Vertikal (471-481 King St E) | 23 & 19 fl | U/C

[ac3r]

Used to do it no problem? We, as humans, built many great things fairly efficiently using slave labour. This continent's century old skyscrapers were built with a complete lack of health and safety regulations, where deaths were common and expected. Are you suggesting we roll back to these times, with your digs at union workers? These skyscrapers and other beautiful, quality buildings are fairly irrelevant anyways, since they were never built to house the masses, but were for the elite and upper classes. The housing for the masses were historically awful and haven't survived, and buildings for the wealthy are not emblematic of the way "things used to be".

I don't completely disagree with the points here, but it's not so black and white.

No, I'm not suggesting we should be relaxing safety standards or using slave labour. Though you'd have to be very naïve to think every worker on the job is practicing safety standards down to the book lol. I could take you to any job site in this region and point out a dozen issues just standing on the ground, then even more if we went up the building. Yeah it's bad to do but the guys working on job sites are cutting corners when it comes to safety because it is quite honestly excessive at times. I feel more at risk just crossing a busy stroad in this region than I do not having a harness on entirely or being fully anchored when working at heights.

My point was more that this is the developed world. We've got centuries of experience constructing things. We have the best engineering and construction methods in the world available. We have modern equipment at our disposal. We could easily build something very quickly if we want to, but we don't because there is no will power to do so anymore and less pride in what we're achieving as a nation. And of course the economic factors at play don't help, with so much stuff being contracted and sub-contracted out, developers wanting things done their way and stuff like provincial/federal rules and union influence on how things get done. Note, I'm not anti-union whatsoever, so I wasn't trying to make a dig at them. I'm actually a strong advocate for unionization in the architectural world because the workers in this field are used and abused. But I've also been in enough unions to know that they can get in the way in very nonsensical ways for both positive and negative reasons.

I just think as a country we need to be more proactive, progressive, determined and prideful about what we're doing for ourselves. One reason China is able to do what it does so fast is partially due to the number of workers they can throw at things, but there is also a strong current of idealism that drives what they've been achieving over the last few decades. When they build a couple high speed rail lines, subways, entire new cities and other infrastructure projects like dams or mines it is because they are guided by overarching theoretical narratives driving their society, such as common prosperity or Chinese modernization. In North America we don't really have such ideals to rally behind like we once used to. Irrelevant of the labour practices in our past, when we were developing fur trades, ports, national railroads, highway systems, the health and education system, our space program and so on people felt there was a greater purpose to accomplishing these things for the greater good of society. These days, everyone is just in it for the money and that's why there's a housing crisis and developers like Vive flip properties like this as a side gig. If we want to build things the way the Chinese do, we need to collectively agree to accomplish that.

[plam]

Actually, a lot of Ikea furniture is made of solid wood. I have a kitchen table which is all wood. The individual planks which have been laminated together are nowhere near as big as in an old-school table, but it’s still a solid piece of furniture which will last and might be worth refinishing when needed.

I’m not sure this actually affects your point, but need to correct the facts on Ikea. Not employed by them, just like some of their stuff.

And Stubbe builds pre-cast concrete panels to customer specifications. They don't particularly make "crap" as such, they make what the builder specs for the building. The panels they provided for Civic 66, for example, look magnificent compared to ones that DTK Condos asked Stubbe to make. Stubbe is not the problem here, and could even be part of a solution.

I'll throw in a third example. Big food service companies like Aramark and Sodexho provide different levels of service, as I understand it. They can cater both the jail cafeteria and the Google cafeteria. Obviously they aren't providing the same product in the two cases. Customer differentiation.

Ikea has the particleboard stuff which does a reasonably good job of staying in one place (but if you try to move it, nah) and it also has the solid wood stuff at a higher price point.

[dtkvictim]

No, I'm not suggesting we should be relaxing safety standards or using slave labour. Though you'd have to be very naïve to think every worker on the job is practicing safety standards down to the book lol. I could take you to any job site in this region and point out a dozen issues just standing on the ground, then even more if we went up the building. Yeah it's bad to do but the guys working on job sites are cutting corners when it comes to safety because it is quite honestly excessive at times. I feel more at risk just crossing a busy stroad in this region than I do not having a harness on entirely or being fully anchored when working at heights.

Yeah. I have plenty of friends and family working in the trades so I'm pretty aware that they, broadly speaking, taking safety pretty uh... loosely. Even so, the difference between now and 100 years ago is astronomical.

We could easily build something very quickly if we want to, but we don't because there is no will power to do so anymore and less pride in what we're achieving as a nation.

There is no willpower to accomplish things we can be proud of as a nation, because are not really a nation. We are simply a state, and no more.

