A Place To Grow

Architecture should keep youngsters in mind

By Ted McIntyre with architect David Anand Peterson

It’s 9 a.m. at the 2019 Interior Design Show at Metro Toronto Convention Centre and David Anand Peterson is about to open some eyes from the podium of his “Future of the Family Home” seminar.

“We are social animals and how we live is important to our health,” Peterson observes. “As a result, our architecture needs to be shaped by social considerations if we’re to contend with the growing mental health problems seen in today’s children.” As an architectural student in Toronto, Peterson (of the self-named David Peterson Architect firm) was encouraged to study abroad. Time in Holland left him thinking that “housing, even when speculative, can be the best of what we make—more valuable than museums or civic building one-offs. It can best reflect society’s values, since we make so much of it.”

And it can change children’s lives.

OHB: You say the trend in construction in the GTA is not conducive to child development.

David Peterson: Yes. In Toronto, 66% of households with children live in buildings that are five storeys and higher, according to the 2011 census. Today’s numbers are certainly higher than that.

If we’re going to be successful in making good places to live, our social lives need to give shape to the things we need—not the other way around, where design dictates how we behave.

The City of Toronto did a study of families in high-rise conditions entitled “Growing Up Vertical.” When they interviewed parents, the common desire was for more space and storage. When they asked the children, it was a different story. They wanted places to play face-to-face with friends, places to hang out.

Is there’s a link between play and mental health?

There’s a quote in The Guardian from UK researchers petitioning parliament for change in 2016: “If children are to develop the self-regulation and emotional resilience required to thrive in modern technological culture, they need unhurried engagement with caring adults and plenty of selfdirected outdoor play, especially during their early years (0–7). Without action, our children’s physical and mental health will continue to deteriorate.”

We’ve made the mistake of thinking, “If we’ve signed kids up for sports activities, their physical needs are being met.” But the research says they’re not really playing if adults are supervising and measuring outcomes.

And while many condo playrooms mean well, they aren’t the right solution. A room with brightly coloured toys is not what’s enticing kids to play.

There’s also increasing depression among kids aged 12-17. They’re suffering from social isolation, with increased screentime being a big factor.

We can’t combat all that, but we can provide safe places to be outdoors.

When I look at design elements that determine how frequently kids get together, the first is spacial adjacency: where kids live and where they will play. Can they go in and out easily? In my seminar, I show a circa-1980 apartment tower at Kipling Avenue side by side with Mississauga’s modern Absolute Condo towers. Here’s the trap we fall into: As an adult, we see these buildings as being completely different, but both belong to the same social typography, in that the access to play is exactly the same: a requirement to be accompanied by an adult to a park area up to 36 metres away (not including the distance up and down the elevators). Compare that to the Via Verde project in New York, with landscaped rooftops—trees, shrubs—that terrace down to the ground level. There are vegetable gardens and spaces enclosed by greenery. They provide ideal spots for youngsters to play while adults chat.

It’s what a true courtyard should be: an enclosed, secure space that becomes an essential part of the building. Those areas should actually be designed first, before the rest of the building!

You’ve designed a similar, secure setting?

One example is our six-storey Ritchie Courtyard Condo in Toronto’s west end, where all 39 units face the courtyard. Outdoor areas with grasses, trees and water allow residents to enjoy the changing of the seasons.

I wanted to see how families were living there, so I moved my office into the fourth floor of the building, and I saw this pattern occurring: kids arriving home after school, getting together. Their parents were not in the picture, but they could see and hear their children in that courtyard.

Is that the optimal size for a courtyard development?

There is a missing middle. We can make buildings that are four to six storeys tall—where you’re able to recognize most residents’ faces and there are few strangers—that fit well into established neighbourhoods. C-shaped, where you can access units off that courtyard, or donut-shaped, where you walk through the building into the courtyard space in the middle.

The key to creating that space without sacrificing gross floor area is pushing the building out to its property lines. At Ritchie, it was possible because two sides were already industrial, one was a street and the fourth was essentially the backyard of residential properties. So the courtyard is enclosed on three sides by the building and one side landscape. So any kids out there will be contained in that space.

What needs to change to encourage more of that?

We need more city staff becoming accustomed to different types of variances. I’d get rid of this idea that Toronto has to have angular planes against certain properties, and allow for shorter buildings—but push them out to the property lines.

And if we reduce parking requirements, you create more opportunity for landscape.

What about philisophical changes?

Take the residences bordering Oakridge Park on Danforth Ave. There’s greenspace behind on either side, but homeowners aren’t treating it like an amenity; they’re walling themselves in and preventing access to the park. Most don’t even have backyard gates! The city has many spaces like that.

So yes, it’s about attitudes. No one in the seminar room today grew up in a courtyard building, but they’re popular throughout the world. And Toronto is increasingly taking on typologies that come from other places.

We haven’t invested in thinking through that problem. I think the value of those Oakride Park homes would actually go way up if there were more of a shared greenspace. And there can be a neighbourhood-watch effect, with homes on either side looking into the park area.

I know privacy is very important to people. But my strong feeling is that we do projects like the Ritchie condos so little that we have too few examples to really know any better. But it becomes an amenity if you do it well. And there are lots of ways to design buildings and landscapes to mediate the transition between property lines and get the best of both worlds, the smallest of which is a porch. Anyone standing on your porch knows they’re in your space.

The fact is, kids connect better when they’re not fenced in their own little yards. And wildlife prefer it too.

Addressing families looking to buy a home, Peter Gray says, “Focus more on the quality of the neighbourhood as a place to play. A neighbourhood of huge houses, big yards and high test scores, but where there are no kids outside playing together, is not a good place for your child.”

How do you convince both buyers and builders?

The value at the Ritchie condos couldn’t be understood in the floorplan. But after it was built, you could see the benefit of facing units in the right direction and what it looks like with the courtyard working.

They still sold really quickly. But then they had the highest resale value in the entire city!