Bryn Davidson @Lanefab
@Lanefab
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Δ Zoning + Single Stair = The Future of Green Building. @oori_arch & @Lanefab. Passivhaus/NetZero B.Eng/M.Arch Bluesky: https://t.co/IsydJDBCMA
Vancouver, BC
Joined December 2009
Look how few cars there are driving on this road . We should definitely draw broad conclusions about how much people like cars from this one photo of a partially completed road network
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A typical North American city’s bike infrastructure:
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Single stair building codes unlock the potential for small lot multifamily housing that goes beyond what you can do with a multiplex or townhouse. Instead of townhouses where every unit loses 150sf to a stair, you have a nice central stair serving 6 to 24 homes.
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A fully accessible 6 plex with shared roof deck and a big shared green space in back. Apartment density (1.4FSR)
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Happy Halloween!. Here are some spooky single lot, single stair buildings. 3 to 6 storeys, 6 to 24 units. 33' and 50' lots, with (and without) on-site parking.
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Last week we explored a 6 storey, single-lot, single-stair apartment building concept, to see what might be unlocked by building and zoning code reform. Here's the same thing, but on a 33x122. (6x) 1Brs + (6x) 2Brs.No on site parking. Accessible, w elevator.50% site coverage
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Check this out. We did some energy modelling. The 'tiny townhouse' that is huddled between its neighbours needs 60% less energy to stay warm vs. the freestanding version. 60%!
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More tinkering with a 33' lot 6 plex, single stair. We can get the units all stacked with the same plans. Could be built for a fairly modest budget, w limited excavation. This version has 2 accessible units, but a residential elevator could be added for about 50k.
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Every morning I walk the kiddo to school through Dude Chilling park. Today I saw that his mom's memorial bench had been installed over the weekend. It's a nice surprise. Thanks to everyone who helped make this happen.
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Contemplating build costs in Vancouver this afternoon. so here's some thinking out loud. In 2010 we built the first lane house in Vancouver for ~$220k (700sf). This included all cost for design / permits / all construction.
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Well. just because yesterday I was curious: . what might a ~6 storey passive house w no underground parking, a mix of units sizes, and only 50% site coverage look like if it replaced two mid-block 50' single fam lots on the west side.
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Still thinking a lot about how to do infill in existing single fam 'hoods. This is an accessible / passive house 8 plex that keeps the adjacent side yards, and is only 50% site coverage. Homes are ~1000sf. A 10 plex version might have 4x 500sf units on the ground floor.
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#Vancouver has vast swaths of 50' wide 'single family' lots. Instead of replacing character bungalows with big single family homes >>> we could be doing solar powered #Passivhaus 8 plexes. 8 new 'Family size' homes with bike garages and built in climate resiliency.
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Getting rid of the side yards means you can keep a big back yard. Getting rid of the underground parkade means you can infiltrate storm water, and reduce the embodied carbon used in the construction. 6 'family sized' 1500sf flats w shared roof deck and rear yard
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Sure, Copenhagen is a great model. If Vancouver allowed 6 storeys everywhere without rezoning, and revised its building code to allow those 6 storey apartments to be built without deep floor-plates and hallways and parkades. then sure. Absent that. towers.
"While Vancouver is increasingly turning to towers to achieve housing supply, Copenhagen limits the spread of towers, preferring to stick to lower density.".Both cities growing, but Copenhagen designs for all classes. Via @goldinyvr #VanRE #vanpoli .
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Single lot, single stair, Six Plex. No parking (but space for 3 on the street). 50x122 Lot, 1.5FSR. 400A Elec service. Low cost "LULA" elevator. 1000sf and 1300sf flats with shared backyard. This could be a great, lower cost, family option in the city.
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Working on ideas for the next "Vancouver Special" .a 5-plex on a 50x122 lot. * Accessible, with individual elevators .* Passivhaus / Net Zero.* In-suite cargo bike parking / at-grade entrances.* 1 Below-market LWH unit.* 4 Townhouses with .private yards /roof decks / parking
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5 pages of rules just dedicated to single family ‘exterior design’ in @CityofVancouver RS-7 zoning. This is just about looks. Not affordability. Not climate change. Not accessibility. Looks. This is how you create a housing crisis.
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Single lot, single stair apartment buildings. Incremental infill using existing infrastructure.for the places where you don't want to (or don't need to) do whole-neighbourhood redevelopment. Housing, trees, green space, accessibility. This is what missing middle should be.
