Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, one of the greats among modern architecture and the inspiration behind Glasshouse’s clean, modern design, said “God is in the details”.
To demonstrate the details of its creations, Urban Capital recently hosted the Glasshouse design and construction teams – together with the equivalent teams from its Halifax and Chicago projects – in Toronto to visit two of the developments UC currently has under construction in that city. The purpose: to see and understand the level of craftsmanship and attention to detail that Urban Capital seeks to deliver to its purchasers.
At Tableau, the first stop, the group of close to twenty braved a ride up the hoist to the 36th floor and then walked down to ground, seeing at first floors where concrete had only just been poured, and by the end floors with fully completed units, i.e. the entire sequence of constructing an Urban Capital unit. From discussing the way to locate ducts so as to achieve the maximum possible volume of clean, open space, to reviewing precautions that need to be taken to protect finishes, the group looked at every aspect of unit design and delivery.
At River City Phase 2, the second stop, the teams saw an almost fully completed building, and focused on suite selections and finishes, amenities, customer service, and the process for delivering suites and dealing with warranty items.
All in all, the day was an intense indoctrination into the right way to approach condominium development and delivery, from unit planning, design and construction, to purchaser relations, and finally on to homeowner occupancy. The team had a chance to talk about the lessons learned from past developments, and solutions to overcome past challenges. The best news is that everyone took the lessons from Urban Capital’s experience of building thousands of urban condominiums in some of Canada’s strongest markets, and from dealing with thousands of home purchasers, so that they could now be applied for the benefit of Glasshouse Lofts.
So maybe on this particular trip it wasn’t God that was in the details, it was just the Glasshouse team. But it felt good to be there.
