Carly, Author at Optima

What It Means to Live the Optima Way

Posted on March 30, 2026March 30, 2026 by Carly

At Optima, we’ve spent nearly five decades asking the same question: what does it mean to build a community where people genuinely thrive? The answer lives in the quality of light through a window on a Tuesday morning. In the conversation that starts in a courtyard between neighbors who didn’t yet know each other. In the feeling, hard to name but impossible to miss, that the place you’ve come home to was built by people who cared deeply. That feeling has a foundation. It’s what we call the Optima way.

A Growth Mindset, Built Into Everything

Since Optima’s founding, growth has been defined on our own terms, not by market cycles, but by a continuing journey to expand what’s possible in the built environment. That mindset shows up in the willingness to ask harder questions about how a building should relate to light, to nature, and to the people inside it, and to keep pushing until the answer is genuinely right.

The Freedom to Innovate

At Optima, we control every aspect of the design, development, and management process, and that integration is what gives us the freedom to make decisions based on what we believe is right, without compromise. It’s the reason the living facades at Optima Sonoran Village and Optima Kierland exist. The reason the atrium at Optima Lakeview was built around greenery and light. The reason Optima McDowell Mountain’s rooftop running track offers 360-degree desert views. When you own the entire process, you can hold the vision all the way to the end.

Committed to Lasting Impact

Everything Optima builds is designed to withstand the aesthetic test of time. We challenge what’s accepted and defy what’s expected. At Optima Signature, that means a 57-story LEED-certified tower redefining sustainable luxury on the Chicago lakefront. At Optima Verdana, it means bringing the full ambition of Optima’s design philosophy to the North Shore. The goal is never the moment. It’s always the bigger picture.

Passion for Creating Together

At Optima, everyone creates. Our culture is defined by openness and collaboration, the belief that the best ideas can come from anywhere. That culture shapes what we build: communities where residents feel genuinely considered, and shared spaces designed to bring people together. The passion for creating together doesn’t stop at the property line.

All In, All the Time

We are as passionate about the small details as we are about the big picture. The weight of a door handle. The material chosen for a countertop because it gets more beautiful with use. These are not finishing touches at Optima. They are the whole point, because residents experience them every single day, and every single day is worth getting right.

What It Means for You

To live the Optima way is to live somewhere built by people who believe architecture is one of the most powerful forces for human good, and who act on that belief at every scale, without compromise.

Come experience what living the Optima way actually feels like. Schedule a tour at an Optima community today.

How Green Building Design Protects Your Health — Not Just the Planet

Posted on March 25, 2026March 25, 2026 by Carly

Sustainable architecture gets a lot of attention for what it does for the environment. But there’s a quieter, more personal story worth telling, about what it does for the people living inside it. At Optima, green building design has always been both things at once: responsible to the planet, and deeply beneficial to the resident.

Nature Built into the Building Itself

One of the most visible expressions of Optima’s sustainable philosophy is our living architecture. The lushly planted vertical gardens at Optima Sonoran Village, Optima Kierland and Optima McDowell Mountain aren’t decorative, they regulate building temperature, filter air, and create a buffer from the desert heat. The soaring skylit atrium at Optima Lakeview fills the heart of the building with natural light and greenery year-round. At Optima Verdana, landscaped terraces maintained year-round with Optima’s signature vertical gardening system ensure that living greenery is present at every level of the building, from the ground floor to the rooftop sky deck. These systems aren’t added on. They’re woven into the architecture itself, which is precisely what makes them work.

The Air You Breathe at Home

At Optima, we select eco-friendly materials, prioritize advanced ventilation, and choose finishes that don’t compromise the environment residents breathe every day. The result is that the air inside an Optima residence is often cleaner than the air outside, a quiet, invisible benefit that residents feel without always being able to name.

Comfort, Quiet, and Better Sleep

A sustainably designed building maintains a more consistent internal temperature, reducing the swings that make a home feel like it’s fighting the climate rather than coexisting with it. Thoughtfully engineered walls, windows, and rooflines keep Optima interiors regulated and calm, whether facing an Arizona summer or a Chicago winter. And the denser, higher-quality materials used in sustainable construction also happen to be excellent acoustic insulators. Less noise means lower cortisol, better sleep, and a nervous system that gets to rest.

Sustainability and Luxury Are the Same Value

At Optima, we’ve never seen sustainability and luxury as competing ideas. The most responsible home to build, one that breathes cleanly, connects residents to nature, and endures beautifully over time, is also, by design, one of the finest homes to live in. Across every Optima community, every green choice is equally a choice in favor of the quality of resident life.

The planet benefits. But so does everyone who comes home here each evening.

Experience it for yourself. Schedule a tour at an Optima community today.

Why Walkability Is the New Luxury

Posted on March 23, 2026March 23, 2026 by Carly

At Optima, we’ve always believed that a great home extends far beyond its walls. Every community we build is positioned with the same intentionality as the architecture itself, placed where culture, dining, parks, and daily life come together.

Location Is a Design Decision

At Optima Sonoran Village, residents step directly into the heart of Old Town Scottsdale, world-class dining, galleries, and the energy of one of Arizona’s most vibrant neighborhoods, all on foot. At Optima Kierland, the Kierland Commons and Scottsdale Quarter are steps away. Optima Lakeview, the lakefront path, Lincoln Park, and the best of Chicago’s North Side are part of the daily rhythm. These aren’t coincidences. They’re the result of decades of intentional site selection.

