Nancy, Author at Optima - Page 36 of 39

Rooftop Amenities at Optima

Posted on December 26, 2019September 1, 2020 by Nancy

Across all of our projects and properties, we believe amenities are essential to building wellness-focused, holistic spaces. From our single-family homes to our multi-family residences, we carefully curate our outdoor and indoor amenities to reflect these values. One of our favorite applications is utilizing our rooftop areas, particularly in our multi-family residences. Although rooftop gardens and green spaces have existed since the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, new technologies have allowed us to expand into sophisticated, expansive systems of features. Optima began using green roofs in Chicago back in the early 1980s, and have evolved our practice to include both green space and amenities throughout our properties in Arizona and Illinois.

The rooftop views from Optima Sonoran Village.

One of our favorite aspects of moving out to Arizona was creating outdoor spaces that celebrated and embraced the desert atmosphere. Our Arizona rooftop amenities include heated pools, built-in seating areas, spas,cold plunges, rooftop running tracks, outdoor yoga studios, entertaining spaces with barbecues and fire pits, and of course, panoramic mountain views. At Optima Sonoran Village in particular, we maximized the small footprint of the building to offer incredible views of Camelback mountain and to create socializing space for residents.

With state-of-the-art features and unparalleled views of the surrounding environments, our rooftop spaces across our Arizona projects create the perfect backdrop for time spent outside with loved ones.

Despite the cold Chicago winters, our projects within the city still take advantage of their rooftop space for dynamic city views and amenities for our residents to enjoy. With outdoor heated swimming pools, cabanas and bars, outdoor saunas and steam rooms, outdoor terraces, fire pits, herb gardens, dog parks and outdoor children’s play areas, both Optima Chicago Center and Optima Signature feature plenty of enticing areas and activities.

Our building amenities are an integral step in our process of creating functional, beautiful and welcoming spaces, and in utilizing our rooftops, we extend our creativity into designing desirable, innovative outdoor space.

Optimized Service at Optima

Posted on December 23, 2019September 1, 2020 by Nancy

With everything we do at Optima, we set out to deepen the human experience. In support of this mission, this year we launched Optimized Service, an innovative in-home concierge program that is the first of its kind in Arizona.

Optimized Service takes concierge services to the next level, providing conveniences for our residents within the comfort of their homes, with our professional in-house teams working around the clock. Complimentary services include dry cleaning pickup and delivery to the closet, in-home plant watering, thermostat adjustments and package delivery to your front door within 24 hours of package delivery to the building.

The program augments the virtual concierge at Optima, which offers our residents the ability to call, email or text for assistance with booking reservations, appointments, coordinating travel and other similar tasks.

We see our new hospitality-grade service as the perfect addition to the abundant amenities offered across all of our Arizona luxury rental communities. In our continuous pursuit of service, we seek to provide our residents with an unparalleled living experience.

Redwood at Optima Signature

Posted on December 18, 2019September 1, 2020 by Nancy

Our design is often driven with sustainability and efficiency in mind. This leads to the thoughtful incorporation of unconventional materials in many of our projects — whether that be for the exterior facade or an interior accent. One such detail, the redwood in the lobby at Optima Signature, is an unconventional material that serves to juxtapose the strength of the building’s steel-and-glass exterior.

A striking statement throughout the Optima Signature lobby, the barge wood adds a soft, natural texture behind the front desk, creating a stark contrast to the surrounding steel and glass. The wood lines the north wall of the lobby in long planks and is the first sight to greet residents and visitors when they enter the building. Though now on display for all in our community, the wood came all the way from California in the 1850s.

Barge wood in the lobby at Optima Signature.

The planks are redwood, formed from one massive log that sat on the bottom of the Big River in Mendocino California. This particular log was a “sinker,” the name given to the handful of logs that unfortunately sank during their river journey from a redwood forest to the sawmill at the mouth of the Big River, not far from San Francisco.

For over 100 years, the log sat at the bottom of the Big River, until it was salvaged by Arky Ciancutti. Ciancutti began a redwood salvage business in the 1970s, raising large redwood logs that had previously sat forgotten at the bottom of the river. This particular log, Ciancutti determined, was from the first growth period of the redwood forest. He knew this because it was more than six feet in diameter and had axe-shaven markings at its ends, indicating that it was cut down, prior to the invention of the “raker tooth” saw of the late 1800s.

