When we think about the times that we're in right now,
I think design has a very powerful way of affecting change.
As designers we've always approached... a very key element, that if you're going to design things,
they should be built to last. It's just sort of an underpinning of what our sort of design tenants
are all about. It's obviously reinforced by the fact that we're living in a building that's 52
years old that surprises us every single day about all of its unique functions but
also its unique beauty. And then Goodee which is the marketplace that we launched about
less than two years ago. The whole idea of Goodee was to create a space or a destination for
products that spoke to things that would last for a long time. And so to think of this building as
being in a lot of ways the genesis of where those ideas came from, it's wildly exciting to
be doing that in business now and reinforcing those ideals in our business.
The best design usually solves a significant problem and it's how are we going to deal with with having this
many people in cities and us also having to always reimagine how will people cohabitate.
Moshe Safdie was already thinking about the way we were going to live in the future
and then you think about that now — I'm not sure that the buildings that are being created, as a
general statement, are thinking about the way that we're going to live in the future and I
think a lot of people are now finding, not just you know amidst the pandemic, but even after
where we are right now that their spaces are not necessarily livable for these times
and probably were not that livable for the times independent of whether there was a pandemic or not.
How will we live together in the future, you know, how do we connect
as humans? And we see it every single day, when you're walking across your neighbour
here but I think they're just very powerful ideas for all architects, all designers to
start rethinking — where the home is more than a product as well too.
When you live in design and as we have for so many years, it challenges us in our day-to-day efforts of curating
other products that you would say, you know, 'in 53 years is this still going to be important?' and I
think that that's really a wonderful additional kind of brain muscle to be able to use because
your life experience on a day-to-day basis is continually reminding us how important design
is in our lives and that really translates into what we do in the company as well too
We feel quite blessed to be in a building like this that has so much history and and has so many
shared stories and I guess in our own way we're continuing that fabric of a narrative as well too.