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.
In the hills of Jackson, Mississippi, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fountainhead stands as one of the architect’s most intimate and inventive late-career works—an embodiment of the principles that defined a movement and continue to inform the way we design, build, and live today.
Completed in 1948 for newspaper publisher Charles T. Johnson, Fountainhead is a study in clarity and conviction. Its low, sheltering roofline; its bold horizontality; and its organic fusion with the landscape make the home feel grounded yet expansive, private yet open. True to Wright’s Usonian ideals, Fountainhead rejects ornament and excess in favor of purpose, flow, and a profound connection to place.
A House That Breathes With Its Site
Fountainhead’s bold triangular geometry is one of its most striking features. Rather than centering the plan around a traditional grid, Wright turned the house on an angle that captures light, frames long views of the wooded acreage, and creates a sense of dynamic movement as you step through the spaces. The home’s carport, cantilevers, and carefully choreographed circulation pathways feel like extensions of the landscape itself.
Brick, cypress, and concrete interlock with ease, reinforcing Wright’s belief that materials should feel native, honest, and alive. Meanwhile, custom built-ins—signature to his residential work—express a belief in designing the entire environment, from structure to storage to the smallest detail of daily life.
A Legacy That Resonates
The spirit of Fountainhead resonates deeply with Optima®’s own Modernist DNA. While decades—and tectonic shifts in technology, fabrication, and cultural expectations—separate Wright’s Usonian experiments from Optima’s contemporary communities, the philosophical throughline remains unmistakable.
Like Wright, Optima® is committed to creating architecture that responds to context rather than overpowering it; that invites natural light in generous, life-enhancing ways; and that integrates materials not merely for aesthetic effect, but for performance, longevity, and honest expression. Optima’s signature use of glass and concrete, its devotion to clean lines, and its belief in open, flexible, light-filled interiors all echo Wright’s conviction that architecture must elevate how people live every day.
Where Wright pioneered the idea of living “in harmony with nature,” Optima® advances that ethos for our time—through biophilic elements, desert-sensitive design, lush landscaped terraces, and high-performance glazing that blurs the boundary between inside and out.
A Living Tradition at Optima®
Fountainhead’s enduring relevance reminds us that Modernism is not a style frozen in time—it is a living tradition of problem-solving, clarity, and human-focused design. Wright’s work demonstrated that beauty and functionality are not opposites; they are partners. That innovation is not about novelty; it is about making life better, richer, more connected.
Fountainhead stands as a reminder of what’s possible when design is both disciplined and daring. More than seventy-five years after its completion, it remains a beacon of modern living—and a touchstone for those of us carrying forward the enduring, ever-evolving language of Modernism.
Some architects reshape skylines with spectacle. Others reshape the field through quiet conviction—through spaces that reward attention, invite contemplation, and honor the material world. Billie Tsien belongs to the latter lineage: a designer whose work is rooted in calm strength, subtle detailing, and a deep belief that architecture is, at its best, an act of care.
Co-founder of the New York–based firm Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (TWBTA), she has spent more than four decades creating buildings that feel grounded, humane, and timeless. With her partner in life and work, Tod Williams, Tsien has developed a practice defined not by signature gestures but by a philosophy—one that takes materiality seriously, attends to atmosphere, and centers the lived experience of the people who inhabit a space.
This devotion to thoughtful, human-centered design resonates strongly with Optima®’s own architectural ethos—where form, material, and experience are inseparable, and where buildings are crafted to enrich daily life rather than overwhelm it.
Façade detail of the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago campus. Designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, 2012. Credit: Jamie Manley on Flickr Creative Commons, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
An Architecture of Patience and Presence
Billie Tsien’s design sensibility is shaped by ideas of slowness: slow craft, slow material change, slow discovery. Her buildings reveal themselves gradually, often through careful transitions, intimate courtyards, filtered light, or tactile surfaces that invite touch.
To Tsien, architecture is not about instant recognition—it’s about long-term resonance. “What we make should last and be loved,” she has said, a principle that can be felt in every project she touches.
Consider some of TWBTA’s most celebrated works:
The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, where textured concrete panels, rich wood, and studied proportions create a museum that is both monumental and deeply personal.
The Obama Presidential Center, currently under construction, where the team’s sensibilities around craft, public space, and civic generosity guide a project of national significance.
Materiality is Tsien’s language. She gravitates toward surfaces that weather with dignity—stone, copper, bronze, concrete, wood—materials that record time and strengthen a building’s relationship with its surroundings.
This deeply material-forward approach aligns with Optima®’s commitment to architectural authenticity, expressed through its own use of sculptural concrete, expressive glass, and carefully articulated details across its Chicago, Winnetka, and Scottsdale communities. Both practices share the belief that materials should feel honest and integral—not decorative, but essential.
