General Suburban Updates and Rumours

[ijmorlan]

There's another small townhouse project planned for 7 Morrison Road, just next to Grand River Hospital and the CP railroad tracks. 16 units in total.

Exterior stairs

At least the Montréal ones have some character.

[sluismcfc]

There's another small townhouse project planned for 7 Morrison Road, just next to Grand River Hospital and the CP railroad tracks. 16 units in total.

Exterior stairs 

At least the Montréal ones have some character.

Would be curious to get your thoughts on the correct treatment for the stairs in this context, I did a quick google for Montreal stacked towns but didn't see a real consistent treatment in what was, admittedly, a pretty cursory review. 

Is it simply the provision of an overhang? I would think that doesn't accomplish a whole lot for snow/rain in any sort of windy conditions and I'm not sure pushing them into the building envelope is an option given my understanding of the building typology. 

The one with stairs leading all the way to the "second" floor seems a bit silly on its face, without understanding the relationship between floors, and it's odd to see the inclusion of garages with this typology. I honestly think the best solution for parking on these types of projects is to keep it on the surface. Maybe one day we will live in a world where we don't need the parking but that ain't KW2023.

[timc]

It looks like the parking here is on the surface. We know that most of those garages are going to be used for some other type of storage. :-)

[ijmorlan]

Exterior stairs 

At least the Montréal ones have some character.

Would be curious to get your thoughts on the correct treatment for the stairs in this context, I did a quick google for Montreal stacked towns but didn't see a real consistent treatment in what was, admittedly, a pretty cursory review. 

Is it simply the provision of an overhang? I would think that doesn't accomplish a whole lot for snow/rain in any sort of windy conditions and I'm not sure pushing them into the building envelope is an option given my understanding of the building typology. 

The one with stairs leading all the way to the "second" floor seems a bit silly on its face, without understanding the relationship between floors, and it's odd to see the inclusion of garages with this typology. I honestly think the best solution for parking on these types of projects is to keep it on the surface. Maybe one day we will live in a world where we don't need the parking but that ain't KW2023.

I believe that snow shovelling of stairs should not be required in new construction. That pretty much summarizes my position. If you look at how much dirt they move in building a new subdivision, it is obvious that the relationship between main floor level and ground level at the front door is entirely controlled by the developer and therefore the relationship can be that they are at the same level. This is also good for accessibility, and fully answers the question for any non-stacked situation.

For stacked situations, I acknowledge that it may help with the flexibility of interior spaces to have exterior doors on various levels. This obviously requires exterior stairs to one or more levels. On the other hand, if you just enclose the stairs, the snow shovelling problem is solved permanently, and with it the combination of work / slip risk (depending on how diligently the steps are cleared).

In this particular development, I really don’t like the way the stairs are sort of islands sticking way out from the building into the driveway area. That seems likely to be especially unpleasant on a cold windy day. Even if they were against the building under a slight overhang it would be better.

Another thing to consider: I find it hard to believe that it’s really that hard to incorporate the stairs within the building. Sure, taking the existing proposal and just plunking the stairs inside the existing building, likely infeasible. But if the whole building is designed that way from the beginning, the expansion of building envelope is tiny — just enough to fit in the actual stairs. In a renovation, space is not fungible: if I want to expand a room by 30cm, it’s going to be impractical. But in new construction, it’s very different: take a typical house plan and revise it to expand a room by 30cm, and you’ll typically only make a proportional increase in construction expense.

Maybe it really is cheaper this way. But then again, what’s wrong with an apartment building? (other than Habitat, with its ridiculous 10th-story exterior corridors)

On the other hand, if people will buy/rent them…

One final comment: part of what makes me believe this is about cultural factors, not a necessary economic trade-off, is the existence of townhouses with a garage at ground level and the main floor above. The doors are a garage door at ground level and a regular door one floor up. Yet there is a staircase inside the building connecting the garage to the living floors. Why not just punch a person door through beside the garage door and dispense with the external stairs entirely? Not fancy enough? I’m talking about townhouses for working-class people, not the Supreme Court.

https://goo.gl/maps/pGEGYQJcs8wPguam9

E5 on campus at the University of Waterloo is an example of this in an institutional setting.

