Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 150

New World Wind is a French company that makes something known as wind trees. These are trees that come in a few different models and produce renewable energy using 36 micro-turbines shaped like leaves ( their Aeroleaf technology ). There is also the option of supplementing these turbines with solar panels.

According to New World Wind, one wind tree can produce enough electricity to cover 80% of a typical French households' annual consumption needs (excluding heating) or about 100 m2 of office space. And on top of this, for every wind tree, the company goes out and plants 10 real ones.

Here's a video of one of their trees being installed outside of a factory in Taiwan:

I think these are pretty neat. And already, they have been installed all around the world . But unfortunately, there has yet to be one installed in Canada. That should change, so maybe one of you will consider installing a wind tree at one of your projects.

I've already reached out for more information so that we can consider doing the same.

Cover photo via New World Wind

I have written before about how Thursdays have become my construction site visit day . And that is still very much the case. It's something I look forward to — seeing our progress, testing my discomfort with heights, and learning what not to do in the future.

One of my rules for site visits is that you can never take too many photos. Because invariably, at some point in the future, something will come up and you'll wish you had a progress photo to look back to.

I find that having text somewhere in the image is the easiest way to search for stuff later. So if it doesn't already exist, I think someone should make a flip card-like contraption with common construction words on it that you can use when taking site photos. You know, with fun words like schluter.

Taking this logic even further, the best practice is a full 3D scan at each inspection stage. A digital twin is naturally going to be better than photos for finding where a particular pipe is going or what the waterproofing detail looks like in the location where you're now experiencing a leak.

We've been using Matterport , but I'm writing today to see if any of you have any other construction software that you would highly recommend. It could be for this exact purpose or for any other construction-related purpose. If you do, please leave a comment below.

Back in 2016, I wrote a post called " Manager vs. maker ," where I cited an essay by Paul Graham that talks about these two modes of working. To quickly summarize, the manager's schedule is for bosses. It's a calendar broken down into units of an hour that gets filled with lots of calls and meetings. Things are said, and then the manager moves on to the next appointment.

Makers, on the other hand, can't operate in units of an hour. If you write, program, design buildings, create financial models, or do anything that requires uninterrupted focus, sporadic meetings are the most effective way to neutralize any sort of productivity. You need solid blocks of time. I was reminded of this post today because, as I said back in 2016, I like making things.

But it's even more than that. Deep work, reading, and strategic thought are, in my opinion, how you win. And to do these things you also need solid blocks of time. You need mental space. And the 12 minutes you have before your next call, isn't it. So I'm reviving my old post, and Graham's old essay from 2009, as a reminder to myself to be more ruthless about saying no and guarding my calendar.

Because :

Don’t your spirits rise at the thought of having an entire day free to work, with no appointments at all? Well, that means your spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don’t. And ambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of your capacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.

Don't kill off ambitious projects. Block time for them.