passports get. Now I find it difficult to travel away from my desk at lunch.

Passports are highly symbolic to me. It equals a particular kind of freedom. But I suppose that’s because I have a pretty good passport. 

According to the 2018 Henley Passport Index , the Canadian passport is tied for 5th – along with Switzerland, Ireland, and the United States – in terms of the number of countries you can access without a visa. 176 countries in total.

The highest ranking countries this year are Japan and Singapore. With those passports you have visa-free access to 180 countries. The last place country, at 105th, is Afghanistan. You get 24 countries.

Switching to design – because that matters – I think you would be hard-pressed to find better looking ones than the new Norwegian passport (pictured above and set to be put into circulation later this year) and the Swiss passport . The Swiss passport is allegedly the first to be professionally designed.

How does your passport fare on the Passport Index ?

Image: Dezeen

The Smith House by Richard Meier turned 50 years old last year. In celebration of that, photographer Mike Schwartz took  these photographs . And just recently they were published in Surface Magazine along with an interview of both Meier and Chuck Smith. Smith’s mother commissioned the house (completed in 1967) and he was 8 years old when the family moved in.

My favorite comment in the article is this one by Smith:

“Don’t throw balls in the house, and don’t touch the walls.” I must have heard “don’t touch the walls” three or four times a day. That said, there’s a crack in one of the windows where I shot it with a BB gun. We got away with some things.

Modern architecture was supposed to be a perfectly engineered machine for living . But I guess living didn’t include touching the walls or shooting BB guns in the house.

My favorite photos – both from Mike Schwartz – are these two:

They feel like inversions of each other. The first one (day shot) is all about the views outward. Meier also talks about how the white on white helps to enhance this experience. The second one (night shot) turns the house inward on itself. Smith talks about how at night the view disappears and all you’re left with is your own reflection.

I also like how the paint is flaking on the fireplace, which by the way, is perfectly on axis with the home’s entry. It makes you work a little bit for the view. Apparently keeping the paint on was a problem since day one. But it gives the house – which is otherwise seemingly perfect – a bit of a patina. 

However, I’m guessing that Meier would prefer the paint stay on.