Building facades are the face of your campus. The porte cochere, balcony details, landscaping and other exterior design elements communicate the essence of your community. The design sets the tone for the experience and creates an architectural relationship with its surrounding neighborhood.

As you consider an addition, a repositioning or the design of a new community, do your available finances hinder you and your team as you embark on the design process?

Budget constraints don’t have to translate into design limitations.

When your architect is truly your advocate, design excellence can be achieved. Design plays a key role in establishing a true sense of community. It is possible to maximize value while still creating drama and a sense of arrival on your campus.

The design process begins with conversations and research. The design team needs to understand the aesthetic expectations and goals for the project. It is their job to listen to what you want and help guide you with their knowledge and expertise.

  • What is the experience you want to create for your residents?
  • What are the architectural influences in your region, city or neighborhood?
  • What is the design aesthetic that you are hoping to achieve?

Once the team understands the style direction, it is important for them to do their research.  It is not about regurgitating old designs to make it work for your project. The design process should be about developing a customized design that expresses the mission of your organization and serves the best interest of your residents. The design process is about creating an authentic experience and making a connection between your community and the community at-large.

Research of local architecture, design influences, weather conditions, materials, etc. aids the team throughout the design development process. Whether a Tuscan Village for Santa Marta in Kansas, a Florida Cracker-Style home for Haven Hospice in Orange Park, Florida, or a Mizner-influenced Mediterranean campus in Bonita Springs, your project deserves a signature design that will establish its architectural presence within the community and the marketplace you serve.

As your advocate, it is our job to present you with the design you wanted or something even better than you imagined. Along with the presentation of the visual, it is our responsibility to show you the costs associated with that specific design. As a true advocate, we need to give you the best solution possible and the financial reality of the construction. It is not the time to despair and say, “We can’t do that.”

By providing you with plans, sections, elevations and detailed costs, it gives you and your decision making team more control in the process.  This detailed information:

1.)  Allows the team to go to the contractor in order to find value in items you “can’t see” before you have to change the design details you will look at on a daily basis.

This is a careful balance to think about. Talk to your engineering team or call AG’ s Tony Luciano to understand the implications of making too many sacrifices with the “can’t see” items that keep your campus operating efficiently.

2.)  Supports the key decision making process. What elements do you want to keep and what are you willing to live without?

This information may lead to more research to identify alternative materials that achieve a similar look at a lower cost or inspire you to uncover more funds in order to maintain aspects of the design that you aren’t willing to sacrifice.

At AG, we believe an architecture firm is truly your advocate when, by a process of in-depth discussions and research, we present you with a design that expresses the essence of your community and work with you and the contractor to make that design a reality. A project is successful when the team maximizes value while still delivering an impactful design.

Santa Marta

In order to achieve the look of a barrel tile roof, the team weighed the cost benefits between clay tile and concrete form tile. After research and careful consideration, clay tile was determined to be the most cost effective solution.

The typical Tuscan material palette is a stone structural wall with a plaster finish. At Santa Marta, we used wood frame construction and EIFS to achieve the look and feel of stucco.

The Terraces at Bonita Springs

In-depth research of the influence of Florida architect Addison Mizner influenced the design process. As part of that influence, a design goal for the project was to maximize access to the outdoors from all locations while providing as many direct views as possible. When contemplating details such as lower ceilings or cheaper finishes the decisions were always made based on not compromising connections to the outdoors.

Haven Hospice Custead Care Center

Traditional Cracker-style homes in the area are hand hewn wood frame construction with a simple applied wood siding. In order to translate this residential style to a hospice environment and deliver a structure that stands up to hurricane force winds, insulated concrete forms and a fiber cement siding product were used to achieve the desired aesthetic.