Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 882

The Hyperloop space has a number of competing companies that are all trying to figure out how to move people (between cities) in low-pressure tubes at nearly the speed of sound (1,234.8 km/h). For what it's worth, Virgin Hyperloop One , which was founded in 2014, has supposedly completed the most testing and raised the most money ( $295 million as of December 2017).

This morning I was reading up on the Toronto-based TransPod , which was founded in 2015 by Sebastien Gendron and Dr. Ryan Janzen. They raised a $15 million seed round from an Italian tech group in 2016 and are close on another $50 million round right now. Following this, they'll look be looking for a few hundred million. They seem encouraged by where Canada's Strategic Innovation Fund has been placing money.

Supposedly, their biggest competitive advantage is cost. The company estimates their cost per kilometer to be about $25 million, which would put the cost of a Toronto-Montreal link at around $15 billion. This is not cheap, but it is allegedly cheaper . The travel time between these two cities could then be as short as 40 minutes.

Virgin Hyperloop One has been similarly looking at a Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal line, as it would stitch together about 25% of Canada's population . But apparently the federal government recommended that TransPod instead look at a line that sits entirely within one province -- at least at the start.

So the company has gone ahead and secured a 10-kilometer parcel of land in Alberta that will eventually form part of a future connection between Calgary and Edmonton. TransPod hopes to have this test track operational by 2022.

However, their focus right now is on France. (Being in Europe is another differentiator for the company. Europe gets transport.) With the help of a few partners, the company has started work on a 3-kilometer test track in Limoges, France . Permits were received at the end of last year and they hope to begin testing by the end of this year.

There's no question that this technology has the potential to be transformational, which is why so many companies are competing in the space right now. But it's obviously going to take a whole lot of moxie. Gendron is on the record talking about the risk-adverse nature of both Canadian regulators and investors when it comes to these sorts of large-scale innovations. That's a problem that we need to address.

The title of this post is a quote by Gendron taken from this TechVibes article .

Image: TransPod

Witold Rybczynski's recent post about the tragic fire at Notre-Dame de Paris provides an interesting summary of cathedral construction techniques over the years:

The Paris fire is also a reminder of what a weird hybrid structure Gothic cathedrals really are. The ancient Romans roofed their basilicas and baths with concrete vaults (the Pantheon with a dome), and the Byzantines used thin domes and vaults of brick. Over time, builders lost these skills and Romanesque cathedrals were roofed with exposed timber rafters like big barns. This made the buildings highly susceptible to fire, often caused by lightning strikes. The solution, pioneered at Durham Cathedral in the 11th century, was to build a lightweight ribbed stone vault over the nave. The timber roof remained, so the vault had no structural function (except to support itself) but it separated the interior from the flammable roof above. This was largely effective as the April 15 fire shows.

Below is an image from the WSJ depicting Notre-Dame's timber rafters and showing the extent of the area consumed by the fire. Fortunately, relatively little of the cathedral was actually destroyed.

Going forward, there will almost certainly be a debate about how the roof and spire should be rebuilt. What materials and construction methods are appropriate for this emblem of Christianity and French culture?

But I agree with Witold in that "there is nothing inauthentic about rebuilding."

It is common to lament that buildings simply aren't built like they used to be. But this is not a new phenomenon. Construction methods change, as do the skills of builders.

There may have been critics in the 1220's complaining about how the cathedral's roof was built using wood, instead of concrete or brick vaulting. But that's what was relevant at the time.

We also know that there have been periods of time since its construction where Notre-Dame simply languished . In fact, some have argued that this week's fire was the result of decades of neglect .

But Victor Hugo once wrote that, “great buildings, like great mountains, are the work of centuries." Despite what unfortunately happened this week, that remains true of Notre-Dame de Paris.

Architect Jeanne Gang (of Studio Gang ) has just been named to the TIME 100 , which is Time magazine's annual list of the world's most influential people. Jeanne is the only architect to be included in the 2019 list.

Jeanne was named to the "Titans" category, which typically honors those who are at the top of their respective field. She sits alongside Mark Zuckerberg, Tiger Woods, and LeBron James in this year's TIME 100.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BwaLukLgj7D/

Past honorees within the architecture profession include Elizabeth Diller, David Adjaye, and Bjarke Ingels. All, stars.

The list is in its 16th year. But it'll be the first year where there will also be a day-long conference. (Lynne and Marc Benioff, of Salesforce, acquired the magazine in 2018 for $190 million in cash and are making some changes.)

Congratulations Jeanne.

Full disclosure: Studio Gang is the design architect for our One Delisle project in midtown Toronto.