The Strength of a Thoughtful Partnership
The partnership between Billie Tsien and Tod Williams is one of the most enduring collaborations in contemporary architecture. Their dynamic is not a duality but a conversation—steadfast, inquisitive, and rooted in mutual respect. Together, they approach each project as a site-specific inquiry: What does this place need? What would make it feel deeply itself? How can a building foster connection—between people, between past and present, between material and meaning?
Quiet Power in a Loud Culture
In an age of architectural spectacle, Billie Tsien stands apart. Her commitment to craft and authenticity feels almost radical in its restraint. She believes that the most beautiful spaces often emerge from modesty and intention, not excess. Her buildings are made to be lived in, learned from, and loved over time. She elevates the everyday: the texture of a handrail, the depth of a window reveal, the soft transition from exterior to interior. She designs spaces that ask us to slow down and feel.
A Legacy Still Unfolding
Billie Tsien has reshaped the field through buildings, but also through leadership, mentorship, and advocacy. She has served as president of the Architectural League of New York, as a guiding figure at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and as an inspiring presence for the next generation of architects—especially women seeking models of practice grounded in integrity and depth. Her contribution is measured not only in iconic projects, but in the values she champions: care, curiosity, calm, generosity.
The holidays arrive gently inside a modernist home. Light stretches across expansive floors. Glass walls gather the shifting colors of winter. The architecture—open, minimal, intentional—sets the tone. Instead of competing with this clarity, holiday décor can echo it, creating moments of warmth that enhance, rather than overwhelm, the space.
Begin with Light: The Season’s Most Modern Material
In modernist architecture, light is everything. This time of year, it becomes an active participant in the room.
Use soft, warm glows. Think frosted glass lanterns, minimal metal candleholders, or a cluster of tea lights arranged with intention. Light should feel quiet—more atmosphere than ornament.
Let reflections do the work. In homes with floor-to-ceiling glass, even the smallest illumination can multiply. Place lights where the architecture amplifies them: along window ledges, against concrete columns, or on floating shelves.
Avoid heavy string lights. Instead, choose delicate strands or sculptural LED pieces that feel like part of the architecture, not an afterthought.
Bring Nature In—With Restraint Modern interiors excel when materials speak. During the holidays, nature can add warmth without clutter.
Choose simple greenery. A single branch of pine in a tall, narrow vase can be more striking than an entire garland. Eucalyptus, magnolia, desert botanicals, or juniper offer subtle color and shape.
Think sculptural, not sprawling. Minimal wreaths made from a thin brass ring and a small cluster of greenery feel contemporary and elegant—perfect for glass doors or concrete walls.
Honor the palette around you. Chicago and Wilmette residents might echo the winter landscape with muted greens and silvers, while Scottsdale homes can play with desert tones: sage, dusty rose, soft gold.
Use Color as an Accent, Not a Theme
Modernist interiors thrive on clarity. Too much color can feel noisy, but a single hue—strategically placed—can bring the season alive.
Pick one color story. Think deep forest green, warm terracotta, soft gold, or even a rich charcoal. Repeat it sparingly in textiles, glassware, or small decorative objects.
Let materials take the lead. Raw wood, brushed metal, wool, and stone carry warmth without introducing unnecessary visual clutter.
Avoid patterned décor. Minimalist spaces benefit from solids, textures, and tone-on-tone gestures that feel calm and architectural.
Create Small, Intentional Gatherings of Objects
Modernist design loves a vignette—a small cluster of objects that tell a story through composition.
Try a holiday still life. Arrange three to five objects on a tray: a candle, a ceramic vessel, a small botanical, a sculptural ornament. Let negative space do the rest.
Edit ruthlessly. If it doesn’t add beauty or meaning, it’s not needed. One thoughtful arrangement can feel more festive than an entire room of decorations.
Let the Architecture Shine
Holiday décor shouldn’t hide what makes Optima homes exceptional: the clean lines, the views, the expressive material palette.
Keep sightlines open. Resist the urge to place decorations on every surface. Allow the visual flow from one room to another to remain uninterrupted.
Highlight key architectural details. A concrete column wrapped with a single ribbon of greenery. A floating shelf with a minimalist candle. A glass corner that frames a small, sculptural tree.
Choose décor that feels like an extension of the space. Think in terms of form, balance, and proportion—the same principles the architecture was built upon.
A Modern Holiday, Defined by Warmth and Intention Celebrating the holidays in a modernist home doesn’t mean sacrificing tradition—it means shaping it to fit your environment. With clean lines as your canvas, small gestures can have big emotional impact. A soft glow. A sculptural branch. A simple palette. A sense of calm that carries through each room.
At Optima®, where light, material, and open space define the experience of home, the holidays become an opportunity to express beauty in its most distilled form. Modern, warm, and unmistakably yours.
