For residents with pets, finding a home means thinking beyond the apartment itself, about where a dog will run, whether there’s somewhere to clean up after a muddy walk, and how close the nearest green space actually is. At Optima communities in Illinois and Arizona, those considerations are built into the design from the start, showing up in dedicated amenities, outdoor spaces, and services that make daily life with an animal more manageable.
Spaces Designed for Off-Leash Play
Dog parks are a standard feature across the portfolio, designed with the same attention given to every other shared space in the building. At Optima Lakeview, a 2,000-square-foot heated dog park on the ground floor gives dogs room to move year-round, with landscaping and seating that make it comfortable for residents too. Optima Signature offers both indoor and outdoor dog parks, useful given Chicago’s range of weather. Optima Verdana in Wilmette has a heated dog park on the ground floor. In Scottsdale, Optima Kierland includes a dog park at each tower alongside green space throughout the property, and Optima Sonoran Village features a community pet park with several acres of open space and walking paths. At Optima McDowell Mountain, the dog park sits within a community designed with open space and walkable paths throughout the grounds, with the McDowell Mountains trail network accessible nearby.
Pet Spas and Grooming
Having somewhere to clean up after a walk before heading back into the apartment is a practical detail that matters more over time than it might initially seem. Most Optima communities include an onsite pet spa for this purpose. Optima Lakeview’s includes onsite grooming services and towel service. Optima Verdana offers onsite grooming alongside dog walking, pet visits, and pet sitting, all bookable through the building’s resident services app. Optima Signature has grooming facilities alongside its dog parks. Both Optima Kierland and Optima McDowell Mountain offer pet spas across their towers.
Private Terraces
Most homes across the portfolio include private outdoor terraces, which give pets access to fresh air without requiring a trip to the lobby. At Optima Sonoran Village and Optima Kierland, and OMM every home has one. At Optima Verdana and Optima Lakeview, many terraces are paired with outdoor grills and landscaping, making them a functional part of the living space throughout the year.
Neighborhood Access
Optima Signature is close to the Chicago Riverwalk and lakefront. Optima Lakeview is near Belmont Dog Beach, one of the city’s popular off-leash areas. Optima Verdana sits within walking distance of downtown Wilmette and the North Shore trail network. In Scottsdale, Optima Sonoran Village’s walking paths connect to the surrounding neighborhood, and Optima McDowell Mountain is situated near the McDowell Mountains with access to hiking and biking trails well-suited to active dogs.
Services That Reduce Friction
At Optima Lakeview and Optima Signature, GoodVets operates as an on-site retail tenant, a practical choice for residents with animals. At Optima Sonoran Village, Optima Kierland, Optima Verdana, and Optima McDowell Mountain, dog-walking and pet-sitting services can be arranged through the building, which helps on busy days or when travel comes up.
In any well-designed residence, the kitchen tends to be where the architecture is most clearly felt. It might be the way the morning light falls across the counter, or how easily guests gather around the island during a dinner party. At Optima, these qualities are the result of a design approach that treats the kitchen as the center of the home rather than a utility room with finishes layered on top.
Across every Optima community, from Optima Signature and Optima Lakeview in Chicago to Optima Verdana in Wilmette and the Scottsdale communities of Optima Sonoran Village, Optima Kierland Apartments, and Optima McDowell Mountain, the kitchen has been designed with the same fundamental conviction. This is the room where daily life is most shaped by architecture, and where the modernist principles that guide Optima’s broader work find their most personal expression.
How the Space Connects
The open kitchen has become a familiar feature of contemporary residential design, but the idea behind an Optima floor plan goes back to a longer modernist tradition, one in which the kitchen, living, and dining areas are joined by sightlines and natural light rather than simply by the removal of walls. Layouts are arranged so that preparing a meal, serving it, and gathering around it each have room to happen without crowding one another, and cabinetry is built in as millwork that belongs to the architecture rather than sitting on top of it. The intent is for the kitchen to feel continuous with the rooms around it, so that someone cooking remains part of whatever else is happening in the home rather than tucked away from it.
