Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 997

This morning I was at 55 St. Clair Avenue West for IBI Group’s annual general meeting. And at this meeting their CEO, Scott Stewart, officially launched a new accelerator called the Smart City Sandbox . 

Here is a description of what that is taken from a  press release  that was also published this morning:

The Sandbox is a smart city-themed accelerator, focused on bringing innovative new products and systems to urban environments that improve the quality of life for residents. A technology hub that supports small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as well as entrepreneurs and start-ups, the Smart City Sandbox will operate out of a designated space at IBI Group’s Toronto headquarters, be open to global applications, and officially open doors with its first smart city-themed cohort in September 2018.

And here is a photo from this morning:

Slate Asset Management is proud to be a founding partner of the Smart City Sandbox and we’re thrilled that it will live at Yonge + St. Clair in midtown Toronto. 

Our role is to provide our domain expertise as asset managers and developers, and to offer participants in the program access to real-world building systems and data from our holdings in the area.

For more info, go here .

And if you were at (or listening to) the meeting this morning, I’m sure you noticed something that we talk a lot about on this blog. To thrive today, virtually every company now has to think and act like a technology company. IBI Group is doing precisely that.

Warren Buffet recently said in a Yahoo Finance interview that when you buy cryptocurrencies you’re not actually investing. Instead, you’re speculating – speculating that “somebody else will come along and pay more money tomorrow.” Investments need to generate a return. And nobody is at all clear on how to value these crypto-assets. This is noteworthy, of course, because it’s Buffet.

But I thought Fred Wilson wrote a good rebuttal on his blog where he points out that, while, yes, a discounted cash flow model isn’t going to be very useful in helping you determine value in this instance, what we are actually seeing is, “the creation of a new internet, built upon protocols that allow for decentralized networks to form…” We’ve talked about this many times before on the blog.

So where I stand on this debate is that I agree with both Warren and Fred. I don’t see crypto-assets as something I want to start putting a lot of money into right now because I don’t know how to calculate what the IRR may be. But at the same time, if crypto-assets are creating decentralized infrastructure that will one day power the “new internet”, I am positive this new internet will eventually create businesses that will fit into Warren’s definition of an investment. 

I just recently discovered the work of Montréal-based firm, Alain Carle Architecte. If you aren’t familiar with their work, do yourself a favor and check it out here . They are apparently known for their secondary homes across the country.

The project that caught my attention was their True North home in Cornwall, Ontario. Here are two photos by renowned architecture and design photographer Adrien Williams (also of Montréal).

And here is a plan via Dezeen .

The concrete and black metal cladding against the snow is pure magic. I also love the way they employed black screens to create a gradient across the landscape and frame some of the outdoor spaces. You really see that in the plan.

The shadows these screens cast on the concrete are also quite beautiful.