Urban Design
Approach
We believe in creating happy, safe and human urban places where people can smile, rest, and feel the sunshine on their faces. We desire people to feel alive.
We believe in creating sensible outdoor places with urban squares, filled with grass and trees and lined by human-scaled buildings. We also design well-defined urban streets that are engaging and alive and place the cars curbside or in center-block parking lots and decks. We desire to create the physical places that facilitate happiness. We create streets and squares where people can unplug, where they can easily find places to sit, walk or play, to dine, drink a cup of coffee or perhaps read a book.
We incorporate monumental public buildings like places of worship, town halls or museums and locate them in prominent places on our squares. We also design more humble buildings for mixed-use and residential uses. The character of our architecture transcends style while it remains rooted in traditional principles of design including the use of human scale, designing for the local climate and embracing the historic character of a place.
Levels of Investment
I. City & Town
We work with investors and municipalities to transform existing urban areas into groupings of walkable mixed-use neighborhoods and to develop large tracts of vacant land as new towns. Four to five hundred acres will yield a new town or small city comprised of several mixed-use neighborhoods. The above Masterplan for South Bend, Indiana was designed by a team including Charles Beck at the University of Notre Dame. The design strategically organizes the city into several neighborhoods, whose approximate individual boundaries are drawn as circles in the above drawing. See the next section for more on “Neighborhood.”
Near the center of our cities and towns is a civic square with important public buildings on it like places of worship, town halls, libraries or museums. The civic square is the heart and physical focal point of our cities and towns and it helps give the community a sense of identity. Our designs are meant to give people a place to live, work, play and worship, all within a short walking distance.
Proposed civic square for South Bend, Indiana. A new town hall and renovated courthouse face onto the large and formal square. Retail pavilions animate the space and mixed-use buildings line the edge. The square is filled with trees, public art and fountains.
II. Neighborhood
Eighty to one-hundred and twenty acres of land will allow for one walk-able neighborhood. The above island neighborhood, designed by Charles Beck with a team of students at the University of Notre Dame, is an example of a small urban neighborhood. It is compact, beautiful and human-scaled, providing a sense of identity for those who live, work, play or worship on the island.
The following conceptual diagram is based upon a similar diagram from Architectural Graphic Standards. The diagram defines a neighborhood as being approximately one quarter mile in radius. This size allows for a five-minute walk from edge to center, the distance most people are willing to walk without driving. The neighborhood has a central square, one or more mixed-use streets and a network of residential streets. Edges are defined by physical boundaries like boulevards, bodies of water or natural preserves. Central squares have noble public buildings built upon them.
Neighborhood Diagram
III. Block
We also design individual blocks or a series of adjoining blocks. This scale of project opens up the possibility to design several buildings that together create urban spaces. All building types are employed in the architecture and are driven by the needs of the community and the location of the blocks within the neighborhood. The above block is an urban university campus designed by Charles Beck. The design incorporates new public and private buildings that together create inner-block pedestrian spaces for both the students and their professors to enjoy.
Depaul University block designed by Charles Beck, Architect. New public and private buildings, an inner-block quadrangle, intimate squares and narrow streets create a pleasant pedestrian environment.
A new village in Colts Neck, New Jersey by Charles Beck. This design features inner-block parking lots that are designed like urban squares, well-defined on all sides.
IV. Building
We design individual buildings for the urban environment. These include civic (places of worship, schools, museums, etc.), commercial (retail, office, hospitality) and mixed-use (retail, office, residential). Mixed-use buildings zone vertically with residential or office uses above retail and are limited generally to 5 stories. We believe in creating low-rise urban environments, allowing people to be more connected to each other and their surroundings. We also design strictly residential buildings including multi-family apartment buildings, townhouses and single-family houses.
Flex Buildings with facades designed by Charles Beck with Torti Gallas & Partners. These buildings were created to be townhouses with the intention of converting them at some point to be mixed-use with retail on the ground floor.
A recreation center, elevations designed by Charles Beck with Torti Gallas & Partners. This is an example of a civic building designed for a village.