Materials Chosen to Last
The materials in an Optima kitchen are selected for how they perform over years of daily use as much as for how they look on the first day. Quartz and natural stone countertops are specified because they hold up to the realities of cooking and hosting, and European hardware operates smoothly years into ownership with soft-close mechanisms and full-extension drawers. The palette stays restrained, with warm woods set against cooler stones and neutral tones that leave the color to the food, the flowers, and the people in the room.
Light and Appliances
Floor-to-ceiling glass brings daylight deep into the interior and changes the character of the kitchen as the day moves, while layered lighting takes over in the evening to keep the room comfortable for cooking and for company. Professional-grade appliances are integrated rather than displayed, with cooktops set flush into the counter and ovens placed where they read as part of the architecture instead of standing apart from it.
The Kitchen Within the Community
A residence does not exist on its own, and the kitchen at the center of an Optima home is supported by the broader life of the community around it. When you can host a larger gathering in a private residents club or stop by a community event without planning a full evening at home, the kitchen is relieved of having to do everything. It can be the place you cook for yourself on a quiet weeknight, the place you bring close friends together on a weekend, or the place you linger over coffee on a slow morning, because the community carries the gatherings the kitchen would otherwise have to host on its own.
A well-designed kitchen tends to disappear into the rhythm of daily life, supporting cooking and gathering and morning routines without asking for attention. The Optima kitchen is designed with this in mind, An Optima kitchen is built to this standard, which is part of why it settles so naturally into the rhythm of living at home.
Explore our communities to see how this approach is expressed across each of our properties.
At most residential buildings, the pool is open for a few warm months and closed for the rest. At Optima, the pool is built to last the year: heated, designed for the climate it sits in, and meant to hold its place in daily life rather than disappear for half of it. Across every Optima community, the same teams develop, design, construct, and manage each building, which means the pool is considered from the first sketch rather than added at the end. Each one reflects the specific light, weather, and rhythm of where it sits.
A Pool That Works in Every Season
A heated pool is a small detail that changes everything around it. It means the water is usable when the air is not warm enough to suggest a swim, which turns the pool from a summer event into a regular habit. A swim before work in the cooler months. Laps after a long day, when the deck is quiet and the city or the desert has settled into the evening around you.
It also changes how the space around the pool behaves. When the water stays warm, the deck stays alive, and the lounge chairs, fire pits, and shaded seating that surround it remain part of the daily landscape rather than props waiting for a season.
Chicago and the North Shore: Designing Around Winter
In Chicago, the pool has to answer a hard question, which is what to do about winter. At Optima Signature, the answer is a heated indoor pool that stays open throughout the year and an outdoor pool for the warmer months, all set within fifty-seven stories above Streeterville with Lake Michigan to the east.
At Optima Lakeview, the rooftop pool is heated for the same reason, a deliberate choice that keeps the deck working regardless of what a Chicago winter decides to do. The pool sits above the neighborhood with a panorama that reaches from the lakefront toward the ballpark, with fire pits, lounge seating, and barbecue areas arranged for a quiet swim at dawn or a gathering at dusk.
On the North Shore, Optima Verdana takes a different approach. The rooftop lap pool is glass-enclosed and heated, with retractable walls that open to the outside air on the right kind of day and close to keep the water usable on the colder ones. The view above it reaches across the Wilmette treetop canopy toward the Bahá’í Temple to the east.
Scottsdale: The Desert as an Amenity
In Scottsdale, the climate flips the logic. Here the question is less about staying warm and more about designing water that makes the desert feel like something you live inside rather than look at. At Optima Sonoran Village, outdoor life unfolds across more than six acres of landscaped grounds with two resort-style pool areas, each surrounded by spas, saunas, outdoor kitchens, fire pits, and lounge seating. Inside, a lap pool sits within the fitness center for the days that call for swimming out of the sun.
