Tag Archives: planning

Modern Monday

Posted on November 21, 2016 | Leave a comment

At our Modern Mixer this past Saturday I was asked if I could find this post from the past. So, without anything further…here you go. Have a wonderful holiday week.

Designing Our Future | How to Make and Attractive City | I came across this video this morning and wanted to share it. While it makes some good points I don’t necessarily agree with everything Alain says here. I appreciate the overall thinking and would love for us to follow a more European model with our urban growth.

His sixth point does hit home to me as we watch most of our newest construction coming from outside influences bringing corporate brands to Asheville blurring our unique identity. My question for us as a community is how can we accommodate this important growth while constructing buildings that are filtered by the values of Asheville itself? What is important to us? How do we maintain our own sense of place that has attracted us all to live and travel here? Think about it. Cheers! Troy

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Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged architecture, asheville, city, contemporary, design, modern, planning

Designing Our Future | The Missing Middle

Posted on September 1, 2016 | Leave a comment

Yesterday, following a closing on a property for one of our investor clients {YEAH!} Kelly and I attended a meeting with AIA Asheville and a member of our city’s planning department on the movement towards changing our zoning to allow more density and housing types in some of our neighborhoods. If interested the presentation can be seen HERE. The city is looking for your input so, also, go HERE and take the survey following. This is your chance to help influence the future of your community. Cheers!

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Posted in Asheville | Designing Our Future

Tagged aia, architecture, asheville, contemporary, design, home, house, housing, infill, modern, planning, Real Estate, residential, zoning

Designing Our Future | 011

Posted on March 14, 2016 | Leave a comment

Thanks to Kelly for sending me this video. There are some really beautiful points within this that offer us good perspective of the development of our own beloved Asheville. It is worth the fourteen minutes to watch.

What Makes a City Attractive? Try These 6 Points. Challenging the notion that beauty is subjective, Alain de Botton has made a case for attractive cities, believing that a city’s beauty is key to its success and citizens’ quality of life. The Swiss philosopher, author and founder of London’s The School of Life believes that attractiveness is the primary reason why many choose to vacation to Paris, and not Frankfurt.

“We think beauty is subjective, and so no one should say anything about it,” says Botton. “It’s a very understandable qualm, but it’s also horribly useful to greedy property developers.”

So, what makes a city attractive? Find out Botton’s six points for beautiful cities. Watch the video here. Cheers!

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Posted in Asheville | Designing Our Future

Tagged asheville, city, construction, design, development, downtown, home, house, modern, new, planning

Designing Our Future #10 | Faking It

Posted on February 22, 2016 | 1 comment

Why Asheville Needs New Design Guidelines

Thanks to our colleague for pointing out this article to us by Laura Berner Hudson who serves on the Planning Commission. The article in Mountain Xpress reflects some of our sentiments here, but she expresses our need to better our city’s design criteria so much better — so let’s let her take over the dialogue. Click here for the article. Cheers!

Laura says,”When serious, authentic architecture is rejected in favor of simulacra, we exchange reality for a mythical past where everything is made to resemble what might have been. In turn, we blur the boundary between copies and genuine history. It is the elaboration of continuously changing ideas that makes a city truly authentic, and if we don’t embrace this vitality and diversity, we risk becoming a generic, theme park version of what we never were instead of an authentic manifestation of who we truly are.”

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Posted in Hotels, Modern Architecture and Interiors, Office Buildings and Commercial

Tagged architecture, asheville, building, city, contemporary, design, downtown, home, house, modern, planning

Asheville Design Center

Posted on September 12, 2010 | Leave a comment

Building livable communities through planning and design.

I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the Asheville Design Center and the great work they do for the community. More information on them to come in the future. In the meantime this is how they describe themselves on their website:

“The Asheville Design Center engages a diverse community of approximately 75,000 Asheville citizens and nearly 1 million Western North Carolina citizens in quality design and planning solutions that promote livable communities.

We are dedicated to educating the public about the importance of quality civic design and providing a means for people to work together in developing their communities.

The ADC is located in downtown Asheville where we have meeting, work and exhibit space. We offer a multidisciplinary team of volunteer professionals including architects, planners, landscape architects, urban designers, community advocates, and others to give shape to community visions.”