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Ok. We're going to see if the city will let us do a wee little beast on our tiny property. Mostly because I love spending time and money and sanity on odd little things that make no sense financially. Odds are slim, but, nothing ventured. 1.4FSR. Footprint: 9'x28'
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If you want (3x) 3Br + (3x) 2Br, each with a parking, and only 50% site coverage. It's doable with the single stair and lift pushed to the front. This can work with, or without, a lane.
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As @christineeboyle pointed out at council today, it is possible to have both density AND permeable green space. but we have to be willing to let go of the underground parking and the desire to have an apartment building that looks like a 'house'
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Perhaps I'll call it a 'fab 4'. Passive house 4 plex on 33' lot(s). Accessible flats w elevator. 1400sf family sized 3br units. Shared roof deck and yard. ~1.4FSR. Could contribute 500k to $1m toward city's affordable housing fund.
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@pmcondon2 Now show a picture of the single family areas where 'Not-Adding-Density' also led to the most expensive housing. I know the point you're trying to make but I'm not sure this line of argument is helping make it.
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Ok - .here's a first-draft four-plex at 1.0FSR on a 33x122 lot. 2 large units + two smaller ground floor homes (with yards). Each of the larger units get a parking space at the rear, a smaller yard, and a roof deck.
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“Canadians need homes, not just housing” . the @globeandmail Ed board endorses single-stair, six storey zoning and code reforms for ‘family-sized’ missing middle housing .
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In case you were wondering what the provincial rules <might> allow on a 33' lot, within 400m of a bus route:. Here's a 6 plex (740sf, 1br + den flats). 1.5FSR, ~50% site coverage. This version has a roof deck, big balconies, and an elevator but those wouldn't be required.
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Speaking of zoning changes. here are a couple of the plex projects we're pushing toward DP submission in the next month
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How small-frontage 8 and 16 plexes might fit into 33' single family areas.
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We had a new inspector tell us that one of our infill dwelling projects needed to have a flat exterior window trim more than 1" wide. and holy #$% I quickly forget just how far down the rabbit hole of character micromanagement the whole north american planning profession went.
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Today would have been my wife’s 47th birthday. * please encourage the women in your life to get screened for breast cancer . * please enjoy the Central Valley greenway, expanded skytrain stations and other regional projects she worked on as an urban planner for Translink . ❤️
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Yesterday we gathered to toast an urban planner who was taken from us 2 years ago. She was an advocate for tearing down freeways, building a 100% accessible transit system and connecting bikeways across the region. She was also my kid’s mom. We’re thinking of her this weekend.
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We should make neighbourhood grocery stores in single family zones legal again.
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Eby’s NDP has been a North American leader in zoning reform. Horgan’s NDP put some demand side controls in place but was too timid to take on zoning. The liberals did nothing but watch land prices balloon. Globe: Don’t demolish progress on housing policy
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Hey politicians pushing ‘prefab’ as a way to help the housing crisis… . that’s great! but how ‘bout looking at your zoning first? . Simple, predictable zoning can deliver 10x the cost and time savings of prefab. (Says the guy who literally has prefab in his twitter name).
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Why 'single lot'?.1. you don't have to compel adjacent owners to sell by offering much higher land prices vs what you might pay for a single lot .2. existing owners can develop with existing lower land cost .3. You get a mix of building types and ages .4. Change is incremental.
Happy Halloween!. Here are some spooky single lot, single stair buildings. 3 to 6 storeys, 6 to 24 units. 33' and 50' lots, with (and without) on-site parking.
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Hey municipal councillors and planners: . if your city makes it harder to get a permit for a lane house than for a mansion, you're doing it wrong.
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Single stair small lot apartment building - this is what comes after plexes.
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In case you're curious, these are the city fees for a 2900sf net zero duplex on a 33' Vancouver lot.
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What Vancouver needs: ground oriented 4 plex w family sized units, and existing residents as co-developer. Apartment level density on 1 lot
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One of these is easy and lucrative: it can get a building permit relatively quickly, with no rezoning, no n’hood consultation, minimal climate performance, and no affordability req. The other is a 12 unit co-housing project being built to the passive house efficiency standard.
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Voted for @bcndp today because the last year and a half with @Dave_Eby and @KahlonRav has seen a huge shift in housing and zoning reform across the province. If it was still Horgan I would have gone @BCGreens - as the NDP continues to be soft on climate imho
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Imagining the Bike Access Block. An accessible single stair "point access block" with at grade e-bike garages. 2FSR. #Passivhaus
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Amazing! . Single-Stair, Small Lot Apartment Buildings are the secret ingredient in great urbanism all around the world. It’s time for Canada to catch up.
