Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 866

A couple of months ago I wrote about the relationship between IPOs and home prices . It was in response to the current wave of tech companies -- most of which are headquartered in San Francisco -- that have gone public or are expected to go public this year (2019). What impact will this have on the city's housing market?

I cited this academic study on the topic, which already discovered a "positive and significant association between local house price changes and firms going public." But today I stumbled upon another interesting study by a San Francisco real estate agent, name Deniz Kahramaner, who happens to also be a Stanford-trained data scientist.

What Kahramaner wanted to figure out was, who tends to buy residential real estate in San Francisco?

So he started with title data and then scraped the internet to try and match up individual buyer names with specific companies and industries. Since not everyone has some sort of public profile and because real estate is sometimes held within a company, he was only able to traceback about 55% of home purchases in San Francisco last year.

Still, the data looks pretty clear. About half of the homes bought in 2018 were by individuals whose employment has roots in "software." The next biggest buyer segment was "finance."

The other interesting thing about this data set is that it shows where people have been buying (at least last year). Historically, the north end of the city has been the wealthiest, but the above data shows things moving in a southeasterly direction. Though, it remains to be seen what all of this will look like when the dust settles after this current crop of tech IPOs.

Chart: The Atlantic

The 2020 Summer Olympics, which will be held in Tokyo, have added 5 new sports, one of which is skateboarding. As someone who grew up skateboarding as a teenager, and is all too familiar with being chased out of public spaces, this lends a great deal of legitimacy to the sport.

It's hard to think of a sport that is more closely connected with architecture and, more specifically, public architecture. Curbed's recent long-form article about " the public spaces that shaped skateboarding " is a good reminder of that. Here is an excerpt (EMB refers to Embarcadero Plaza in San Francisco, which was previously known as Justin Herman Plaza):

When skateboarding debuts at the Tokyo Olympics next summer, some three decades after the first polyurethane wheels hit the bricks at EMB, it will have completed the long, improbable trip from criminal act to social and institutional acceptance. But even as an Olympic sport, skateboarding will remain a direct physical response to the varied terrain of American public architecture.

Interestingly enough, one could go on to argue that the history of skateboarding is really steeped in the adoption of public spaces that had, in many cases, failed to serve their intended purpose. In other words, skateboarders were often the only people using these urban spaces:

“What made Justin Herman Plaza attractive to skateboarders and work for skateboarders was its inappropriateness to the traditional city scale and function,” King says. “You had all these planners and architects in the 1950s and ’60s saying cities need these grand, celebratory spaces—and they really didn’t.” But apparently skaters did.

Welcome skateboarding to the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

Photo by  Frans  on  Unsplash

121 East 22nd -- which is OMA's first ground-up project in Manhattan -- recently finished up construction at the corner of E 23rd St and Lexington Ave (the site continues through to E 22nd St, where there is basically a 2nd building). I wrote about the project over two years ago, here .

Below is a photo by Laurian Ghinitoiu , via Dezeen , of it completed:

The defining feature is its "prismatic corner", which, I understand from this interview with David Von Spreckelsen (President of Toll Brothers City Living), was largely an outcome of the site's restrictive zoning. There was a requirement to have constant street walls. That minimized what could be done architecturally on the project's main elevations.

The solution is two contextual street walls -- the punched windows are designed to match the rhythm of their adjoining buildings -- coming together and creating dramatic visual interest only at the point where they intersect. Below is a rolled out elevation from OMA. Note the gradient created by the windows as they converge toward the corner (center in the drawing below).

The other interesting thing about this project is that it reminded me just how different the built form of Manhattan can be compared to Toronto. In the case of 121 East 22nd, the streetwalls rise 150 feet without any stepbacks. There is then a 10 foot stepback before the building rises another 60 feet -- similarly without any additional breaks.

I love the grandeur.