Research, Authenticity Are Key
Creating a genuine sense of place isn’t as straightforward as it sounds because to reflect a culture accurately and respectfully, you need to understand it—and that requires doing some homework early on.
“Research is key to this process and understanding a place can not only be skin deep,” DiLeonardo points out. “While finishes and color palettes might reflect one element of a place, a designer can further explore in the organization of a plan or a local industry.”
Case in point: for a hotel project in the seaport community of Mystic, Conn., the obvious approach would have been creating a maritime theme with nautical references and colors. But as the design team at DiLeonardo International dug deeper, they discovered the harbor was developed in response to local farming communities and manufacturing. “From here, planning and materiality referenced the way in which early settlers used dry-stacked stone walls and early furniture manufacturing details,” DiLeonardo recalls. “The results are an unexpected and thoughtful renovation that has guests feeling a part of the culture of Mystic in an authentic and subtle way.”
Parker adds cultural differences require designers to do their due diligence. As a firm based in the Boston area working on a project in Thailand, for example, research is crucial to understanding the local culture and creating designs that look authentic and are respectful of the community and its values. “The colors and symbols mean completely different things here than they do there, so you need to be careful,” she warns. Likewise, she says it’s important to pay attention to the indigenous design of an area, such as in the Southwest where the Native American culture is prominent. “You want to make sure you’re working with and referencing the right cultural sources.” However, the Internet has made access to information more readily available, so “it’s much easier to do it today than it was 25 years ago,” she adds.
Local culture isn’t always external, either. In the design of its Sacramento, Calif., office, DPR Construction turned the process inward and scheduled a full-day city tour with a diverse group of employees to take in the sights and local influences. The team visited a railroad museum, nearby rivers, local coffee shops and restaurants, public art installations and other historic renovations taking place in the city to determine how they could incorporate these elements thoughtfully into the design of their workplace—a process that was key to its success, according to Marshall Andrews, project manager at DPR’s Sacramento office.
“If you just get caught up in what you think localization should be and operate in a silo, it’s not going to be as successful,” Andrews observes. “Going through that full-day experience with others and all of us really learning something different added quite a bit of value I don’t think would have been incorporated into the project otherwise.”
The danger with the localization design trend is going too far and overcompensating by overloading a space with local cues. “It needs to feel natural. It can’t be forced,” Kent states. “I can see where you could go and do too much and then it’s going to feel kind of quirky and awkward.”
The Importance of Materials
Historically, buildings reflected their locale by the raw materials they were constructed with because they were sourced nearby. Today, using local materials in thoughtful ways can not only reflect the region, but also may result in innovative solutions.
“Materiality is important on many levels. It can be the best environmental and economic choice but it should go beyond detailing and craftsmanship and should reflect why a material was chosen,” DiLeonardo says. “In some cases, this could mean taking a traditional material and using it in a completely new and innovative way or vice versa—using a new material in a traditional detail.”
For example, the design inspiration for the Renaissance Toledo Downtown Hotel draws from the regional history of Toledo, Ohio, known as “The Glass City” because of the legacy the glass industry left in the region. As such, there was a strong focus by the DiLeonardo International team to incorporate glass and its natural properties in the design DNA. Exploring the dynamic opportunities of glass material, each space reflects the energy of the city beyond transparency and results in unexpected, yet intriguing design elements.
Similarly, DPR Construction looked to Sacramento’s moniker “City of Trees” for inspiration for its new offices, which led to an innovative use of wood that resulted in a change in the building code. Andrews recalls the team’s decision to construct a 6,000-square-foot expansion entirely out of cross-laminated timber: “With Sacramento’s moniker being the ‘City of Trees,’ we really thought this structured-type wood would be quite reflective of that, so we decided to go down that route. But our decision to pursue the option of the new structure being made entirely out of wood wasn’t adopted by building code.”
After meetings with the city’s structural engineers and submitting calculations for structural loads and sheer, the DPR team managed to get their design (and local thematic element) approved. “It’s the first [project] in Sacramento to have this mass timber in a sheer wall application and the first time this product has been used for a sheer wall in the state of California, which is a pretty big deal if you consider the earthquake and seismic requirements,” he recalls.