Another important step - finding ways to build differently. ✅. The province will lead a discussion over the next year to update the BC Building Code to explore enabling single egress stairs, that will allow some buildings to be built more efficiently. 👉🏾
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You can build a 30,000 sf single family house in vancouver without any affordability requirements or community amenity contribution. But sure, let’s pick apart the cost of a tiny house pilot project.
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Classic @CityofVancouver :. They tell us our permit is ready to issue, but then come back and tell us that they have planted a tree in front of the property during the time of permit review, so we are now required to spend time and money revising our survey and arborist reports.
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Shaughnessy (FSD) vs the Olympic Village. as a rough sense of scale
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Took a quick look at what 1.0 FSR might look like on a typical 50' Vancouver lot. Many ways to do it, but this is:. (4x) 1500sf townhouses with yards and roof decks. Option for parking space or cargo bike garage. Basement could potentially be lock off suite.
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I design and build efficient single family houses, and many sf homes are wonderful spacious places, but I always think about this chart when we talk about what kind of big steps need to be taken to keep the climate livable. There's no climate action without zoning reform.
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Trying to build an at-grade, accessible, low carbon duplex in this city is like pulling teeth. Every @#$% design guideline fetishizes basements and pre-determined 1920 aesthetics. It's so @#$% infuriating and backward looking.
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Almost done converting this garage to a two storey lane house. Yes, it would have been easier to simply demo it and rebuild 😜
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Ok, so not every infill project will have a lane, .or be completely car-lite. so here's our 6 storey single-stair accessible plex, .re-imagined with 8 at-grade parking spaces (incl street parking) + 6 ebike garages, and green space (so no new sewer mains required).
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I think we need to talk about “Growth pays for growth” . It feels like another one of those axioms of North American urban planning that needs to be be questioned.
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I’m sorry but I’m going to have to rant a bit. PoCo has had the opportunity to provide amazing family sized ground oriented housing (in the form of coach houses) but their own rules are so limiting that they’re almost useless. 🧵.
The Province’s one-size fits all housing order demands an overwhelming focus on studio/one bedroom units which it defines as 470 sqft & is already being cited by developers who’ve disliked our efforts to see family-friendly, livable homes.
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Text from a client living in one of our recently completed Step 5 (~passive house) homes:. “. Just letting you know that despite the solar exposure, the house remains nice and cool. We have yet to turn on the AC 👍”.
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Not equivalent . Hornby st. separated bike lanes .vs 'Off Broadway' Bike street
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Our tiny lot goes to the BOV this afternoon… wish us luck! . Thanks to everyone who has written to express their support.
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So I'm hearing that Burnaby planners are suggesting $100k in development fees for EACH additional unit in a multiplex. So, a 4plex would be 300k in fees PLUS building permit fees (60k?) for $360k in fees?. Completely insane. And Burnaby is not alone.
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Submitted permit drawings yesterday for the #DalebrightPassiveHouse in @burnaby . We’ll start hazmat remediation soon and then deconstruction with Unbuilders. The aim is to turn the nice structural lumber in the existing house into cladding & stair treads for the new house.
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Continuing to think about what the next 'vancouver special' should be. This is 2FSR, single stair flats. 50% site coverage with permeable area / trees. Anywhere from 7 to 14 homes. Passive house efficiency, with a nice bike garage and a few parking spots for electric car share.
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Strolled past this new project in the 'hood. Small multifamily bldgs like this should be allowed everywhere in the city.
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The infrastructure cost (sewer, power, water, roads, parks, schools) is so much higher per household in the single family zones. Those areas are highly subsidized by the denser parts of the city. “Growth has been paying for non-growth”.
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Hey planners: .Kill your minimum lots sizes. Just delete them entirely. Estate zoning isn’t helping anyone.
Starting today, Austin (326sq mi) will lower the minimum lot size required to build a home to 1,800sf in many parts of the City. In Greater Boston, we still have communities that require 40,000 - 80,000sf lots to build a home.
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That is an incredibly disappointing and weak showing from the mayor and ABC, especially if the flimsy rationale is “staff time and economics”. It seems @KahlonRav and the province still have some work to do overcoming the Wealth-Exclusion-Inertia complex in Vancouver.
UPDATE: Mayor Sim and ABC killed my motion to add badly needed housing in Shaughnessy. 😩. So much for taking the housing crisis seriously. So many excuses, so little tangible action from this Council. #VanPoli
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#E37thPassiveHouse. Before: .Draughty, asbestos laden, 'character' home that burned copious quantities of fossil fuels, for decades. After: .New all-electric passive house with a secondary suite. This is what it looks like when two low-carbon dwellings replace one climate hog.