The 15-Minute Life

Urban planners call it the 15-minute city, a place where everything you need is within a comfortable walk. For most people it’s an aspiration. For Optima residents, it’s the lifestyle. When the coffee shop, the farmers market, the dinner reservation are all reachable on foot, something shifts. Life expands. You become a regular. You feel less like someone who lives near a city and more like someone who genuinely inhabits it.

Walkability and Well-Being

The benefits run deeper than convenience. Research consistently links walkable neighborhoods to lower stress, better cardiovascular health, and stronger social connection. At Optima McDowell Mountain, residents are minutes from the McDowell Sonoran Preserve trail network. At Optima Verdana, downtown Wilmette and the lakefront are steps away. Movement, nature, and community, built into the address itself.

Why It Matters

The most walkable address isn’t just the most convenient one. It’s the one that makes daily life richer, healthier, and more connected. At Optima, that’s not an afterthought. It’s part of the design.

Discover the neighborhood at your doorstep. Schedule a tour at an Optima community today.

Morning Rituals That Actually Stick and the Spaces That Help

Posted on March 18, 2026March 18, 2026 by Carly

A great morning doesn’t happen by accident; it’s built from small habits that feel good enough to return to. The secret most people overlook? Your environment matters as much as your willpower. At Optima, we design for both.

Start with Light

Natural light within the first hour of waking regulates the circadian rhythm and produces the alert, energized feeling that coffee tries to replicate. At Optima, light is never something residents have to seek out. Floor-to-ceiling windows fill Optima Sonoran Village and Optima McDowell Mountain residences with warm desert morning light, while the soaring atrium at Optima Lakeview makes the transition from night to day feel effortless. For those who want to take it outside, the rooftop sky decks at Optima Kierland Apartments offer open-air sunrise views that make early rising feel like a reward.

Signature Rooftop Deck at Optima McDowell Mountain® — Optima McDowell Mountain® Sky Deck

Move First

Even 20 minutes of morning movement improves mood, focus, and reduces anxiety for hours after. The challenge is never the movement; it’s the energy to get there. When world-class fitness amenities are steps from your front door, that barrier disappears. Residents across Optima communities wake up adjacent to state-of-the-art fitness centers, resort pools, and indoor basketball & pickleball courts.

Basketball Court at Optima Kierland® — Optima Kierland® Basketball Court

Find the Stillness

The most grounding morning habits are sometimes the quietest, a few minutes of journaling, meditation, or simply sitting somewhere beautiful before the day takes over. The key is a space that makes slowing down feel natural. At Optima Sonoran Village, the lushly landscaped courtyards offer a serene desert morning that’s hard to rush through. Optima Lakeview, a quiet corner of the atrium with light filtering through the greenery above, is all it takes. At Optima Signature, the views make pausing effortless.

Life at Optima

The most important insight from habit science is simple: we don’t rise to our intentions; we fall to our environment. At Optima, every design decision, from building orientation to courtyard placement to window quality, is made with the lived experience of morning in mind. Because a day that starts well, in a space designed to support it, tends to stay that way.

Start your day in a space designed to elevate everyday living. Schedule a tour at an Optima community today.

The Art of Biophilic Design: How Nature in Your Home Changes Everything

Posted on March 16, 2026March 16, 2026 by Carly

At Optima, we’ve always believed that the best architecture doesn’t just shelter you from the natural world, it draws nature in. That belief has a name: biophilic design. And it’s quietly transforming the way people feel in the spaces they call home.

What Is Biophilic Design?

Biophilic design is the intentional integration of natural elements, light, greenery, water, organic materials, and open air into built environments. Rooted in the idea that humans have an innate need to connect with nature, it’s not simply a trend. It’s a philosophy that shapes how people experience their surroundings on a deeply physical and emotional level.

Research consistently links biophilic environments to reduced stress, improved focus, faster recovery, and a greater sense of calm. When the spaces around us echo the patterns of the natural world, something in us settles.

Living Green — Literally

One of the most striking expressions of biophilic design at Optima is our living architecture. Lush vertical gardens cascade across building facades and bloom within our interior courtyards, softening the geometry of modern design with the organic rhythm of growing things. These aren’t decorative flourishes, they’re purposeful choices that improve air quality, regulate temperature, and bring a sense of vitality to every day.

Light as a Design Element

Natural light is perhaps the most powerful biophilic tool of all. At Optima, our architects design floor plans and communal spaces to maximize sun exposure throughout the day, creating interiors that feel alive, warm, and energizing in the morning, and softly golden in the evening. Large windows, and thoughtfully oriented residences ensure that light moves through a home the way it moves through a forest: dynamically, beautifully, and with purpose.

Organic Materials, Timeless Feel

Beyond greenery and light, biophilic design lives in the materials we choose. Natural stone, warm wood tones, textured surfaces that echo the landscape, these choices ground a space and give it a sense of permanence that sleek synthetics simply can’t replicate. At Optima, our residences are designed to feel like a natural extension of their surroundings, not a departure from them.

Why It Matters for How You Live

Where you live shapes how you feel, every single day. A home that connects you to nature, that lets in the light, that surrounds you with living things, is a home that actively supports your well-being. That’s what biophilic design delivers. And it’s what makes Optima communities more than just beautiful places to live, they’re environments designed to help you thrive.

Experience biophilic living for yourself. Explore our communities and learn more about living the Optima lifestyle today.

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Author: Carly