The Commercial Real Estate Revolution

Ray Lucchesi sent a video morphing the mind with a little video magic on the facade of a building. How does this provoke your own thinking about our interaction with the built environment. When you consider smart technologies, offsite assembly and modularity, RFID interface and convergent spaces the very idea of a building takes on new meanings and new uses.

I recently heard an interview where the head of innovation for a large company gave his definition of design. He said that the root for design is designate. The act of design is then to create new meaning and bring that new meaning to life.

555 KUBIK | facade projection | from urbanscreen on Vimeo.

If we subscribe to Marshall McLuhan’s “the medium is the message,” even a little,  then the medium of the building should force us to step back a bit and consider – “What message lays beneath the curtain wall of each building?”

I know this is treading on the philosophical for a first of the week blog. However, it is important. There is certainly one layer of meaning described by a building’s size, location, price and attributes. If the proforma and specs define the building, however, then what does that imply about the stronger message that will permeate the experience of everyone who resides in that building?

If we are beginning to buy into this notion of sustainability then we’ll need to consider the built environment as a four dimensional entity, an interactive agent that is far more than its rental and cap rates.

Those who have traveled down the Lean Construction and Integrated Project Delivery route for a while have experienced this kind of mindshift. As Dean Reed, with DPR,  expressed in our book; projects are no longer a series of critical paths and spread sheets but a network of relationships. The quality of those relationship determines the quality of the project.