If Field of Dreams was remade for today's audience, the protagonist wouldn't be urged to build a baseball diamond but rather a structure equally as precise—and just as irresistible to its fans: a shimmering tower of glass and steel, with 90-degree angles, clean lines, and expansive views.
Liz Dunn would play the lead. It was the Seattle-based developer's gutsy if-you-build-it-they-will-come mentality that inspired just such a building in the city's historic-turned-hip Pike-Pine neighborhood in 2001. The 1310 East Union Lofts project housed eight open-plan, live/work units plus street-level retail space. Confident that others who shared her passion for modern aesthetics lurked in the Northwest, Dunn put the building on the market and waited.
The response came a few months later and was greater than she'd anticipated. “The buyers all found me,” says the principal of Dunn + Hobbes. “They had to [bypass] their agents, who were telling them, ‘It's just not a safe investment to buy something that modern.'” Now, not only has the real estate community embraced her work, but so has the American Institute of Architects, which bestowed the project with numerous local and national awards. Encouraged by the response, Dunn actively pursued other infill and adaptive reuse sites, each with a contemporary flair, and each as successful as her first. “It just took [a while] to percolate into the public's consciousness,” she says. “Now, developers who might not have considered doing a modern project are going out and finding really good architects because they know they have to be competitive in design.”
Dunn is right. In recent years, multifamily developers, brokers, and bankers nationwide have discovered that modernism is hip again. As consumers become more design-savvy, thanks to influences from baby boomers to Target, they are looking for housing options that reflect their tastes, personality, and lifestyle. “Design sells,” Dunn says. “Consumers demand it. There's a built-in expectation on the part of buyers that more effort be put into the design of these projects.”
DEFINING A MOVEMENT But the modern movement already came and went—didn't it? True, if you're talking about the blocky concrete towers of the post-World War II era. Many of the high-rises built during that time weren't of the highest quality, giving modernism a bad rap. Today's consumers desire a less sterile, more livable look tailored to their contemporary lifestyles.
“Modernism is more than minimalism,” says David Miller, principal of The Miller/Hull Partnership and the architect on Dunn's East Union project. Miller/Hull has done similar multifamily projects in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Chicago. “People are looking for a powerful image that has a simplicity and rational order. Our buildings are not tricked up; they're clean and ordered, and very transparent, which lets the life of the building really come out.”
Industry professionals like Dunn, Miller, and their ilk attribute the change to consumers who understand design, are surrounded by it, and demand it in every facet of their lives. As stores like Design Within Reach proliferate, and magazines like Wallpaper and Dwell take high-concept design into the mainstream, savvy consumers have made it clear that, as Dunn discovered, good design does sell.
As such, the buildings are more often new construction, urban infill, toned down a notch from adaptive reuse projects that bear the raw stamp of former industrial space. The look is sleek and refined, with clean lines, natural materials, and a simple, flexible floor plan. Residents decide for themselves how to use the space. “It gives them a lot of freedom,” Miller says. “We try to be efficient about bedrooms, bathrooms, and storage so we can maximize the public spaces where people really live.”
Characteristic of the less-is-more aesthetic is that basic elements become much more important. “It used to be that no one would spend money to put hardwood flooring in an apartment. Now people are willing to pay a higher rent for places that have it,” Dunn says. “Even the quality of kitchen appliances and plumbing fixtures is way more important than a bunch of fussy trim.”
Glass, too, plays a major role in these designs. Large expanses of floor-to-ceiling windows are a distinct departure form the “punched openings” of more traditional buildings. “People who live in the city want open expanses of glass to more fully connect them with nature,” says Dunn, who begins all her projects by figuring out how to get the largest windows possible. Why? To deliver residents “a meaningful indoor-outdoor experience.”
SPANNING THE SPECTRUM Bob and Karen Ranquist's story is remarkably similar to Dunn's. The pair pursued a passion for contemporary design roughly 10 years ago, building a series of smaller, boutique-style condos that garnered loads of awards and national press.
“We started small and found there was a niche for it,” Karen says. “It wasn't something that was offered at all. Clean lines and minimalism set us apart from the people who are, literally, building next door.”
Chicago-based Ranquist Development has proper ties scattered throughout Chicago that stand out sharply against a sea of red brick and limestone. Most incorporate the same elements as Dunn's projects: floor-to-ceiling glass, high-end detailing such as exotic wood, and Arclinea kitchens. On the exterior, there's flagstone and treated red cedar cladding, zinc panels and cement board. Outdoor space is maximized with roof decks and “green screens”—vertical trellises climbing with ivy. “We're not just going to put up a little evergreen shrub and call it landscaping,” Karen says.
