Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 818

I was talking about this with my friend Evgeny Tchebotarev last night:

The transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong (also known as the handover ) happened at midnight on July 1, 1997. At the time, Hong Kong had a population of about 6.5 million people and China had a population of about 1.23 billion people. But Hong Kong punched well above its weight class and its GDP as a percentage of mainland China's GDP was about 18.4% (see above). In other words, Hong Kong represented about 0.53% of the population, but almost 1/5 of China's economic output. Today, well as of 2018, this number has declined to 2.7% (again, see above). Hong Kong still possesses a number of structural benefits compared to mainland China, but its position as a global financial center is not guaranteed.

Graph: Investopedia

The Standard recently opened up its first international outpost in London. It's a 266-room hotel housed in a 1974 Brutalist office building overlooking King's Cross. London-based Orms (architect) was the lead consultant and they did an incredible job both preserving and modernizing the existing building.

All of the existing windows were replaced, but otherwise the Brutalist exterior remains more or less intact.

A tasteful 3 storey addition was placed on top of it, which required threading new steel columns through the existing waffle slabs . There's a 1st floor transfer slab with concrete columns below it in order to pickup these new loads.

A dedicated (and red) exterior shuttle elevator was also added to the north elevation of the building. This takes people up to the rooftop, which is a signature feature of all Standard Hotels.

Brutalist architecture is experiencing a bit of renaissance right now. We are seeing people lament the demise of our concrete blocks from the 60s and 70s. Perhaps it's because it's a style/movement that is finally old enough for people to appreciate it. That's often how these things work.

The Standard in London is a perfect example of how this history might be both respected and repositioned.

Images via Orms

I can think of at least a dozen buildings in Toronto that use some form of a parking stacker system. And I am seeing firsthand how they are becoming more popular and more commonplace as a result of space constraints, rising costs, and a bunch of other factors. Below is an example of a system that allows you to (almost) triple the number of cars that can be accommodated on a given footprint. However, it does require higher floor-to-ceiling heights and a pit. If you can't see the video below, click here .

https://youtu.be/lDbMnNMdFFg