[danbrotherston]

Would be curious to get your thoughts on the correct treatment for the stairs in this context, I did a quick google for Montreal stacked towns but didn't see a real consistent treatment in what was, admittedly, a pretty cursory review. 

Is it simply the provision of an overhang? I would think that doesn't accomplish a whole lot for snow/rain in any sort of windy conditions and I'm not sure pushing them into the building envelope is an option given my understanding of the building typology. 

The one with stairs leading all the way to the "second" floor seems a bit silly on its face, without understanding the relationship between floors, and it's odd to see the inclusion of garages with this typology. I honestly think the best solution for parking on these types of projects is to keep it on the surface. Maybe one day we will live in a world where we don't need the parking but that ain't KW2023.

I believe that snow shovelling of stairs should not be required in new construction. That pretty much summarizes my position. If you look at how much dirt they move in building a new subdivision, it is obvious that the relationship between main floor level and ground level at the front door is entirely controlled by the developer and therefore the relationship can be that they are at the same level. This is also good for accessibility, and fully answers the question for any non-stacked situation.

For stacked situations, I acknowledge that it may help with the flexibility of interior spaces to have exterior doors on various levels. This obviously requires exterior stairs to one or more levels. On the other hand, if you just enclose the stairs, the snow shovelling problem is solved permanently, and with it the combination of work / slip risk (depending on how diligently the steps are cleared).

In this particular development, I really don’t like the way the stairs are sort of islands sticking way out from the building into the driveway area. That seems likely to be especially unpleasant on a cold windy day. Even if they were against the building under a slight overhang it would be better.

Another thing to consider: I find it hard to believe that it’s really that hard to incorporate the stairs within the building. Sure, taking the existing proposal and just plunking the stairs inside the existing building, likely infeasible. But if the whole building is designed that way from the beginning, the expansion of building envelope is tiny — just enough to fit in the actual stairs. In a renovation, space is not fungible: if I want to expand a room by 30cm, it’s going to be impractical. But in new construction, it’s very different: take a typical house plan and revise it to expand a room by 30cm, and you’ll typically only make a proportional increase in construction expense.

Maybe it really is cheaper this way. But then again, what’s wrong with an apartment building? (other than Habitat, with its ridiculous 10th-story exterior corridors)

On the other hand, if people will buy/rent them…

One final comment: part of what makes me believe this is about cultural factors, not a necessary economic trade-off, is the existence of townhouses with a garage at ground level and the main floor above. The doors are a garage door at ground level and a regular door one floor up. Yet there is a staircase inside the building connecting the garage to the living floors. Why not just punch a person door through beside the garage door and dispense with the external stairs entirely? Not fancy enough? I’m talking about townhouses for working-class people, not the Supreme Court.

https://goo.gl/maps/pGEGYQJcs8wPguam9

E5 on campus at the University of Waterloo is an example of this in an institutional setting.

This is a rather interesting point. When we moved into our new place in NL I was surprised how level everything was (yes I realize that NL has kind of a reputation for flatness, but we're on the side of an embankment...the houses behind us have the ground floor one story up from us). Our front door and back door both have completely level access. I wonder why this is not done more, it is one feature which helps blend indoors with outdoors in a pleasant and accessible (and anti-COVID) way.

That being said, it's still not fully accessible, we have a 2 inch high threshold on the door, which is necessary, because water pools in the back by the door, if there was no threshold, it would easily be pushing on the door seals which probably wouldn't hold back water. So yeah, I wonder if overland flooding is a reason they don't do this in other places. The NLs, also known for water, does have unusually good control over stormwater. That being said, if I understand best building practices in Canada it shouldn't matter if you have a step or not, as long as the grade of the surrounding yard is away from the building.



There might be fire code reasons that a door through the garage is insufficient. FWIW I've never seen a property with no exit other than through the garage. But I agree in general that sheltered stairs would be good. This does seem like...the low cost option. I also like the sweeping stoops that are iconic in places like NYC and on Sesame Street. They give the street some interest.

[ijmorlan]

There might be fire code reasons that a door through the garage is insufficient. FWIW I've never seen a property with no exit other than through the garage. But I agree in general that sheltered stairs would be good. This does seem like...the low cost option. I also like the sweeping stoops that are iconic in places like NYC and on Sesame Street. They give the street some interest.