Dunn and the Ranquists both play in the shallow end of the developer pool with boutique projects. But today's modernism can be successful on a larger scale. Chicago's CMK Realty Corp. has put together a similar look for high-rises with upwards of 400 units.
CMK's biggest success to date, 1720 S. Michigan in Chicago, was the top-selling condo in the downtown in 2006. “As with all our buildings, the contemporary modernist styling really sets us apart and gives buyers an alternative,” says Scott Hoskins, the company's president and managing broker.
Their target is first- and second-time home buyers—the same young, style-conscious professionals driving the modernism resurgence. “We give them the chance to live in an amazing home in a great location at a reasonable price,” Hoskins adds. “When we first started this [in the mid-1990s], banks were hesitant to get involved ... but time and time again, we've proved that there is a market for it.”
Indeed, the company has developed around 10 such sites in downtown Chicago and has another 714-unit building under construction. “Pretty much all we do is high-density, urban multifamily projects,” Hoskins says. “With larger projects, you're netting more revenue because you have more units.”
Price points further enhance CMK's success. “Entry point in the market is one of the most important factors to our buyers, so they're willing to trade off a little square footage for a better price,” he says. One such cost-saving measure: Shave off about 1,000 square feet of interior space per unit to achieve a higher level of design. And with spaces including floor-to-ceiling windows and 10-foot ceilings, they feel bigger anyway.
Large or small, Hoskins says, “I don't think there's any question that modernism is here to stay. There's always going to be those people who appreciate the artistic nature of the contemporary architect and what the architect creates. Even if it's a small percentage ... those buyers think of housing in terms of how it defines their personality and their taste.”
RIPPLE EFFECT It's easy to imagine that modernism has a welcome reception in Los Angeles, but the region was thirsty for good design eight years ago when Lawrence Scarpa completed his first lofts project. The principal of Los Angeles-based architecture firm Pugh + Scarpa readily admits that lofts are nothing new—except that in the Southern California enclave, in 1999, they were. That development—the Bergamot Artists Lofts—opened the door to other contemporary multifamily work. Today, 70 percent of the firm's business is market rate and comes from word of mouth.
Now Scarpa is single-handedly attempting to spawn the same kind of revitalization in downtown Charlotte, N.C., via a satellite office. “There is a major market now that didn't exist five years ago,” he says. “Where there is nothing, there is a demand. Charlotte has a million people and you can't tell me there aren't 10 people out of a million who want this kind of project. There will be a market.”
He'd be one to know. With a background in subsidized housing, Scarpa was used to projects that deliberately flew under the radar, implementing them on a shoestring budget and turning a tidy profit. In a landscape of exorbitant prices (market rate is north of $700 per square foot in Southern California), his projects consistently sell for above market value. “Land prices are high, so you have to have a product people really like,” he says.
Now, Scarpa is starting a 12-unit, for-sale loft project in Los Angeles that will drive his point home: It uses no structural steel. “Once you understand the structure, you can free up some money for other things,” he says. “We go for substance over style.”
The one-time niche of modern design is not limited to isolated regions. It's suddenly everywhere: in Washington, D.C., where Bethesda, Md.-based McInturff Architects won a 2007 AIA award for 1247 Wisconsin, a rooftop village of modern residences in historic Georgetown; in Philadelphia, where design-build firm Plumbob is causing a stir with its innovative, green-friendly “flats” projects in the blue-collar Fishtown neighborhood; and in conservative Boston, where Office Da's dramatic 150- to 200-unit building is reinventing the downtown.
“We're a more design-sensitive populace than we ever were before, and it's all around us, this design culture,” says Will Bruder, president of Will Bruder + Partners, a Phoenix architecture firm that has done groundbreaking projects in Scottsdale, Ariz. “We all look for a hip place, a modern place ... and top design is selling for top dollar. These projects are bringing in much bigger returns because you're selling art.
“The future of multifamily is modernism, most definitely,” Bruder adds. He envisions the movement causing a ripple effect beyond the multifamily industry, and sees urban infill as a laboratory for building the next great American city. “We're going to have new town squares, new neighborhood enclaves,” he says. “And it's going to be much more livable. We could actually make America a place of cities and towns again.”
Jill Waldbieser is a freelance writer and design buff living outside Philadelphia.