Residents are looking for multifamily apartment projects that include quality outdoor amenities. Every building needs outdoor amenities to draw people in and encourage them to stay.
But creating an extraordinary outdoor amenity experience isn’t easy. Sometimes these complex spaces can cause problems and stress for the architect. Effective collaboration between architecture and landscape architecture is key.
Ways Outdoor Amenity Design Can Be Problematic for Architects
Outdoor spaces vary in size and program. So their final costs can be very challenging to pin down. This can make it difficult to manage client expectations. This means more work for the architect during the value engineering process.
Each outdoor space has a unique purpose and geometry. They need a tailored design solution that calls for ample creativity, every time. Does another consultant take the initiative to design the space? If not, this extra design work becomes the architect’s responsibility.
Outdoor amenities, especially those on rooftops, intersect the scope of many disciplines. From civil engineering to plumbing and electrical, interior design to structural engineering. Each sub consultant has to be aware of what happens with the outdoor amenities. Architects can get caught up in coordinating between disciplines, adding to their growing mountain of work.
Outdoor amenity design requires a particular knowledge and skill set. Some landscape architects may not have the expertise. The less capable the landscape architect, the more the burden of the detailing falls to the architect. (This is especially true when it comes to rooftop amenities.)
Finally, the outdoor amenity design must meet project deadlines and keep everything on track. Without confidence that deliverables will arrive on time, the architect may have to intervene.
But designing successful outdoor amenities shouldn’t have to be this painful. What would it be worth to never have to worry about any of these issues again?
Extraordinary Results with The Immersive Experience Method
Loft Six Four’s proven process, The Immersive Experience Method, is your solution to these challenges. Over the last decade we’ve collaborated with some of the best architects in the country. We’ve learned some ways to overcome these outdoor amenity design problems. And we’ve discovered a passion for making architects’ lives easier. All while creating stunning outdoor spaces that bring value to your clients.
It’s taken a lot of effort, and continues to be ever-evolving. But these are 5 of the things architects love most about our design process:
1 / Realistic costs and budgeting. We provide designer-informed preliminary budget ranges before design. And rough order of magnitude cost opinions based on the design concept. These preempt a cost-prohibitive design.
A cost-effective design is impossible without a clear understanding of the target budget. And an informed view on what it will cost to achieve a client’s vision. So we start to get a handle on it as early as possible in the process.
As soon as we begin a project, we provide a preliminary budget range for what our scope of the project will cost. This gives the client an opportunity to rein back their expectations if necessary. And enables them to allocate more budget to the project as they see fit.
We also provide a rough order of magnitude cost opinion with our design concept. It’s based on our experience seeing how much each line item has cost on our previous projects. The client can use it to evaluate the design and puts them in the driver’s seat in the decision making process.
These methods improve collaboration and manage client expectations. And remove the frustration of ending up with a design they love but can’t afford.
2 / Consistent, high-quality designs. We collaborate to deliver innovative, creative results every time. Instead of uninspired designs that don’t follow your design directive.
Some landscape architects lean away from design. They prefer to focus on documentation, horticulture, or other aspects of the project. Others can be creative, but veer away from the direction of the architecture. This leads to disparate and incongruous indoor and outdoor spaces.
Our Loft Six Four team aims for a fine balance between bringing new ideas to the table and following the direction of the architect. We understand the expectation to be collaborative. Our design is cohesive with yours. All the while including fresh ideas you wouldn’t have thought of, but definitely fit.
3 / Proactive coordination with other consultants. We seek to avoid the mistakes and unpleasant surprises that come from working in a vacuum.
Architects shouldn’t have to do all the coordination for outdoor space. You have enough on your plate. Like our collaboration with you, our team collaborates with all other consultants on the design team.
On large and complex projects there may always be misses and scope gaps, but our goal is to minimize them. This means we will reach out and coordinate with every other discipline to ensure we are all on the same page.
4 / Deep rooftop amenity expertise. We offer true specialized expertise instead of generalist landscape architecture.
We’ve focused on rooftop amenities for several years. Our firm has unmatched collective knowledge and resources in the category. And our deepening understanding of rooftop amenity design applies outdoor spaces at ground level.
5 / Unmatched responsiveness and attention to deadlines. We never make you rely on fake schedules with the expectation that deliverables will always be late.
Our foremost internal success metric is never missing a deadline. We’re responsive and prompt because we understand the frustration of waiting on a deliverable.
Ready to Begin? Let’s Collaborate
Explore our proven process and our collaborative approach with architects. Or contact us to see how we can work together to elevate your project’s potential.
Editor’s Note: Originally published March 28, 2018. Updated March 6, 2024 with a fresh take on the topic.