At Optima Kierland, the pool is a private amenity rather than a shared one. Each tower has its own, which turns a rooftop into something that genuinely feels like yours. The most recent tower carries an Olympic-length heated pool on the roof alongside a running track that follows the perimeter, a spa and cold plunge, fire pits, and an outdoor bar and kitchen, all set against unobstructed views of the McDowell Mountains.
At Optima McDowell Mountain, the rooftop pool sits high above the desert floor with the McDowells to the east, Camelback to the south, and Pinnacle Peak to the north, surrounded by lounge seating, fire pits, and outdoor kitchens built for the evenings that make the desert worth it.
Why the Pool Becomes the Center
A pool can be the most photographed thing in a building and still not be the heart of it. What turns water into the social center of a community is everything around it, and the way those things are placed. The fire pit close enough to the lounge seating to make conversation easy. The shade arriving where the afternoon sun lands. The bar within reach of the water. The view oriented toward the pool rather than away from it. None of that happens by accident, and at Optima none of it is left to chance, because the people who design the pool are the same people who design the building it sits on.
That is what makes the pool more than a place to swim. It becomes the place where a Sunday afternoon turns into something worth looking forward to, where neighbors become familiar, and where the city or the desert reminds you why you chose to live where you do.
Walk into most apartment buildings and your eyes drift toward the elevator. Walk into an Optima community and they land on something specific and stay there.
Optima Signature: Kiwi
In the plaza outside Optima Signature stands Kiwi: a 15-foot, bright yellow steel sculpture by David Hovey Sr., FAIA. The piece began as freehand drawings, layered into a tall stacked form, reminiscent of an animal but ultimately abstract. The yellow pops against the building’s red podium, giving it an identity visible from blocks away. Walking into Optima Signature means being greeted by a piece of original art before you’ve even reached the door.
Optima Lakeview: The Cloverleaf Sofa
At the base of Optima Lakeview’s skylit atrium sits the Cloverleaf Sofa, designed by Verner Panton in 1969–1970 for his Visiona 2 exhibition. Four connected circular seats in a snake-like configuration, a piece of design history, a work of sculpture, and an extraordinarily welcoming place to sit down. Walking into Optima Lakeview means arriving somewhere with a place to stop and stay, not just a corridor to move through.
Optima Verdana: Curves and Voids
At Optima Verdana in downtown Wilmette, the southeast plaza holds Curves and Voids, an eight-foot David Hovey Sr., FAIA sculpture. Sweeping steel curves interrupted by laser-cut voids that catch the North Shore light differently in every season. Inside, an Eames Lounge Chair anchors the library lounge. Walking into Optima Verdana means encountering something that changes with the time of day, a building that rewards a second look.
Optima Kierland: Modular Color
At Optima Kierland in Scottsdale, the arrival experience is shaped by color. In the lounges, modular SOFTLINE PLANET sofas in saturated tones invite residents to convene or retreat, while the Barcelona Chair anchors residents’ clubs across all five towers. Walking into Optima Kierland means stepping into a space that adapts to how you want to be in it, together or alone.
At Optima McDowell Mountain in North Scottsdale, glass-enclosed 15-foot ground-floor levels make the lobbies feel transparent to the desert beyond, with the McDowell range framed through the glass and the central courtyard close at hand. Walking into Optima McDowell Mountain means arriving at a place where the desert is part of the room.
Why It Works
The Barcelona Chair by Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich appears at every Optima community. So does the Eames Lounge Chair. On the walls, Calder, Picasso, Miró, and Klee. None of it is there for prestige alone, it’s there because residents, walking home on a grey November afternoon or a bright Scottsdale morning, deserve to pass through a space that has been thought about.
