A turbulent year has passed. It has shaken the way we live and inhabit the many spaces that allow us to grow as a society. We saw a redefinition of living in the city. From the privacy of the bedroom, to the reevaluated living spaces that we saw transforming into the new working spaces. We were challenged to look at them in a more meaningful way, one that went beyond their basic function, which was providing shelter. The public realm was no different. We saw the streets, the sidewalks, the parks, and many transitional areas such as stoops and front yards acquire a different value. On the way we also regained appreciation of local businesses that pivoted to cater to their immediate neighbors.
Throughout the year we saw how great cities like New York and Los Angeles mutated from different levels of open public life and indoor secret gatherings, and in this process we confirmed what we have been predicting for a long time. Number one: Design matters. Providing different possibilities to be able to inhabit the spaces that shelter us, where we create, where we rest and reset, and also, in a more overarching sense, the spaces in which we can be ourselves is vital in our approach to space making. But this approach, we have also understood, should come in the form of a white canvas on which to project the meaningfulness of human nature. Number two:, being able to create community through place making matters. When our most immediate surroundings became the only places we saw on every walk or afternoon run, the most immediate sources of coffee, bread, and produce supply at a moment when we needed to be as close to home as possible, the small business owners became familiar faces as well as the residents sitting at their stoops.
But these concepts are not new to us. We understand the city as a living mechanism where our dwelling spaces play a vital role in fueling it. We have led a practice where we push the boundaries on the conception of inhabiting space, juxtaposing them with the many current realities, economic, political, environmental, and social, that keep leading to a highly ineffective delivery of dignified living alternatives. It is in this constant pushing of a discipline that operates at the intersection of development, architecture, and design that we saw the flaws in the process of delivering housing; We identified the many parts that need to be brought together to truly scale the much needed production of good housing, and started looking at technology as the most effective tool to make this possible.
