COVER STORY, JANUARY 2008

DESIGN INTERVENTION
Architects work to boost integration and sustainability.
Brian A. Lee

Integration and sustainability are two major goals of western architects, who have designs on improving commercial real estate in the region.

The More The Merrier

Greg Lyon, principal and partner at KTGY Group Inc., based in Irvine, California, is seeing increased integration, with a New Urbanist flavor, in today’s retail developments.

“The most major trend that we are seeing in the West is the lifestyle center that combines retail, entertainment, office, residential and hospitality to create a high-density, urban resort environment that has both a local and regional draw,” he says. “Cities are now willing to add non-theater entertainment and hospitality components such as a night club or live entertainment venues to their mixed-use projects, which previously only consisted of a combination of retail, office and/or residential components.”

Makar Properties’s Pacific City, a 31-acre, mixed-use development designed by KTGY Group in Huntington Beach, California, will bring together high-end retail, dining and entertainment, Class A office space, upscale residential housing, and a boutique hotel.

A good example is Makar Properties LLC’s Pacific City, a 31-acre, master-planned development in Huntington Beach, California, that will feature high-end retail offerings, dining and entertainment, Class A office space, upscale residential housing and a boutique hotel. The retail and parking structure of the KTGY Group design is slated for completion in spring 2009.

“Pacific City’s retail, entertainment, office and residential components capitalize on the spectacular ocean views throughout the project and successfully integrate with the hospitality, gathering places, open spaces, public art, green belts and central park,” says Lyon.

The KTGY Group principal, who is based in the firm’s Santa Monica, California, office, said an emerging architectural trend is the blurring of the line between retail/entertainment and advertising.

“Think of New York’s Time Square, where the signage and graphics used throughout the project transforms itself into an ever-changing canvas of graphic content and messaging,” says Lyon. “Both state-of-the-art animated and passive technologies can be utilized to infuse the shopping center environment with a thrilling, high-energy and ever-changing content, adding multidimensional layers to the shopping center.”
Core Values

Building on the integration theme above, Kevin James, a principal in MCG Architecture’s San Francisco office, says major design trends in the West as well as the rest of nation are about developing community cores.

“These areas are identified as New Urbanism, revitalized downtown districts, mixed-use overlays, etc.,” says James. “They focus on the implementation of strategies that create a variety of building types, increasing density and providing convenient access with a variety of transit options.”

As a result, demands on retail and other commercial design are increasingly complex and evolving. Architectural solutions that address the local communities’ demands are valued over the old suburban model that followed a series of guidelines promoting division and separation, which resulted in low-rise sprawl.

James says, “Modern design solutions have to address place-making and create a more intimate feeling than can be seen in traditional town planning. There are increased connections to the surrounding neighborhoods rather than restrictive signalized access points. Also, the inclusion of a variety of service and retail options, as well as workplace and living units, generate vibrant activity throughout all the various time zones existing within a day. It encourages access and participation thereby reducing the dependence on the automobile and conserving one of the most precious commodities — time.”

Opening in spring 2008, The Fountains lifestyle center in Roseville, California, is designed to be a true community center with its mix of uses and attractive gathering places.

The Fountains lifestyle center, a MCG-designed mixed-use development opening in spring 2008 in Roseville, California, embodies the architectural principles meant to bring people together in a true community center.

“We have incorporated a variety of commercial, retail and office uses within the overall development,” says James. “The integration of hospitality and community within the project has been designed to encourage involvement by the local residences and surrounding businesses. It is the intent of the high-quality design and materials, as well as the tenant make-up, to reach out to the surrounding population to improve the quality of life. The provision of a unique communal space and gathering options inclusive of visual attractions, art displays and children’s playgrounds have all been carefully placed and detailed to provide this development with the opportunity of becoming the heart of Roseville’s commerce and recreation.”

Founded in 1927 and headquartered in Pasadena, California, MCG Architecture has a design portfolio that is nearly two-thirds retail.

Sustainable Is Attainable – Just Ask NASA

Dan Heinfeld, president of Irvine, California-based LPA Inc., emphasizes that sustainable design is the most substantial commercial design trend in the West right now.

“We are in the first stages of sustainable design,” he says. “In many ways, it is the conservation stage where we are being more mindful. The future will require projects to produce the energy that they use, create zero waste and have/require a much higher degree of sustainability in all areas.”

NASA's Flight Projects Center, an LPA Inc. design

The 200,000-square-foot Flight Projects Center, which the nearly 43-year-old company designed on the campus of the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California, will be NASA’s second LEED project and the largest in its history, according to Heinfeld. The $60 million project broke ground in February 2007.

Says MCG’s James, “Many of the strategies previously described will assist the designer in proposing solutions for this energy and conservation-minded approach. Sprawl, which has already shown itself to be unsustainable, consumes land at an aggressive rate and generates traffic conditions that impose countless hours of waste and pollution. Reduction in automobile dependency, proximity of work and recreation options are in themselves cost-cutting. Adaptive reuse of existing facilities rather than a single-use sprawl is more supportive of environmental issues. Good design should equal healthy livability."

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