The Globe and Mail

Of the several condominium schemes I wrote up last year, none was more exciting than N-Blox. This striking six-storey building was designed for a site in Toronto's Little Italy by Roland Rom Colthoff and Richard Witt, then with Quadrangle Architects. (They've since gone out on their own.) It had a handsome façade: a dramatically asymmetrical composition that expressed the interlocking and overhanging units within. But the best things about it were the units themselves: house-sized apartments, with prices to match ($700,000 to $1.5-million), pitched to deep-dyed downtowers. Hearing nothing more about N-Blox after I did the column about it, I began to wonder what happened to the project. So, last week, I dropped by the downtown office of its developer, Jim Neilas, 37, to find out. The story he told me says a lot - alas! - about the readiness of Toronto condo buyers to embrace advanced architecture and family-sized apartments.