Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 257

Maison Kitsuné is a French-Japanese lifestyle brand that was founded in 2002 as both a record label and a fashion house. Apparently, the founders -- Gildas Loaëc and Masaya Kuroki -- started out by DJ'ing in order to promote their brand and clothes.

In 2005, they released a full ready-to-wear collection and, according to Wikipedia , fashion has come to represent about 90% of the company's revenue (2020 figure).

In 2013, Kitsuné opened their first coffee shop in Tokyo. And since then, they have expanded around the world, opening cafes in Paris, Vancouver, Shanghai, and many other cities. As of today, I think they have 35 around the world.

Their latest venture is something a bit new though. It's called Desa Kitsuné , it's located in Canggu, Bali, and it's their first ever clothing shop/restaurant/club. It also comes with a pool and the idea is that you can do lots of different things here: shop, lounge during the day, and/or party at night.

I always find it interesting when different ideas and approaches are combined. And that's what Kitsuné continues to do. They also plan to do more of it. According to Monocle, the company wants to reach 100 cafes/restaurants around the world in the next 5 years.

So keep an eye out for more foxes in your city.

Sometime next month we're going to be pouring a large concrete transfer slab at the second floor of One Delisle . Its function is to take the loads coming down from the entire tower above it and "transfer" them onto new structural elements, before being brought down to our mat foundation at the bottom of the parking garage.

Put differently -- and, as always, I should warn you that I'm not a structural engineer -- a transfer is used whenever you have a change in your structural grid and the loads don't have a straight path down to your foundations. Because whenever this happens, you're now introducing moment forces and those need to be dealt with structurally.

Transfer slabs are relatively common here in Toronto (which isn't the case in every market), but they are expensive and they consume a lot of depth. In the case of One Delisle, our level two transfer slab is 1.8 meters deep and it's going to contain about 1,200 m3 of concrete. (Some of you might also recall that One Delisle's mat foundation is over 4m deep .)

We were reviewing this with the team today and we think that we'll be able to pour about 100 m3 of concrete per hour. That means that this slab will take about 12 hours to pour! This requires a lot of coordination. Neighbors need to be notified, pumps need to be on standby in case of a breakdown, and so on.

Another major consideration is heat. When concrete cures it generates a lot of it. And with a thick slab like this one, I am told that we run the risk of the middle starting to overheat (especially with the hot weather that we've been having lately). The guideline limit is 60 degrees Celsius, so we'll be monitoring it for probably about 1-2 weeks following the pour.

I find these details fascinating. Maybe some of you do too. So once it's poured, I'll share a few photos.