Today marks the five-year anniversary of our very first blog post. To mark the occasion, we took a look back at over 100 posts to select the ten(ish) posts that we think everyone should read. The posts cover a wide range of topics, including design, mobility, housing choice, and redevelopment. We think of the blog as our laboratory – a place to post things that we are working on, learning about, and debating in the office. A lot of these posts started that way – as conversations in the office. Our knowledge and thinking on these topics has grown and evolved over time, but these selected posts capture the highlights and topics we get asked about the most.
In our previous post, we provided an example of how small-scale infill could work within a few house lots to provide a dynamic range of housing choices. We are now going to break down the components parts of this design.
When meeting with new clients, we are often asked what the first step is in our design process. We are typically called on to investigate repurposing old buildings in urban environments. For the vast majority of these projects, our initial task is a baseline site study. This study is an examination of a site to determine several key items: how much space is required for streetscape (sidewalks, street trees, street furniture), how much parking can fit, and how the building engages the site and street.
