Design is the Ultimate Edge
Architecture can be one of the few factors differentiating your asset from the one down the street. Ignore the power of elegant and function and you are no more than a commodity. Great design is a timeless advantage.
Design is best defined at the margins--the margins of materials, how they meet, how they are daylit, how they are located where people can touch and feel them.
Design is more reductive than it is additive. You know you are there when you can't take anything else away.
I spent today getting my head around the numbers for a acre and a half site that is the perfect mixed use, sustainable, walkable location. Design will be a significant part of my message for this proposal.
A lot of design people never really get. For example--every mixed use plan in the markets I work in is a parking plan, first and foremost. How you:
- get the cars off the street,
- get the people out of the cars,
- get them into their place of refuge (home), or
- get them into the mixing chamber (retail/restaurant),
- get them back in their cars, and then
- back out on the street
safely, securely, and with the sense of place that leads them to the next decanting point.
I still am struggling with this site--getting the parking to work. Every plan is a parking plan...every plan is a parking plan. And a significant part of the costs--an underground parking space is $35 to $50K to build.