I just think as a country we need to be more proactive, progressive, determined and prideful about what we're doing for ourselves. One reason China is able to do what it does so fast is partially due to the number of workers they can throw at things, but there is also a strong current of idealism that drives what they've been achieving over the last few decades. When they build a couple high speed rail lines, subways, entire new cities and other infrastructure projects like dams or mines it is because they are guided by overarching theoretical narratives driving their society, such as common prosperity or Chinese modernization. In North America we don't really have such ideals to rally behind like we once used to. Irrelevant of the labour practices in our past, when we were developing fur trades, ports, national railroads, highway systems, the health and education system, our space program and so on people felt there was a greater purpose to accomplishing these things for the greater good of society. These days, everyone is just in it for the money and that's why there's a housing crisis and developers like Vive flip properties like this as a side gig. If we want to build things the way the Chinese do, we need to collectively agree to accomplish that.

See above. What you are describing are essentially nation building exercises, a direction that Canada is choosing to move further away from. A society focused on fostering a diversity of people, thoughts and ideals will inherently be more individualistic and have fewer shared common goals. I don't really have an answer here, but I think a different approach than something like Common Prosperity is required for Canada to achieve both goals.

Overall, I agree with your points here, but your previous post from my view was saying something quite different.

[DK519]

Looks like the taller crane will be coming down today.

[nms]

Here is something that could be pre-fabricated: bathrooms. Standard apartment bathrooms in non-luxury accommodation are not architecturally interesting, often don’t even have windows, and are already mostly in a small number of meaningfully-different plans. It should be possible to create a small number of plans (powder room, full bathroom, maybe a couple of variations including one that includes space for laundry appliances) and churn out the entire room as a unit which is just lowered into place during construction. The trick is that in order to actually be worthwhile the savings would have to be entirely in construction efficiency, not in how they’re built — the actual toilets, for example, should be normal toilets that can be replaced later in the same way that a toilet in a non-prefab bathroom would be replaced. Otherwise this would just create a maintenance and repair nightmare later.

Bathrooms are small enough that a truck could bring enough for several apartments. Instead of having to bring in plumbers, electricians, painters, tile specialists, trim and maybe others, only some of them would be needed in order to do the hookups.

The last time that Canada had a housing crisis was during the Second World War when housing was needed fast for factory workers, and then from 1945-1960 when the returning veterans needed housing fast. What started as the Wartime Housing Corp evolved in CMHC. Up to a million homes, usually about 1000 square feet, were built to standardized dimensions from 1945 to 1960. Private developers also copied these practices.

The townhouses opposite WLU along University Ave were one of the first CMHC projects in Waterloo. They have prefabricated bathrooms that were hung on the outside of each unit. The surrounding neighbourhood was largely the 1.5 story houses. The neighbourhood west of Albert St was a little more sturdier (eg brick construction) but fit the general rule of compact houses on compact lots, in a grid street layout that were walkable to what was needed.

[panamaniac]

I suppose everyone already knows this, but Kitchener’s St Mary’s heritage district is a great example of the housing built in the years right after the war.

[KevinT]

Ikea has the particleboard stuff which does a reasonably good job of staying in one place (but if you try to move it, nah) and it also has the solid wood stuff at a higher price point.

Off topic, but we just glue all the dowels when we're building Ikea. Even their particle board stuff stays solid during a move that way...

[Ellensparky]

Any current updates about the actual property??

[Ellensparky]

360 Tour

https://app.cloudpano.com/tours/-Ih3Do6S-

[Ellensparky]

Anyone been by this site lately? Pics?

[ac3r]

I have no photos but one tower is topped out and they've been making progress on the other one as well as the podium.

Still as slow as ever, though. I'd estimate at least mid 2025 before it's anywhere near completion. Maybe move in ready by end end of that year but that's being optimistic.

[tomh009]

I believe they are going to have occupancy in the first tower well before the second tower tops out.

Drewlo's towers go up at roughly one floor per month.

[Acitta]

       

[Rainrider22]

Thanks

[ac3r]

The grey and black pattern they have going on looks awful. It's going to really clash with the red and white of the balconies and podium and the glass with colours that will wrap sections of the latter. If it was just red and white then at least it would be coherent, even if the design of the building itself is bad too. A red and white building tower can look pretty good if you just put some thought into it. These almost look like some sort of building that would be a tile in a really old Sim City game haha it's just weird.

Unrelated but I found a funny quote on the first page of this thread. From 2011, it's in regards to whether to waive the development fees for this project as the city was doing that at the time to promote development:

“I think it’s a good idea,” Etherington said. “The downtown finally seems to have some healthy momentum and I am in favour of anything we can do to add to that momentum.”

Over a decade later I think we can say they lost any momentum they had, it's been a slow build. :'p