Trends suggest that condos more stock-like asset, than a dwelling

By
Haytham Nawaz
-
0
566
Brutalism is the architecture of democracy, it should guide forward-thinking culture today Haytham Nawaz September 20, 2022 Brutalism was a product of the post-war era in Britain, so entangled in the idea of rebuilding in service of a growing public that it would spread worldwide. The spirit of functionality, affordability and ultimately democracy at the heart of this 20th century architecture should be a guiding principle for a forward-thinking culture. The reinforced concrete that dominated the visual language of wartime bases, bunkers and flak towers during the war would be recast in the vision of a welfare state looking to construct a bright future for its masses. Brutalism would become a global phenomenon representing the radical break from a destructive past. In India, for example, this architecture would coincide with the break from British colonial rule in 1947. In fact, the country’s Palace of Assembly built in 1962 in Chandigarh would become a distinctively brutalist structure worldwide. Here at Brock, the Arthur Schmon Tower is the school’s flagship building and as brutalist as it gets. Decked out in drab concrete, protruding columnar pillars and sharp, externally visible rectilinear sections with telecom hardware extending out its top—it emphasizes a guiding principle of brutalism: unabashed functionality-on-display over purely aesthetic features. The Schmon Tower was designed by Gordon S. Adamson & Associates and built in 1968. Gordon Sinclair Adamson, an Ontarian, would come to be well known in southern Ontario for ushering in this post-war modernist architecture that had already infected a large part of the United Kingdom. The architectonics of modernism had so much to do with progress and breaking with tradition after the unimaginable global destructiveness of two global wars. The more popular modernism emerging after WWII is why relics of this austere architecture can be seen today in the design of libraries, hospitals, governmental institutions, educational institutions, public housing blocs and other publicly oriented buildings. The post-war consensus dovetailed nicely with brutalist design because it focused on rebuilding the social and material fabric of a damaged nation. Up until the 80s, brutalism was the material backdrop to a societal gestalt worthy of imitation in combating the liquid, sterile, standardized, and often anti-homeless postmodern architecture dominating our 21st century. The late cultural critic Mark Fisher in his quasi-autobiography, Ghosts of My Life, aligns brutalist architecture with the broader popular modernism that has disappeared, only to re-emerge in a kind of postmodern nostalgia-fetish; the formalization of nostalgia that’s part and parcel of what he, following Jacques Derrida’s original coinage in Specters of Marx, calls “hauntology.” He writes: “What’s at stake in 21st century hauntology is not the disappearance of a particular object. What has vanished is a tendency, a virtual trajectory. One name for this tendency is popular modernism. The cultural ecology that I referred to above — the music press and the more challenging parts of public service broadcasting — were part of a UK popular modernism, as were postpunk, brutalist architecture, Penguin paperbacks and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.” With the current abundance of a corporate, hypersleek glass and steel look — most horrendously seen in the ever-multiplying presence of garish condominiums in urban centers — brutalist architecture is radical in comparison in that it pushes back against the planned-obsolescence that articulates itself in not only tech products but contemporary architecture. Brutalism should be looked at as a model for what societal infrastructure should aim for: functionality, longevity and public oriented.

As of late, the activity in the condominium market is symptomatic of the utter failure of the government to address the housing crisis.

The condominium became commonplace in the residential market around the 1980s. It is now currently the most constructed dwelling-type in Toronto as well as consisting of more than half of new Canadian homes being built in the province right now. Recent developments in the housing market have only emphasized how condos are increasingly used as an investment and effectively foreclosing possibilities of equitable housing alternatives.

Throughout the summer, the housing market saw a downturn, likely a result of the Bank of Canada raising the benchmark interest rate to 2.25 points in March. Due to this, a large number of dwellings up for sale were either relisted or outright unlisted. The unlisting of condos, in particular, saw a 643 per cent increase from January to June. On top of this, condo rentals saw a record average of $2,806 in Toronto during August 2022. These are staggering figures.

The question that should be answered considering the proliferation of condo construction, an uptick in homelessness among Canadians and home prices in the country more than doubling since 1997, is how could this be acceptable?

This is a rather easy question to answer: property owners are capitalizing on the rising cost of housing.

However, there are more complex sides to this phenomenon worth considering in addressing the problem, given that public housing seems to be off the table for the foreseeable future.

Mathew Soules, professor of architecture and urban design at the University of British Columbia, centres his work around how finance capitalism affects the way dwellings are built, when they’re built and how they function in relation to trends in the market. He argues that condos are built spaces that follow the amplitude of boom-bust cycles and are used to store wealth rather than for use. This accounts for the mass vacancies in a bust cycle as seen in Toronto for the last several months.

Soules mentions in the interview linked above how Toronto is implementing a vacancy tax that takes effect in 2023 which taxes one per cent of a dwelling’s Current Assessed Value when deemed vacant at the end of every fiscal year. This is a step in the right direction but doesn’t go far enough.

One thing Soules mentions is how in the very design of condos you see a kind of standardization that makes them more liquidable assets. In the same way every dollar bill has to look like an exact replica of each other to be exchangeable, condos are increasingly homogeneous in their structure and aesthetics so as to be more easily exchangeable. Another side to this manifest exchangeability which Soules describes, is the way developers of condos are purposefully cutting out the construction of courtyards, hallways and other public spaces in condominium buildings, resulting in extremely tall, slender buildings where an elevator basically deposits you into your unit.

This has to do with making these condos purveyors of liquidity as the labor of social entanglement which often comes from bumping into neighbors in hallways and courtyards disrupts a frictionless experience which is part and parcel of the spatial logic of financialized housing.

While this situation can appear hopeless, if we start from the premise that housing should be a human right, then the condo market is in desperate need of problematization in the fight for housing equity.

Previous articleBrutalism is the architecture of democracy, it should guide forward-thinking culture today
Next articleWater should not be a commodity
Haytham Nawaz
Haytham Nawaz
Haytham Nawaz is the previous editor-in-chief at The Brock Press. He was an editor in the organization for 4 years. As the former Chair of the organization's board, Nawaz was a lead architect behind the shift of The Brock Press' administrative structure to a worker-cooperative model wherein every employee in the organization is given a share which allows them to more directly influence the direction of the company and its internal policies and practices. This change reflected a set of values Nawaz holds deep and which he expresses in other avenues of his professional life including in his academic career where he has published work on philosophy, politics and language. Nawaz is a fifth-year English major at Brock University where he plans to do his post-graduate work using a Marxist lens to study the psychodynamics of worker-cooperative political-economy. Outside work, Nawaz enjoys reading, debating politics, classic cinema and engaging in forms of activism.
Mail Twitter