A close-up look at the barge wood at Optima Signature.

Having sat in the river for over one hundred years in mineral-rich water, this redwood log developed a truly rare and unique “curl” pattern within the grain of the wood. To highlight this unique feature, the wood was cut into three-inch-planks that ran the full length of the log. We then carefully installed these planks, with their raw beauty intact, leaving the live edges of the wood as is. The planks were then hung vertically in the lobby space, the orientation the same from which they grew.

From a river in California to the lobby of a Chicago residential building, our barge wood at Optima Signature has a unique story that connects our urban lobby back to nature, and reflects our commitment to sustainability and longevity.

A Day at the Art Institute

Posted on December 16, 2019May 25, 2024 by Nancy

Architecture is intrinsically linked to art; and designing within the Modernist discipline, we find inspiration from all forms of art. That’s why there’s no better place we can think to spend the day than at the Art Institute of Chicago.

The Art Institute is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. Founded in 1879, the museum is an iconic fixture in downtown Chicago’s Grant Park on Michigan Avenue. As a host to 1.5 million people annually, the curatorial efforts there always brings forth something new to see and learn.

This year, to celebrate 100 Years of Bauhaus, new special exhibitions at the museum shed light on the lasting influence of the iconic design school. That impact has extended into our practice at Optima, with the history of icons like Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and other Modernist masters informing how we create today. Visiting the Art Institute gives us the opportunity to see how that impact has spread elsewhere, too, in three phenomenally curated exhibits. If you only have one day to spend at the museum, this is what we recommend seeing:

In a Cloud, in a Wall, in a Chair: Six Modernists in Mexico at Midcentury

For the first time ever, the Art Institute is showing the work of Clara Porset, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Anni Albers, Ruth Asawa, Cynthia Sargent and Sheila Hicks as a group. The exhibition explores the unifying factor that has impacted the work of each of these artists and designers: Mexico. From different generations and mediums, all created work that was boundary-breaking.

In a Cloud, in a Wall, in a Chair: Six Modernists in Mexico at Midcentury is open until January 12, 2020.

Weaving beyond the Bauhaus

Tucked away on the lower level of the museum, this modest exhibit serves an impactful punch. The exhibit traces the diffusion of Bauhaus weaving workshop artists Anni Albers and Marli Ehrman, and their reciprocal relationships with fellow artists and students. The result is a soaring collection of weavings, acting as a conversation between iconic female textile artists.

Weaving beyond the Bauhaus is open until February 17, 2020.

Bauhaus Chicago: Design in the City

When the Bauhaus shut down, its teachers, students and thought disseminated across the world. This exhibition explores the way that instructors and students at ID and IIT adapted the German design philosophy to the United States through an array of medium, spanning from jewelry, photography, and textiles to furniture, monumental sculpture and urban planning.

Bauhaus Chicago: Design in the City is open until April 26, 2020.We love the way that art helps us understand the world, and in turn, informs the work we do every day. This collection of exhibits plays off one another beautifully to help deepen that understanding, relating it back to our practice in a context that is at once close and timelessly global. To experience these exhibits and everything the Art Institute has to offer, visit their website.

A Brief History of the Terrace

Posted on December 11, 2019May 25, 2024 by Nancy

A hallmark of Optima properties is our integration of the built environment with the natural. Oftentimes, we employ terraces—level platforms incorporated into buildings that allow for plantlife to thrive—that allow our buildings, and their residents, to live in harmony with the surrounding landscape. The usage of terraces is one that dates back for over 12,000 years, evolving over the millennium to be the sophisticated components of urban architecture that they are today.

Terraces of Ancient Times

The word terrace is derived from terra, the Latin word for earth. The technique has been in use for over 12,000 years, first utilized as an ancient farming method in hilly regions. Agricultural terracing involved cutting the land into a series of successively receding flat platforms, much like steps, to allow for more effective farming, by decreasing erosion and surface runoff and increasing the effectiveness of irrigation.

