Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 771

Before bed last night, I was was reading about a Tokyo-based real estate company called Spilytus. They have an apartment brand called Ququri (pronounced ku-ku-ri) that specializes in tiny apartments, which I suppose isn't all that novel for Japan.

Since the brand was launched in 2014, they have developed over 70 buildings and now manage about 1,200 micro apartments across the central wards of Tokyo (~17 units per project if you do the math). We are talking about apartments in the range of 9 square meters (plus sleeping loft) for somewhere around ¥75,000 per month.

Not surprisingly, their projects seem to lease up right away. And supposedly there's a long wait list for future projects. People are clearly looking for affordable housing in the neighborhoods in which they want to live. It's about lifestyle and location, and living a large portion of your life within the public domain.

This housing typology isn't for everyone. But it's great for some people. And I have no doubt that demand for it will only continue to grow in big global cities. However, for what we are all going through right now, I can imagine that it would be nice to have a bit more than 9 square meters to roam around in.

Image: Spilytus

When you go to architecture school, you are indoctrinated to appreciate certain projects, buildings, and houses. One of those pieces of architecture, at least for my generation, is the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois, by Mies van der Rohe.

Completed in 1951 for Dr. Edith Farnsworth (a nephrologist), the house is one of the most celebrated midcentury modern houses in the United States. Today, the former weekend retreat is a museum owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. (Information on how to visit can be found, here .)

But what they don't teach you in architecture school is that the house never really worked all that well as, you know, an actual house. And that the client and architect ended up embroiled in legal battles toward the end of construction.

This is part of the story that is told in Alex Beam's new book, Broken Glass , which was recently reviewed by Witold Rybczynski in the Wall Street Journal. Now, Witold isn't a fan of modern architecture to begin with and so the Farnsworth House never stood a chance:

Despite the purposeful appearance of his architecture, Mies was not particularly interested in practical matters. The travertine on the terrace weathered badly, and a poorly designed heating system left sooty stains on the windows. The glass walls resulted in spectacular heating bills in the winter and hothouse temperatures in the summer—there were only two small openable windows. Then there was the problem of condensation on the glass in cold weather. “You feel as though you are in a car in the rain with a windshield wiper that doesn’t work,” Farnsworth complained. A film about the genesis of her house, starring Elizabeth Debicki and Ralph Fiennes, is currently in the works. It will be interesting to see if it will show the doctor squeegeeing her foggy windows.

On his blog , Witold calls Mies an aesthete. Appearance was everything. My personal view is that it's generally good practice to design houses so that they function properly. But icons are icons and the Farnsworth House is certainly an icon. Maybe we should just call it a prototype .

Image: Farnsworth House (National Trust for Historic Preservation)

The Financial Times has some of the best charts/graphics that I have seen on the coronavirus and its impact. They're also free and regularly updated . Below is the cumulative number of deaths, by number of days since the 10th death (last updated March 23 at 21:00 GMT). I prefer this to the number of cases because it is more precise, though impacted by things like demographics. The number of cases is impacted by how good you are at testing. Some countries have been far better than others. And what we are continuing to learn is that lots of people were and are completely asymptomatic.

Seeing China (and Iran?) continue to flatten out is encouraging. (Note the logarithmic scale.)

Here has been the impact to the Chinese economy. It's slowing coming back.

And here are traffic volumes around the world. This chart was published on Sunday, March 22. At that time, Tokyo looked to be largely business as usual.