Sleep is often treated as something the body does on its own. But sleep researchers see it differently. Sleep is shaped by the environment around you, and the room you sleep in plays a real role. Light, temperature, sound, and air quality all send signals your nervous system is reading.
A well-designed home is quietly working in your favor every night.
Light
Light is the strongest cue for the body’s internal clock. Morning daylight anchors the circadian system and sets the timing for melatonin release later in the day. Homes with abundant daylight give that system a clearer signal. This is part of what makes a community like Optima Lakeview feel restorative from the inside out: a landscaped atrium runs through the building’s seven-story core, drawing daylight deep into spaces that might otherwise stay dim. At Optima Kierland, the vertical landscaping system is visible from every residential unit, keeping natural light and greenery within view throughout the day. Optima Signature takes a different approach to the same principle, wrapping its 57-story Streeterville tower in floor-to-ceiling windows with sweeping views of Lake Michigan and the Chicago skyline.
Temperature
Core body temperature drops as you fall asleep, and that drop is part of what triggers sleep. The Sleep Foundation recommends a bedroom temperature between 65 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit, with a broader range of 60 to 67 often cited for adults. A room that holds a steady nighttime temperature, without large swings, supports deeper, more continuous sleep. Optima communities are designed with thermal stability in mind, from well-insulated building envelopes to thoughtful glazing choices like the bird-friendly glass and green concrete used at Optima Verdana, which achieved Green Globes certification in 2023. In Arizona, where heat management matters even more, Optima Sonoran Village uses shaded glass, lush landscaping, and underground parking to moderate interior temperatures, while Optima McDowell Mountain brings sustainability strategies into its first completed tower to support a stable interior climate against the desert backdrop.
Acoustics
The brain continues processing sound during sleep, which is why intrusive noise can disrupt rest even when you don’t fully wake. Good acoustic design isn’t about silence but about reducing unpredictable sound, through dense materials, careful wall assemblies, and quiet mechanical systems. Across Optima communities, concrete-framed construction and considered unit-to-unit detailing help keep the everyday sounds of a building from becoming the soundtrack of a restless night. At Optima Sonoran Village, 5.5 acres of landscaped courtyards create a soft buffer between the residences and the surrounding city, and at Optima McDowell Mountain, the open desert setting and generous space between phases keep the soundscape calm even as the community continues to take shape.
Air and Atmosphere
Indoor air quality and humidity affect breathing and comfort throughout the night, with humidity in the 30 to 50 percent range generally considered ideal. Connection to greenery and natural light also matters: research links these elements to reduced stress and better sleep, likely because the nervous system reads them as signals of ease. Optima’s biophilic approach is visible across communities, in the lush plantings and vertical gardens at Optima Kierland, the interior atrium at Optima Lakeview, the residential courtyard and rooftop sky deck at Optima Verdana, the plant-fringed balconies and Camelback Mountain views at Optima Sonoran Village, the desert landscape framing Optima McDowell Mountain, and the 1.5 acres of amenity space at Optima Signature, including indoor and outdoor pools, saunas, and a yoga studio. Each keeps that connection to nature and ease woven into daily life.
Designed for Rest
Optima describes biophilic design as the deliberate integration of natural elements, light, greenery, organic materials, and open air, into the built environment. The result, for residents, is a place where the variables that govern sleep are considered as part of the home itself, rather than left for residents to solve on their own.
Explore our communitiesto see how a home built around light, comfort, and connection to nature can change the way you rest.
The Colorado River has been in sustained drought for more than twenty years. Its average flow has declined nearly 20% since 2000. Arizona is currently facing an 18% reduction in its Colorado River allocation. The guidelines that govern the river’s allocation among seven states are being renegotiated, and the outcome will shape the future of water in the American Southwest for decades.
These are not abstract concerns for a developer building in North Scottsdale. They are the conditions on the ground, and they are the conditions Optima McDowell Mountain was designed to address.