An illustration of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

In 9800 BC, ancient civilizations realized that they could adapt this technique to buildings, and they began to add terraces to their homes and other domestic structures. This first usage was seen across the globe, from the Middle East to the Pacific Islands. The most famous interpretation is undeniably King Nebuchadnezzar’s Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Although no actual proof of its existence has been found, depictions show an ascending series of tiered gardens abundant with plantlife, complete even with a waterfall.

Thousands of years later, from 3000 BC – 600 BC, Mesopotamians grew gardens atop ziggurats, terraced religious temples that allowed for religious spaces to become placed ever higher. The structures were placed upon many layered platforms, and it’s believed that ziggurats were what inspired the Biblical parable The Tower of Babel.

Terraces continued to be integrated into homes. Around 1500 AD, Venice adopted terrace design to the tops of their homes, called altanas. Altanas were private, slat-floored roofs. They started out as a place to hang laundry out to dry, but continue to be used today as social spaces.

The terraced design of Optima Camelview Village.

Terraces in the Modern Age

Following the progression of altanas as a place to socialize, people began more and more to use the terrace as a location to congregate in privacy. Private rooftop and per-unit terraces became luxury amenities in the 1920s, when building height began to increase due to the adoption of the elevator. At that time, terraces become a status of wealth, allowing for privacy, fresh air and separation from the increasing bustle of life on city-level.

Today, the use of terraces continues to flourish, finding increased purpose and urgency in response to population growth and a changing environmental climate. They provide private places to reconvene with nature, away from the bustle of the city. Terraces also create sustainable and contributive space, by providing thermal insulation, solar shading to mitigate air pollution, increased biodiversity and enhanced quality of life.

At Optima, we incorporate terraces to create private social space, to integrate nature into our communities through our signature hanging gardens, and to contribute to our sustainability practices at many of our properties, including Optima Camelview Village, Optima Sonoran Village and Optima Kierland. Terraces at Optima serve as outdoor living space, connecting the outdoor and indoor for a seamless living experience. From agricultural beginnings, the terrace stays true to its roots, allowing us to find harmony with nature.

The New Architecture: Integrating the Built and Natural Environment

Posted on December 9, 2019September 1, 2020 by Nancy

In a recent New York Times article, author Karrie Jacobs wrote that the “hard barriers between the designed environment and the natural one are softening — maybe for good.”

Jacobs went on to say, “Designers today are rebalancing the relationship between architecture and nature, with the goal of increasing the quality of life, especially in urban settings.”

The NYTimes article features several new and innovative works by global architects who are designing to fuse outdoor and indoor, with structures that are both influenced by and have influence on their environment. We love to see the innovation taking place throughout the architecture world, and the continued conversation surrounding how design can evolve to appreciate nature.

From the beginning, our work at Optima has celebrated this fundamental connection between design and nature as a way of enhancing the human experience. Since our founding in the late 70s, we have been utilizing Modernist design to create homes that are an extension of their environment and integrate nature into the lives of those that live in them.

One of our first residences, Sandy Knoll, demonstrated how modular housing could integrate a home into a steep, challenging wooded knoll. What resulted was a beautiful home that preserved the integrity and grace of its site, with mature trees and local Illinois vegetation creating the views out of glass-paneled walls.

Since then, we have continuously challenged ourselves to evolve new ways of incorporating nature into our design. Green space has always been a large component to the communities that we build, and our move to Arizona has only deepened our intimate understanding of landscaping.

Relic Rock, Optima DCHGlobal, Scottsdale, Arizona

Our desert dwellings incorporate the elevation, vegetation and climate of the desert into every facet of design, from bridged courtyards to the materials and colors used for each home’s exterior. Glass curtainwalls also provide uninterrupted, panoramic views of the sweeping landscape, so that the mountains of the desert feel a part of each home.

Optima Sonoran Village, Scottsdale, Arizona

In our multifamily work, we incorporate the Optima vertical landscaping system to create protection, privacy and beauty. For us, lush landscaping vertically and horizontally across our communities is an integral part of creating connection – a connection that is both physically inviting and spiritually inviting, as our design seeks to connect people with their surrounding environment.

We look forward to the future, to constantly pushing the boundaries and exploring how to further unify the built and natural environment. We’re excited that the work we do is part of a larger conversation in the architecture world and can’t wait to see what we, and others, do next for architecture and for the earth.

