Thursday, 22 December 2011

Sky high Toronto: Condominium Facts

By Elli Davis


Apartments are more popular than ever. As one of my prior articles discussed, hundreds of condominium projects have been launched in Toronto during the last two years and each one of them unquestionably makes a contribution to the spirit of our city. How should we handle the increasing quantity of apartments being built? What is there to understand about apartments in Toronto?

A graphic Vertical Toronto lately made public in the Star provides answers to these questions. It tells you everything you could want to know about Toronto condominiums.

Neighbourhoods

To retain its unique atmosphere and stay abreast of all of the construction and invention going on, Toronto has undertaken a few steps. Firstly, it is essential to recreate one of the most famous traits of our city รข€" the neighbourhoods, the Star claims. Making buildings is just not enough; the buildings need to connect to the community around them. How can this be done?

These days very popular shops, cafes, or cafes at street level help in keeping a community spirit alive. Add one or two community events and events for children, and the situation improves rather more. Green spaces surrounding the building won't do any harm either. In fact , to make space around a condo more pleasant to take a look at, friendlier and possibly even to cover possible failings, Toronto's urban design guidelines counsel developers to use some landscaping elements,eg trees or public art.

Glass

Perhaps the most typical feature of these super new apartments is glass. Take a look at River City 2, a hot new project that is composed of 1 or 2 12-storey glass buildings. If you consider it nonetheless , walking around a massive glass building does not sound too safe, does it? The balconies of some of these condos has been known crack, and the damaged glass might hurt somebody. The city of Toronto is nevertheless , attempting to prevent similar accidents by ordering developers to set up protection around buildings that would potentially be deadly.

There also are concerns over the lifespan of the windows. In Toronto, many developers use roughly 90 per cent windows as cladding, but if the windows do not have a lengthy lifespan, it is not a really sensible idea. According to the graphic, the average lifespan of windows in an apartment building is 35 years.

Storms

Typhoons in higher buildings can get pretty intense. Winds at the higher storeys is a lot stronger than on the ground. In stormy and wet weather, living on the 50th floor would possibly not be that pleasant, truly. High buildings, naturally, have a bigger disposition to sway if there is robust wind.

Lightning protection for high-rises isn't a requirement, but the more recent condos are often protected, and some older buildings are considering it to lower insurance risk. How often does lighting hit a building? For instance, as the graphic claims, our CN Tower is hit by lightning 75 times a year on average. Not an immaterial number, I believe.






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