The Numbers
At the lower level of the 22-acre site, an underground concrete vault is designed to capture and store approximately 210,000 gallons of rainwater. That system, the largest private rainwater harvesting system in the United States, collects stormwater that falls on the site and repurposes it for on-site irrigation, removing all irrigation demand from Scottsdale’s municipal supply.
The result: residences at Optima McDowell Mountain are designed to use half as much water as the average Scottsdale multifamily residence, and a quarter as much as the average Scottsdale single-family home. In a city actively managing for a future with less water, that is not a marginal improvement. It is a different order of magnitude.
Beyond the rainwater system, Optima has secured 2,750 acre-feet of water through a partnership with the City of Scottsdale, equivalent to more than 30 years of full residential and commercial occupancy, deposited directly into Scottsdale’s water system to support the city’s long-term supply.
The Building Systems
Water conservation at Optima McDowell Mountain is embedded in the architecture, not layered onto it. The vertical landscaping system allows drought-resistant plants to cascade down the facades of all six buildings. Providing natural insulation and reducing the urban heat island effect that drives additional cooling demand. Xeriscape landscaping, drip irrigation, and native plantings across 75% of the site reduce water requirements while creating a landscape genuinely suited to the Sonoran Desert.
Optima McDowell Mountain is the first development in Arizona built under both the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC), providing an additional 9% energy savings over the previous code, and the International Green Construction Code (IgCC). Solar panels, high-performance VRF heating and cooling systems, induction cooktops in every residence, 100% underground parking, and EV charging complete a sustainability program that David Hovey Jr. has described as the culmination of everything Optima has worked toward over four decades.
What It Means
The question facing developers in the American Southwest is no longer whether to take water seriously. That conversation is over. The question is how seriously, and at what scale. Optima McDowell Mountain provides one answer: seriously enough to install the largest private rainwater harvesting system in the country, and to design every building system, from the facades to the mechanical plant to the vertical gardens, around the imperative of using less.
There is a moment that happens to almost every new resident of an Optima community. They take the elevator to the top for the first time, step out onto the sky deck, and stop. Not because they weren’t expecting something good, they were. But because what’s actually there exceeds what they imagined was possible from the roof of a residential building.
That reaction isn’t accidental. It’s the result of a design philosophy that has treated the sky deck not as a finishing touch, but as one of the most important spaces in the entire community.
A Design Decision, Not an Amenity Package
At Optima, the rooftop is designed with the same intentionality as any residence. Every sky deck begins with a fundamental question: what does the specific setting of this building demand, and how do we build something that honors it? The answer at each community is different, shaped by the landscape, the climate, the views, and the particular character of the neighborhood below. The result is that no two Optima sky decks are alike. They share a standard, but not a template.
David Hovey Jr. has described how the sky decks have evolved over time in direct response to how residents live, with bigger pools, more shaded gathering areas, yoga studios with open sliding glass walls, saunas and cold plunges, outdoor theaters, and the quarter-mile running track that made its debut at Optima Kierland. Each iteration built on the last. Each one asked: what would make this better?
Optima Kierland: A Sky Deck for Every Tower
At Optima Kierland, the sky deck isn’t a shared amenity, it’s a private one. Each of the five towers has its own dedicated sky deck, exclusive to that tower’s residents. It’s a design decision that transforms a rooftop from a communal convenience into something that genuinely feels like yours.
The 7190 tower’s sky deck is the most recent evolution: an Olympic-length heated pool, a quarter-mile running track that follows the perimeter of the roof, a spa and cold plunge, lounge seating, fire pits, an outdoor bar and kitchen with TVs, and the most breathtaking unobstructed views of the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale. In the earlier towers, glass-enclosed saunas, heated lap pools, yoga studios, outdoor theaters, and rooftop gardens round out sky decks that have set the standard for what rooftop living in the desert can be. Arizona’s first rooftop running track was born here, because the architects who designed the buildings also designed the life that happens on top of them.