Neighborhood Spotlights: The Chicago Botanic Garden

Posted on December 4, 2019May 25, 2024 by Nancy

It’s no secret that we love the outdoors at Optima. That’s why we are thrilled that our Glencoe office is less than a five-minute drive from the Chicago Botanic Garden, where we’re able to find inspiration and beauty in astounding acres of natural plantlife. To encourage these meditative visits, we have passes for our team to allow them to take a stroll through the gardens for a break and even a lunchtime picnic.

Open for nearly fifty years, the Chicago Botanic Garden features 27 gardens and four natural areas, sprawling across 385 acres, complete with nine islands and six miles of lake shoreline. With over 2.5 million species of plants, the Garden is a hub drawing people in from all over to visit and learn about horticulture, conservation and sustainability in a beautiful setting.

Year-round, the Chicago Botanic Garden features a garden set into the stones and terraces beneath a cascading waterfall, hidden rooms within their English Walled Garden, a Japanese Garden that’s the perfect place to find a mindful moment and a secret land filled with model trains traversing across bridges and trestles. We are always thrilled to visit their meticulously cared-for collection of hundreds-of-years-old bonsai trees, or to have a drink or bite to eat at the Garden View Cafe overlooking a peaceful pond.

Right now, the Garden is also hosting Lightscape, an enchanting and exclusive U.S. experience. The exhibition brings a mile of immersive ribbons of light, a garden of fragrant fire, a sparkling tunnel and more to an already breathtaking landscape. Also on display, The Orchid Show features 10,000 brilliant blooms in unexpected ways.

Whether it’s for a breath of fresh air during a daytime walk or to have a picturesque lunch, we are lucky to have our offices so close to this neighborhood gem.

Infill Land and Optima’s Beginning

Posted on December 2, 2019September 1, 2020 by Nancy

When David Hovey Sr. and Eileen Hovey set out to create Optima in 1977, they had a distinct vision for how to transform their passions into a business. After deciding that David would design and build the projects and Eileen would take charge of sales, they put a second mortgage on their condominium and purchased infill land in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. That plot of infill land eventually became our first development, but the concept of redevelopment and infill land has benefitted countless cities and urban areas throughout the country. Today, we dive into its history.

The History

The American Planning Association describes infill development as redevelopment that “optimizes prior infrastructure investments and consumes less land that is otherwise available.” Infill development can result in efficient utilization of land resources, reinvestment in areas that are targeted for growth and more efficient delivery of quality public services. Infill buildings are often constructed on vacant or underused property or between existing buildings. Often called “smart growth,” infill development allows for sustainable land development close to a city’s urban core, instead of spreading out. This type of development also helps to renew neighborhoods and create more prosperous communities.

In Chicago

Following World War II, a series of local and federal initiatives were passed to revitalized aging and decaying parts of Chicago. Major institutions, including Illinois Institute of Technology, took part in the planning and reinvesting of various neighborhoods. New developments and infill on individual lots began to bring new vitality back to the city, with local school improvements and reduced crime rates following behind.

At Optima

From our plots of land, to designing each residence, to creating fantastic amenity spaces, we’re passionate about bettering the lives of those within our buildings and the environments around them. Starting our first project on infill land, and continuing to do so with many projects for years after, reflects our pursuit of creating beautiful spaces that enhance the human experience.

Desert Dwellings: Laboratories to Test Our Tastes

Posted on November 27, 2019September 1, 2020 by Nancy

Optima’s residential work goes back to 1982, when Sheridan Elm in Winnetka, IL first allowed us to challenge the status quo. Sandy Knoll and Ravine Bluff followed, each an exploration of the steel-and-glass Modernist aesthetic on our own terms. Ultimately, however, it was our geographic leap to designing homes in the Arizona desert that drew our practice, and design, into a new realm. Our desert dwellings serve as laboratories in which we are able to test our tastes and stretch the boundaries of our thinking.

Shadow Caster, Optima, Scottsdale, Arizona.

