Design Firms Home Back In on Domestic Work

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Design Firms Home Back In on Domestic Work
Laid Out: Mike Ellis

Just two years ago, Chinese projects made up the vast majority of Hollywood architecture firm 5+design’s business. Now, it’s little more than half and could fall even further over the next couple of years.

That leaves 5+design – like other L.A. architecture firms that depended on China’s hot construction market over the last few years – to look for work back home and figure how to sell themselves to American developers using their largely foreign portfolios.

So far, Mike Ellis, principal of 5+design, said it has been a challenge. Not many American developers are building the same types of massive mixed-use projects that merge housing, retail, offices and mass transit that his firm has been working on abroad. At least not yet.

“When I meet with developers in America, they don’t see work overseas as relevant to their work here,” Ellis said.

He sees change coming, however, with domestic projects in the years ahead likely to look more international. But in the meantime, he’s changing up 5+design’s strategy, pitching potential clients in part on how his firm coped with the challenges of working overseas.

For instance, he’s promoting the technical savvy and design sense his firm used in dealing with complex and often bizarre foreign building codes – something he hopes developers will see as applicable in dealing with domestic building codes. One example the firm is touting is the massive Diamond Hill project in Shenyang, China, designed for China Merchants Bank of Shenzhen.

That project was subject to a very specific rule about sunlight for residents of adjacent buildings, said Ramon Hone, a design principal at the firm.

“In China, there are code ordinances that require each residential building to receive a minimum of two hours of sunshine on the shortest day of the year,” he said. “So we had to make sure our design satisfied this requirement.”

The firm also had to comply with strict height limits and fit lots of retail shops, housing units, offices and a hotel into a very tight area atop a yet-to-be-built mass-transit hub, Hone said.

Retail’s direction

Ellis and other architects are also counting on changing American tastes to make their overseas work more appealing to domestic developers. For instance, Ellis hopes American malls will soon start looking more like the extravagant shopping centers 5+design has worked on in Turkey, Dubai and China.

And trade group International Council of Shopping Centers Inc. in New York believes that’s where domestic malls are headed.

“We are seeing a lot more developers look to incorporate dining and entertainment options to create experiences for the consumer,” said Jesse Tron, spokesman for the council. “That’s what we’ve seen internationally.”

And some of the newest shopping malls are examples of that trend. The Collection at RiverPark, an outdoor shopping center being built in Oxnard and designed by downtown L.A.’s Altoon Partners, mimics a downtown area with public art, a splash park, playgrounds, offices, a Whole Foods Market and housing. Another Altoon project, the mixed-use development Downtown Summerlin in Las Vegas, will be a walkable downtown-like center with a nine-story office building, retail, dining and entertainment when completed in 2015.

Architects refocusing on domestic work also see opportunity in the growing demand for transit-oriented development, especially in Southern California. Such projects are already common here, though they’re typically much smaller than the massive transit-oriented projects 5+design and other firms have worked on abroad.

For instance, Pasadena’s Del Mar Station Transit Village has about 350 apartments and 20,000 square feet of retail space, whereas 5+design’s Diamond Hill project includes nearly 750,000 square feet of retail space and 470,000 square feet of offices as well as 1,100-plus apartments. What’s more, existing domestic projects are typically close to transit hubs, whereas in China and elsewhere, projects are usually built directly atop them.

As Southern California’s subway and light-rail network expands, that type of development could become more common here, said Scott Johnson, design partner and founder of international architecture firm Johnson Fain in Chinatown.

He said his firm, which has done major projects in China, Indonesia and Taiwan, and other architecture firms that have worked on big transit-oriented projects abroad, have a leg up in securing similar work here.

As an example, Johnson points to its Blossom Plaza in Chinatown, which will mix housing, public open space, retail and eateries around a Metro Gold Line train station.

“Now as we densify, I know that we understand these things – it’s second nature to us,” Johnson said. “It comes from an understanding of overseas examples and from living in New York for years.”

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