Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 395

3D printing, or additive manufacturing, is often referred to as the next industrial revolution. And we are certainly seeing it creep into the mainstream economy in meaningful ways. You can soon buy a 3D-printed home for under $99,000 , and already you can buy a home in the world's largest 3D-printed community . We also now make bridges using additive manufacturing, which in this case in Amsterdam , was prefabricated off site and craned in.

Many of the architects we work with also use 3D-printed models to rapidly prototype, which I am guessing is disruptive to the whole unpaid architectural intern thing. But what has been missing, for me at least, is a comfortable pair of 3D-printed shoes from the future. Thankfully, Denmark-based RAINS (in collaboration with Zellerfeld) announced their first 3D-printed pair at Paris Fashion Week earlier in the year.

And now they're available for order :

Maybe you like the look of these, or maybe you don't. I would definitely wear them. But what's interesting is that they're 100% recyclable; they're printed upon order (so no excess supply); and they're made using a fully automated production process -- meaning there's little to no labor component and there's no overseas factory. This sounds like something!

I mean, presumably this completely changes where shoes want to be made. Previously you wanted an overseas factory where labor was cheapest. But if labor is no longer a meaningful input, do you now just want to produce these things closer to where your customers actually live and reduce shipping costs? From what I have read , Zellerfeld's factory is in Hamburg and it currently takes something like 40 hours to print one pair of shoes.

Decentralization was always one of the great promises of 3D printing. And to be honest, it's not hard to imagine a world where you walk into a store, have your feet scanned for optimal sizing (already the company lets you do this online with your phone's front camera), and then you get a new pair of shoes printed for you right on the spot. Maybe you even get to play with the design a little so that no two shoes are ever exactly the same.

Of course, along with this, you'd also get an NFT version of your shoes indicating where you printed/minted them. This would be your decentralized blockchain record for your decentralized physical shoes. This sounds weird and consumers won't necessarily think of it in this way , but it'll be what's happening behind the scenes. What consumers will care about is being able to flex their new shoes both offline and online.

On that note, let's get back to the basics here: Would you ever order/wear these shoes?

Friday was a busy day at Junction House .

In the morning, we gave a hard hat tour to Toronto's City Planning Division. They are currently revisiting the Mid-Rise Building Performance Standards , and so this was an opportunity to see what these standards translate to when you're on site trying to actually build a mid-rise building.

It was great to see the group so highly engaged and looking for ways to improve the delivery of this housing typology. Thanks for taking the time to visit Junction House.

Then we had the "official lighting ceremony" for the placemaking art . And by official lighting ceremony, I mean that there were a handful of us playing around with a drone and trying to get cool pictures on our phones. However, did we have one actual videographer, so stay tuned for some proper video footage of the installation.

https://videopress.com/v/QcsJGPFo?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true

Finally, in the evening after sunset, we got to see it illuminated for the very first time. And it was everything we had hoped for! An idea turned into reality, many years later. Shout out to the Urban Toronto community for spotting one of our earlier prototypes online and then encouraging us to make some design changes. We are happy we listened.

But what do you all think? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.

I am so impressed by The Well . I walked through it this afternoon after a meeting at BDP Quadrangle's office, and I think that once it's fully open and stabilized, it's going to become an instant icon and destination in the city of Toronto. So much so that when people visit Toronto, they're going to come to The Well to take a photo under its glass canopy. Just watch.

Right now, only a portion of it is accessible to the public and it's because there's a BMO bank branch on the lower level that is open and operating. It's all by itself right now, though, so if you bank with BMO, maybe pop by and say hello.

Now, if you're a naysayer, I would imagine you're probably thinking at least two things. You're thinking of the office space that Shopify left behind . And you're thinking that open-air malls maybe aren't well suited towards the Toronto climate. When our group walked through it today, Matt Young (of Republic Developments ) immediately said that it felt like something from California.

I don't really get this climate argument though. Mainly for two reasons: (1) because winter clothes exist and (2) because we have lots of other open-air malls throughout the city that are doing just fine. Except we don't call them open-air malls, we just call them streets. And the way they work is that people walk outside , and then go into various retail establishments.

On the office piece, well, you all know how I feel about office .

Congratulations to everyone involved in The Well. It is an accomplishment that you should all be very proud of, and our city is better for it. I look forward to seeing it continue to take shape.