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3 to 8 storey passive house w biomass construction is the ‘greenest building’ . …not a 1910 bungalow that’s been burning oil and gas for a century and isn’t dense enough to support local shops and transit . Time to recognize that the existing building isn’t always the ‘greenest’.
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Imagine @CityofVancouver corner lane houses being allowed to be little storefronts like this.
The fact that it's impossible to walk somewhere as simple as a coffee shop nearly anywhere in the US, because we've made it illegal, is really one of the craziest things about modern America. We have to build walkable cities!
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Before and after. The E.59th Lane House was built from the bones of an existing garage in East Vancouver.
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The recent single-stair code change in BC made a range of new housing types viable (in theory) but we now need zoning to reflect the potential. Let’s allow up to 3 to 6 floors, single stair, 50% site coverage, no min parking req, as an outright use.
Tinkering with a single stair 6 plex on a 33' lot. (3x) 1Br and (3x) 2b flats per lot. Roughly 1 to 1.5FSR depending what you count. This is with a 5' wide stair.
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There once was a time in Vancouver when we didn’t think we should put all the apartments on busy corridors - instead those bustling streets were home to a diversity of small shops, and we built up the housing in the adjacent quiet blocks.
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I can’t believe they have to go through a development permit process just to get a table on the sidewalk. @Brassneckbrew .#vancouver
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New item for my zoning wishlist - the Solar Pergola. You can combine Net Zero solar with roof decks / gardens. A bit of sun, a bit of shade.
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Just enough space for a single stair and elevator. fyi This is "Copenhagen / Paris" -esque density for those who are arguing for that as an alternative to towers.
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Several layers, and specific sequences, to do a passive house door threshold so that it's airtight and minimizes thermal bridges. Animations help the guys on site to plan ahead.
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Love the ride from Swartz Bay ferry terminal to Victoria on the Lochside path. Wish there was a better bike+transit connection on the vancouver side.
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A thread of project photos; because I do sometimes get tired of talking about zoning and the climate crisis. Here’s the E57th solar lane house.
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Yesterday we went for a nice sunny ride on the Central Valley Greenway. 🚲. Today we’re remembering my late wife, who was both an awesome mom and a cycling advocate. Her many years as a planner at TransLink were spent working on the CVG and other regional projects.
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Coming soon: .an 8’ wide sign for a 9’ wide property.
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'Single family' zoning was invented as an explicit tool for racial and class exclusion, starting with Berkeley in 1916 and spreading across north america in the early 20th century. Cities are starting to map this history, and every city needs these maps:.
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Half tempted to put on the snow pants and go lounge in those patio chairs
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This floor plan could be stacked on a typical vancouver residential lot. we just need the code reforms to allow Single Stair Apartment Buildings.
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"Engagement completed as part of Vancouver Plan indicates that public support for character retention is lower than support for other public objectives, such as adding housing choice in more neighbourhoods and responding to climate change, are growing in importance" . CoV Staff.
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Vancouver’s single family n’hoods are lovely and leafy, but the tax density is a fraction of the adjacent urban areas. Cities are have lost out on a whole lot of tax revenue during the many decades they’ve used zoning to keep density artificially low.
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Contemplating the extent to which half the planet will become completely unlivable in coming years . meanwhile, at work, researching whether an existing house’s trim detail means it has ‘enough character merit’ that we’re allowed to add a bathroom . #planning .#priorities.
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Just found out it's #WorldCancerDay . So. here's a pic of the kiddo's mom, who we lost to triple negative breast cancer in 2018. but who still wanted to go camping in her last weeks despite not being able to walk or lie down. Make every moment count.
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The blind spot is a bit smaller with this guy versus an F150
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It's not the prettiest thing yet, but this is one way the duplex bylaw could let us do a passive house 4 plex in the same space as a typical single family house. With some tweaks (and a lane house) this could be the new Vancouver Special.
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The 7yr old put together a Vancouver poster for visiting family. I think it’s kind of awesome @VIAwesome
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Moving beyond the ‘granny cottage’. Coach houses and lane houses can now be “family sized” in Vancouver and Burnaby. Other cities:. This is the simplest way to provide ground oriented family size housing >> just fix the FSR and size cap in your zoning.
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Ok. Construction of the tiny townhouse prototype is about to kick off!. We've got prefab panels from @InsulspanSIPS , windows from @InnotechWindows , skylights from @VELUXCanada and an HRV coming from @smallplanetws . @TheTyee @pmcondon2
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Accounting for inflation that 220k would be about 300k today. Accounting for the higher end specs and features we do as standard today, it would bump up to 350k. In 2024 the "all in" cost is ~$600k (design+permits+construction). so about 18k per year cost escalation, roughly.
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Moving toward the final stages of the bowen island house.
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