Optima McDowell Mountain: Six Decks, Six Panoramas
At Optima McDowell Mountain, every one of the six buildings will have its own rooftop sky deck, each one will offer a 50-meter Olympic-length pool, a running track that follows the building’s perimeter, outdoor fire pits, lounge seating, arbors covered in vines, and outdoor kitchens with barbecues and dining spaces. The views rotate with the desert compass: the McDowell Mountains to the east, Camelback Mountain to the south, Pinnacle Peak to the north, and sunsets to the west that light the sky in every shade of amber, rose, and gold. No seat on any of these rooftops offers the same view twice.
Rooftop Deck at Optima McDowell Mountain
Optima Lakeview: Chicago, Unobstructed
In Chicago, the sky deck takes on an entirely different character. At Optima Lakeview, the rooftop sky deck places residents above the Lakeview neighborhood with panoramic views that sweep from the lakefront to Wrigley Field, a cityscape that is one of the most extraordinary in the country. The heated pool is designed for year-round use, a deliberate choice that ensures the deck never closes regardless of what a Chicago winter decides to do. Fire pits, lounge seating, a glass-enclosed party room, an outdoor theater, and barbecue areas ensure that whether the evening calls for a quiet drink above the city or a gathering of neighbors, the space is ready.
Optima Lakeview Sky Deck
Optima Signature: Elevated Living Across Four Amenity Levels
At Optima Signature, the experience is different, and intentionally so. Rather than a single rooftop sky deck, Optima Signature distributes its amenity spaces across four floors, giving residents multiple ways to engage with the city depending on the hour and the occasion. The heated indoor and outdoor pools sit within an amenity experience that spans 1.5 acres and includes a 40-yard indoor running track, multiple spas, indoor and outdoor saunas, and men’s and women’s locker rooms with steam rooms, as well as a Level 20 library and residents’ lounge with views of the lake and the skyline, and the exclusive Club 52 sky terrace for Apex residents. From 57 stories above Streeterville, Lake Michigan stretches unbroken to the east, the Chicago River winds through the city to the south, and the skyline fills every other direction. The result is not one elevated moment but a building-wide experience of height and light and city, one that changes with every season, every floor, and every time of day.
Optima Verdana: The North Shore, Elevated
At Optima Verdana, the sky deck takes its cue from the particular quality of North Shore light and the intimate scale of Wilmette’s village character. The glass-enclosed heated lap pool with retractable walls opens to fresh outdoor air when the season allows, year-round swimming in a setting that frames sweeping views of the Wilmette treetop canopy and the Bahá’í Temple to the north. A sun deck, barbecues, herb gardens, a bocce court, fire pits, and a party room with a chef’s kitchen make the rooftop at Verdana a space that reflects both the ambition and the quieter, more considered pace of North Shore living.
Optima Verdana
Optima Sonoran Village: A Desert Oasis, Ground to Rooftop
At Optima Sonoran Village, the elevated outdoor experience is distributed across the community rather than concentrated at a single point. Tower 15, the community’s most recent tower, offers its residents an exclusive rooftop sky deck with views of Camelback Mountain, an outdoor kitchen, fire pits, a spa, and a sun deck scaled for intimacy rather than spectacle.
For the broader community, the outdoor life unfolds across 6.1 acres of lushly landscaped grounds: two resort-style pool areas with spas, saunas, outdoor kitchens, fire pits, and lounge seating under the Scottsdale sky. The glass-enclosed 19,000-square-foot fitness center overlooks the lap pool, dissolving the boundary between inside and out even in the middle of a workout. A sculpture garden of five original David Hovey Sr. works in natural Cor-Ten steel, a putting green, and courtyard walking paths complete an outdoor experience designed to make the desert feel like an amenity, one that rewards every hour of the day differently, from the blue cool of early morning to the amber light of an Arizona evening.
