At Method, our focus is on building and revitalizing communities through design. People crave a sense of community and belonging, and the way that we design our built environment can either promote or discourage that feeling. To us, the idea of community is not just about the traditional way we think of community.
Historically, much of the housing development in public spaces was classified as mixed-use, created organically to meet the needs of business, retail, restaurant, and entertainment spaces. With the United States’ heavy use of Euclidean Zoning, housing was often divided from other zoning usages. This zoning change, along with other factors, led to Urban Sprawl.
With the rise of urban sprawl in American cities and suburbs, we’ve seen a decrease in community-oriented design. Housing - often single-family - has grown over large expanses of land, followed by commercial development and transit infrastructure. This results in an individualized experience of the city, where one’s access to forms of community is often entirely dependent on their means of travel, which is often a personal vehicle, over what can be lengthy commutes. Sprawling cities without accessible amenities or reliable public transit can produce citizens disconnected from both contributing to their city and fully enjoying the sense of community their city has to offer.
We’ve honed in on Infill, Mixed Use, Historic Preservation, and Multi-Family Housing as the most common project types to foster community-focused development and help address these issues.
Infill Development
Adaptive Reuse Example, Kolstrand Building by Graham Baba Architects, Seattle WA
Infill Development focuses on reallocating land or buildings for new construction, often looking at obsolete or underutilized buildings and sites. Infill development can reintegrate a community back into an area where infrastructure already exists, reducing the need for further development. Residential infill development can directly address the issue of urban sprawl in a metropolitan area.
We aim to consider the community aspect of every project. For new construction projects - what is the context? Who makes up the surrounding community? What are the needs and desires of the neighborhood? Infill development is a vital way to add density, character, and economic benefit to existing neighborhoods. Great infill development complements the surrounding neighborhood, provides tangible benefit and contributes value to the community.
Mixed-Use
Mixed-Use Development blends residential, commercial, cultural, institutional, or entertainment uses into one integrated space. Much of the historic North American construction developed as mixed-use, but the introduction and heavy use of Euclidean Zoning in the 1930s and 1940s diminished the potential for mixed-use development. Only in the past 30 years has mixed-use zoning become desirable.
Mixed-Use Example, The Mill Mixed Use Development by AB design studio, Santa Barbara, CA
Mixed-use developments and buildings can be used as a bit of a buzzword. What is mixed-use, really? To us, a successful mixed-use project doesn’t just mean a mixture of commercial tenants - which is essentially just a glorified shopping center. The benefit of mixed-use development is that you’re creating an ecosystem. Mixed-use developments should consider several aspects - the site, the street frontage, the overall building heights, etc. - and design to best utilize the strengths of the location for each use type.
Traditionally, this translates to retail/consumer-facing tenants on the street level (especially on the street-facing sides) to capture pedestrian traffic and activate the street from a human scale. The upper floors of the building could be a variety of uses, including office tenants, or housing. Office space on the upper floors provides a daytime occupancy to the area - people who will spend their day in the neighborhood. Housing also provides people who will regularly patronize the area, shopping for groceries, eating at restaurants, and participating in nightlife. This variety of tenancies allows the development to serve the needs of various occupants and diversify the economic impact - creating community and vitality around the clock.
Historic Preservation
Historic Preservation Example, Lowe Campbell Ewald Headquarters by Neumann/Smith Architecture, Detroit, MI
Historic Preservation reuses existing buildings that are identified as historically significant by groups like the National Register of Historic Places. These buildings often require small additions or changes to meet modern building codes or a new use, while efforts can also be taken to maintain or restore the components of the building that make it historic.
Very few things add character and a sense of place like historic buildings do. They make places unique, and give people a strong sense of importance and attachment. However, it’s also easy for historic buildings to fall into disrepair over the years. These buildings are typically a great opportunity to breathe new life into a community. Through adaptive reuse for example, we can reimagine how to best utilize a historic building that may no longer serve the current needs of the community - like turning old manufacturing spaces and warehouses into offices and housing, or converting a historic boys home into multi-family housing.
Multi-Family
Townhome Example, Mount Pleasant 05 by rndsqr, Calgary, Alberta
Multi-Family Development provides separate housing units within one building or several buildings within one complex.
It’s fairly obvious how multi-family housing would create a sense of community - after all, it’s a community in and of itself. However, not every multi-family development or apartment complex is designed to create a real sense of community. In order to really create a sense of belonging in multi-family development, it’s important to be intentional about creating opportunities for community - places to gather, share amenities and resources, as well as catering to shared interests like pets, eco-friendliness, or the arts.
Even though not every project may seem at its surface like a community-oriented project, we feel that every project should incorporate a community-aspect. Almost every place or space is an opportunity for people to gather - and they’re typically gathered for similar reasons. We lean on that concept and work to design places and spaces that bring out that opportunity to connect. To build and revitalize communities through design.
To quote one of our founders, Josh Kunkel -
“Truly great architecture does more than just look nice. It resonates with people on a deeper level. It evokes that same sense of wonder that I had as a child, and that’s something that I think the world could use more of.”