Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 238

It's hard to think of Barcelona and not think of its famed street, La Rambla. But this same street design (and name) also appears in other cities throughout Spain. The above two streets are in Palma. The first is also called La Rambla (which is supposedly derived from an old Arabic word meaning sandy riverbed) and the second is called the Paseo del Borne. Both follow the exact same urban design principles. They're broad tree-lined streets with a large center median dedicated to only pedestrians. All car traffic is relegated to the sides. What's great about this design is the following. One, it reallocates public space according to who uses it the most (i.e. pedestrians). Two, it consolidates the main pedestrian realm (in lieu of just having larger sidewalks on either side of the street). And three, it establishes a clear hierarchy for the street. Pedestrians are most important here, and that's why they get the center position. It's surprising that more cities don't adopt this same design.

This is a beautiful apartment building in the center of Palma. Brutalist ground floor. Operable wooden slats up the rest of the facade. It feels right at home in this climate. It's also a passive-energy building that uses 90% less energy compared to a "conventional" apartment building. The technical classification is nZEB (or a nearly zero energy building). It's pretty amazing that with only 9 apartments, these kinds of projects pencil here. Perhaps it's no surprise that it's also a single-stair building .

The architect is OHLAB. For more information, here's their website .

Today we are pouring our massive level two transfer slab at One Delisle. Delisle Avenue has been temporarily closed and the first concrete truck arrived at 6 AM. We're currently averaging about 100 m3 per hour. There's also a bit of light rain in Toronto right now, so that should help keep the slab cool. We're a few weeks later than we were initially targeting back in June, but a lot of coordination has gone into this one slab. Our level three slab is also somewhat unique because of the double-height pool space and the gym; but following that, we're on to our "typical" floors. And by "typical", I mean as typical as one gets on a project like One Delisle .