A New Frontier

In moving out to Arizona in the early 2000s, our intention was to build in a physical environment that was drastically different than our Chicago beginnings. Our team, led by David Hovey Jr., needed to utilize the outdoor space year-round, an interesting new challenge in comparison to Midwest seasons. Over the years, our desert homes have included Shadow Caster, Cloud Chaser, Vanishing Rain, and Sterling Ridge. While our Illinois residences were straight-forward, functionalist modular builds, the Desert Homes are deepened and complexified by the multi-layered and defined spaces within.

Our desert residences also allowed us to test changes in traditional components of Optima architecture, like our all-glass facades. Traditionally, transparency into such a hot region is ineffective for temperature control. However we were able to experiment with landscaping and solar screening that would help to shield our structures from direct sun and subsequent heat, while still allowing seamless desert views. We also discovered new methods of landscaping, creating shallow and bridged beds, as well as self-irrigating planter boxes, in order to create the vibrant verdure of the landscaping seen today at Optima Camelview Village, Optima Sonoran Village and 7160 Optima Kierland.

A New Way of Seeing

With a new office in Arizona, we were able to utilize current technology to form a project flow for both areas. About this time in 2001, technology was improving from an architecture standpoint; things were moving from a 2-D CAD design system into a 3-D building information modeling system. This allowed us to communicate effectively through our offices, helped our executive team take on more responsibility and started the process for multi-family projects in Arizona.

Part of this expansion in Arizona was the introduction of Optima DCHGlobal, which acted as another laboratory for some of the processes we envisioned for large-scale buildings, especially with the transformation from 2-D design into 3-D BIM systems. The vision for Optima DCHGlobal was to create a customizable, flexible and standardized system, which resulted in additional desert dwellings, Relic Rock and Arizona Courtyard House. Through our desert laboratories, we have explored not only how to create beautiful spaces, but how to make them sustainable and adaptable across all types of geographic environments.

The discoveries that we make through our desert dwellings don’t exist in isolation. With each new home, we uncover more of what makes our design uniquely us, and how to create our vision in the best way possible, so that we can bring it to each and every project that we undertake, no matter the type of home or type of terrain.

Forms in Bronze: The Work of Henry Moore

Posted on November 25, 2019May 25, 2024 by Nancy

As one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century, Henry Moore often used his sculptural work to explore landscape and the human form. With our design deeply rooted in a respect for nature, Moore’s art is an innate fit to our beliefs and passions at Optima.

To honor this connection, we look back on his life and its work.

The Life of Henry Moore

Henry Moore was born July 30, 1898 in Castleford, Yorkshire, lucky number seven to a household of eight children. Moore’s father was a miner, looking to help his children escape poverty by seeking advanced education — he believed that pursuing art and sculpture was just another form of manual labor with few career prospects. And while Moore displayed an affinity for and interest in the arts at school, he was nonetheless pushed in the direction of a teaching career.

On his eighteenth birthday, Moore enlisted in the British Army during World War I. A gas attack injury forced his honorable discharge, and led to an ex-serviceman’s grant that allowed him to pursue an education in the arts. In 1919 he became a student at Leeds College of Art and in 1921 continued his education at the Royal College of Art in London.

Ironically, Moore did end up teaching at the college, and it was there that he met his wife. Eventually, the two moved to a farmhouse in Perry Green, Hertfordshire, where Moore was able to further explore landscape, nature and the female form in his sculpture.

Two Forms by Henry Moore. Credit: M. Readey on Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

The Art of Henry Moore

Moore was a driving force in the English Surrealist movement, although he was also inspired by the primitive forms that he saw as a schoolboy at the British Museum, citing Mexican, Egyptian and African sculptural influences.

His work was also undeniably influenced by nature, landscape and the female form — the softly undulating curves found within his sculptures are reminiscent of the lulling hillside of his birthplace, Castlefor, and his sculptures are always abstractions of the human figure that typically depict mother-and-child relationships or reclining bodies.

One of Moore’s most famous works, Recumbent Figure 1938, was commissioned for the terrace of a modernist house in the Sussex countryside. Moore said of the sculpture, “My figure… became a mediator between modern house and ageless land.” His wood and bronze sculptures set apart by their curves, hollows and piercings, evoking the feeling of objects that were both ancient and modern all at once in their influence and form.

Because of his connection to nature and to Modern abstraction, Moore is indeed a beautiful mediator between natural and built environments, something we too strive to achieve through our projects.

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Author: Nancy