Why the Sky Deck Becomes the Heart
A building can have extraordinary residences and still feel anonymous. What turns a building into a community is the shared space, the place where neighbors become familiar, where a Sunday afternoon becomes something worth looking forward to, where the city or the desert or the lake reminds you why you chose to live here. At Optima, the sky deck is designed to be that place.
It works because it’s never designed generically. It works because the pool is the right size, in the right place, oriented to the right view. Because the fire pit is close enough to the lounge seating to make a conversation easy, and far enough from the pool to give the space room to breathe. Because the running track goes where the best views are. Because every detail, from the shade structure to the bar placement to the choice of materials underfoot, was considered by the same people who designed the building below.
At Optima, the sky deck isn’t the amenity at the top. It’s part of the design from the very beginning.
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.
Optima Lakeview Atrium
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.
Optima Kierland’s Patio
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.
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.
Lushly Landscaped Courtyards
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.
Optima Lakeview’s Atrium
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.
Each year, the Pantone® Color of the Year arrives as both a reflection and a proposition—an atmospheric reading of where we are, and a subtle invitation toward where we might go next. For 2026, that color is Cloud Dancer: a soft, luminous neutral that hovers between white and pale gray, carrying with it a sense of airiness, calm, and quiet optimism.
At first glance, Cloud Dancer feels understated. But like the most enduring design ideas, its power lies in nuance. This is not a blank white or a cool gray; it’s a tone infused with light, warmth, and breath. It evokes morning skies before the day asserts itself, the hush of elevation, the feeling of space opening rather than closing. In a world still negotiating speed, noise, and density, Cloud Dancer offers pause.
At Optima®, this sensibility resonates deeply. The company’s design philosophy has long centered on clarity, light, and the idea that architecture should elevate daily life—not overwhelm it. Cloud Dancer mirrors the principles embedded in Optima’s modernist lineage: restraint, intention, and a belief that well-designed environments can support both vitality and stillness.
Optima®’s iconic vertical landscaping celebrates nature’s colors against the quiet restraint of neutral materials.
Within Optima® communities, color is never ornamental alone—it’s experiential. In sunlit residences, color amplifies natural light, reflecting the shifting tones of day and season. In shared spaces, it creates a sense of openness and welcome, encouraging movement, conversation, and quiet moments alike. Paired with natural materials—wood, stone, greenery—it becomes part of a living palette that feels both contemporary and timeless.
There’s also a psychological dimension to Cloud Dancer that aligns with Optima®’s holistic approach to living. Soft neutrals are known to reduce visual noise, supporting focus, restoration, and emotional balance. In homes designed to accommodate work, rest, and social connection all at once, this matters. A neutral palette doesn’t demand attention; it supports presence. It allows art, furniture, views, and people to take center stage.
Importantly, celebrating neutral colors is not about retreat—it’s about readiness, with lightness that suggests possibility, adaptability, and resilience. As lifestyles continue to evolve, spaces must remain flexible, capable of shifting moods and functions without constant reinvention. Paleness does exactly that, offering a stable yet responsive foundation for changing needs.
For Optima®, the use of a neutral palette also reflects a broader cultural ethos: optimism without excess, elegance without austerity, modernism softened by humanity. It’s a reminder that progress doesn’t always arrive loudly. Sometimes it enters quietly, like light through a window, changing how a space feels before you even realize why.
As 2026 unfolds, Cloud Dancer invites us to reconsider the role of color in our environments—not as statement, but as atmosphere; not as trend, but as tone. Within Optima® communities, where architecture, landscape, and lifestyle converge, it feels less like a new arrival and more like a natural extension of a long-held belief: that beauty, balance, and well-being are built from the inside out.
A well-designed kitchen tends to disappear into the rhythm of daily life, supporting cooking and gathering and morning routines without asking for attention. The Optima kitchen is designed with this in mind, An Optima kitchen is built to this standard, which is part of why it settles so naturally into the rhythm of living at home.
