Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 389

Back in 2020/2021 when we were getting ready to launch sales for One Delisle, the team came up with the idea of pill-shaped kitchen islands for our residences. 

What that means is we wanted to use perfect semi-circles on both ends. We didn’t want oval islands. We didn’t want distorted semi-circles. We wanted islands shaped like pills!

We felt these opened up the kitchens and also looked really unique. So with Studio Gang and the rest of the team, we proceeded to design a few different types.

We needed ones that would work for smaller suites, we needed ones that would work for larger suites, and we needed to accommodate breakfast bars/seating.

When we approached Scavolini Toronto about this idea their first response was, “we’ve never done this before. It would be a first.”

However, their second response was, “but we’ll figure it out with you.” And based on this response, we built (by hand) a pill-shaped island for our condominium sales gallery, and then included them as part of One Delisle.

Fast forward to 2023 and we are now in the “let’s figure it out phase”. This week we reviewed the very first production prototypes in Scavolini’s factory in Pesaro.

They are everything we could have hoped for, and we are thrilled that Scavolini was a willing partner in this endeavor.

It’s not easy doing new things in construction. The smallest things can (usually?) end up being a lot more work. But it all feels worth it when you get to see the results.

Today I learned that one of the most important quality assurance tests you can run on a kitchen is this one here:

It is the “pasta sauce test”. And it involves repeatedly boiling a cauldron of water underneath some cupboard doors for at least several hours.

It is an important test because the combination of heat and humidity is particularly tough on certain kinds of finishes.

So if you happen to be in the market for a new kitchen, make sure you ask them about the pasta sauce test.

P.S. Scavolini is supplying the kitchens for both Junction House and One Delisle.

These two residential buildings:

Or this one here?

Both are located in the Porto Nuova district of Milan.

And from what I could tell when I walked by them yesterday, they’re pretty comparable. They have similarly deep balconies. And they even appear to have the exact same exterior cladding.

Of course, the big difference is that the former — the celebrated Bosco Verticale — has about 800 trees, 4,500 shrubs, and 15,000 plants sitting on its 3.3m cantilevered balcony slabs. It also has an elaborate irrigation system that services said greenery.

Okay, so which is more “sustainable”?

First impressions would suggest that it’s the former. Trees and green things are good for the environment. So putting trees on a tall residential building must also be good, right? Maybe.

The main counterargument is that it requires a lot of additional work to get trees, shrubs, and plants onto a tall building. You need more concrete, more structural reinforcing, an irrigation system (maybe not always?), and a way to maintain everything going forward.

In this case, all of the greenery is a common element, and so it’s maintained by the building and not by any of the individual residents. Among other things, this preserves a uniform aesthetic.

But all of these additional materials increase the building’s embodied carbon. And so there’s an important question to consider: Do the benefits of putting trees up in the sky outweigh the impacts of actually doing it?

This is one of the great debates surrounding this project, and it’s a good reminder that being more sustainable isn’t so simple. There’s a lot to balance, and there are countless details to figure out.

However, innovation does require iteration. And already there are new iterations of the Bosco Verticale, such as this one in Paris , that plan to swap concrete for mass timber construction.

So even more trees in the sky. That’s probably a good thing.