Just to clarify, I’m not suggesting a door through the garage. Houses like the ones in the Google Streetview link I provided in my experience at least have a hallway beside the garage; I’m suggesting punching a person door between the outside and that hallway. The door would go immediately under the door which actually exists one floor up and would come out inside the area currently taken up by the stair structure which leads up to the upstairs door.

[ac3r]

Plan to build 160 stacked townhomes on estate lots in south Kitchener draws criticism from residents: https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-...dents.html

[danbrotherston]

Another interesting take on the stairs question that I saw today (and reminded me of a similar thing in Kitchener) is to expand the space at the top into more of a common area and stick it on top of something.

   

This example is near me in the NLs. In this case the stacking is a three story townhome on top of single floor apartment. The stairs are at each end, are covered and controlled (but not enclosed). The area around the stairs provides storage and mailboxes. Climbing the stairs you reach a large area where each home has level exterior access to and the areas function as an outdoor space, people have benches, BBQs, etc. It is on top of the lower apartments which fill a larger footprint than the townhomes above.

   

This example is just on Ahrens St. in Kitchener, I find the whole property very strange...setting the homes way back in the property means the street has a break, but with landscaping instead of a parking lot, this isn't unpleasant for the street I think, it's just strange. In any case, again you have common/shared stairs, uncovered and uncontrolled access, but with more of them. The upper deck area is stacked on top of the garages and again provides a space with level access to the homes and an outdoor space for the homes for seating, bbqs, etc.

Looking at the design in the render, I don't see why such a compromise wouldn't be possible, but it might run afoul of some idiotic FSA restrictions. The render does make the garage floors look really high though. I'm unsure if this is just a quirk of the render, or driven by the topology of the site (the rear looks like its level access) or possibly a decision made to accommodate the idiotic gargantuan commercial trucks being preferred by today's suburbanite.

In any case, all of the examples look a lot more pleasant to me than the render.

[bravado]

I can only hope that our heroic (and totally not arbitrary) local building codes can save us from that European horror…

[danbrotherston]

I can only hope that our heroic (and totally not arbitrary) local building codes can save us from that European horror…

Presumably this is sarcasm, but just because I want to make ya'll jealous, this is actually one of the less attractive parts of the neighbourhood (and I still find it frankly excellent) but here's a shot from the other side of the street.

The other corner of this intersection has a...frankly beautiful 10 story apartment building on an artificial lake that the local school sits on (yes ON).

Honestly, it's not just bike infra that makes the Netherlands great.

I wish these petrified ignorant NIMBYs could just spend a few minutes in a real mixed use neighbourhood like this. And the crazy thing is this is a highly car oriented place, parking is free and plentiful everywhere, most people have cars. It's too many cars for me, but at least it's a choice of whether to own a car.

   

[ac3r]

Another small townhouse project. 28 townhouses and 44 parking spaces for 265 Cotton Grass Street in West Kitchener by Schlegel Urban Developments and 4 Architecture.

[ijmorlan]

Another small townhouse project. 28 townhouses and 44 parking spaces for 265 Cotton Grass Street in West Kitchener by Schlegel Urban Developments and 4 Architecture.

Now that’s what I’m talking about. Nobody is going to have to shovel stairs in that development!

[neonjoe]

Another small townhouse project. 28 townhouses and 44 parking spaces for 265 Cotton Grass Street in West Kitchener by Schlegel Urban Developments and 4 Architecture.

This one will back onto Max Becker Common if I recall correctly. I think Schlegel gave up developing the entire ´Main’ Street as commercial.

[danbrotherston]

Ooof...they gave up after half a block and half that being empty.

Man, its almost as if there is something fundamentally broken about the economics of how we build our cities.

[ac3r]

Another small midrise project in the suburbs. Polocorp is proposing a small townhouse complex at 1385 Bleams Road (at the Fischer-Hallman intersection) with 8 units.

While I'd like to see more midrise projects going up in established neighbourhoods as opposed to distant suburbs, it's still good to see townhouse and similar projects going up around here.