Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 950

Earlier this week it was announced that Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger have resigned from the company. Supposedly it had to do with weakening independence from the parent company, Facebook. But I’m not really in a position to comment on the specifics.

Fred Wilson wrote a good post about the news this week. The point he makes is that it is extremely rare for founders to stay on, at least for extended periods of time, after their company has been acquired. So it is actually quite remarkable that Instagram’s two founders stayed on for 6 years.

But what I really want to talk about today is this quote from Fred’s post : 

“The truth is that many entrepreneurs don’t make for great corporate citizens. Entrepreneurs like to be in charge, to be able to move quickly without a lot of friction, and they like to feel a deep sense of ownership in what they are working on.”

It stood out to me for two reasons. One, because I agree with it. And two, because it reminded me of Daniel Pink’s book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us . His overarching argument is that motivation is intrinsic and that we are best driven by the following: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

That sounds pretty similar to the things that entrepreneurs also seem to like.

This is an excellent talk by NYU professor Scott Galloway about Amazon, online grocery, and many other aspects of the retail landscape. The bits about Amazon’s scale and reach are fascinating. There is about 30 minutes of him speaking quickly and then another 15 minutes of Q&A. If you can’t see it below, click here .

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HyiY_m_YxI&w=560&h=315]

Over the years on this blog I have posted the occasional “Project Profile”, where I have shared a noteworthy development project, an interesting piece of architecture, or some other kind of project that I thought would interest all of you. Everything is now a project .

This morning I decided that I should do that more often. I’m not sure if it will be every week, but hopefully it’ll be fairly regularly. I also have a few other alliterative blog series that I have started in the past and should continue.

This week’s Project Profile is the Pavillon du lac in Quèbec (somewhere) by Montréal-based Daoust Lestage. All of the photography used in this post is by Adrien Williams . 

The first thing you may notice is that it is evocative of Philip Johnson’s Glass House and Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House (1951) – but probably more the latter.

Le Pavillon du lac was completed in 2015. It has 2 bedrooms and is about 1,240 square feet. The entire glass pavilion is housed between two thin flat slabs with cantilevering overhangs on two of its elevation. They create a kind of portico that frames views of the water. All of the glass is triple-glazed.

One of the key distinctions for me is how the house sits on the ground. As is the case with the Farnsworth House, le Pavillon du lac sits on stilts, elevated off the ground. The ground floor slab is then able to ignore whatever topography there may be beneath it. 

At the same time, there are elevations of the house where the ground has been carved into (see below). This creates a small moat around the perimeter and roots the building within the landscape. 

For more photos of le Pavillon du lac, click here .