Thursday, July 22, 2004

Urban Villages come to the OC

San Francisco Lofts
The reality sets in across urban Southern California: 6 million people by 2030. Where will they go?

Developers in Orange County want to solve the problem with vertical mixed-use developments that place apartments and condos over retail or workspaces. Large central county cities like Anaheim, Santa Ana, and Irvine all have projects in the works because planning departments are finally adding some flexibility to their books:

In the Platinum Triangle, an area of predominantly industrial buildings near Anaheim Stadium and the Arrowhead Pond, the city has loosened the zoning with the goal of encouraging private companies to bring their own proposals to the city. Instead of micromanaging what's going there, the city is throwing open the doors, believing that the market will turn this area into a vibrant downtown for the county. The city expects high-rise offices, new commercial centers, new housing and the emergence of a mixed-use neighborhood where underutilized buildings now stand.

Already developers have plans in the works:
CREA/Nexus Anaheim Corners LLC, an affiliate of the residential division of Nexus Properties Inc. of San Diego, plans a 390-unit apartment complex and 11,000 sf ground-floor retail space.

There's another innovative project in the pipeline for Santa Ana:
Urban+West+Strategies and the Lennar South Coast Division plan 108 units of for-sale, live-work lofts at the companies’ new Santiago Street Lofts, which the developers describe as a transit-oriented development across from the Santa Ana Train Depot...The 108 units will be three stories each and will range from about 1,540 sf to 2,300 sf, with the ground floors of the lofts designed especially to accommodate the work portion of the live-work spaces. “A key to the project is that the work spaces will be completely separate from the living spaces,” DiRienzo emphasizes.

Live-work strategies like these will become increasingly prevalent in future years. America's workers are trading in stodgy corporate jobs to become free agent marketing consultants and indie publishers. Trends like outsourcing and improved collaboration and conferencing technology will allow more people to telecommute and stay mobile. Office condos, wireless networking enabled Starbucks, and live-work spaces meld perfectly with these 21st Century workers.

Sure, single family tract homes will continue gobbling up the deserts of the Inland Empire but for those who prefer to live in vibrant urban environments these new projects are exciting developments.

Thursday, July 15, 2004

A whole new meaning for "Home Printing"

Print a New Apartment Building
What if building your own custom home was as simple as pressing "Print" on your computer? Science fiction fantasy? Not if Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis from my alma mater, USC, has anything to say about it. He's pioneering a new construction method called Contour Crafting. Here's how the New Scientist article describes it:

It takes instructions directly from an architect's computerised drawings and then squirts successive layers of concrete on top of one other to build up vertical walls and domed roofs. The precision automaton...can work round the clock, in darkness and without tea breaks. It needs only power and a constant feed of semi-liquid construction material. The key to the technology is a computer-guided nozzle that deposits a line of wet concrete, like toothpaste being squeezed onto a table. Two trowels attached to the nozzle then move to shape the deposit. The robot repeats its journey many times to raise the height and builds hollow walls before returning to fill them.
"The goal is to be able to completely construct a one-story, 2000-square foot home on site, in one day and without using human hands," says Khoshnevis. The robot can install plumbing and wiring as it goes, but can't do windows -- yet.
Khoshnevis's prototype robot hangs from a movable overhead gantry, like the cranes at ship container depots. Khoshnevis speculates that they could also be ground-based, running along rails and able to build several houses at one time.
Not only will the homes go up faster, but more beautifully as well. According to Venice architect, Greg Lynn, ""I'm convinced this will allow you to make beautiful, innovative and as yet unimagined kinds of houses." Unconstrained by 2x4's, the technique will allow for complex curving walls and dramatic domed ceilings. I'm thinking about a funky mix of Taj Mahal, Walt Disney Concert Hall, and old school Mongolian yurt for my dream house.

The technology's speed and cost also makes it perfect for emergency housing in cases of earthquakes or war, low income housing, and even space colonies. Imagine future space colonists reading the directions: "Mix one part moon dust with one part water and stir..."

The construction industry has been a laggard in the productivity miracles that have already remade agriculture, manufacturing, and services. Looks like that won't last long.