One of the most exciting aspects of real estate development is the unique architecture concepts that come to life through innovative planning and design. Southeast Real Estate Business spoke with a few southeastern architecture and design firms to get a glimpse of the most recent gems in their portfolios.

Forum Architecture & Interior Design

Forum Architecture & Interior Design, Inc. has specialized in planning, architecture and interior design since 1986. Based in Altamonte Springs (Orlando), Florida, Forum is a recognized national leader and award-winning design firm that focuses primarily on multifamily, clubhouse, resort, hospitality, residential and commercial properties.

"The majority of the work our firm specializes in is developer-oriented," says Norman Stoehr, president, principal and architect at Forum. "Most of our clients are on the construction side of things, so we have developed very good relationships with building contractors. In fact, probably 60 percent of our referrals are through and from building contractors that have become experienced in working with our plans and understanding what we are trying to do."

Forum was the architect of record for the high-profile Orlando Harley Davidson project, located on Interstate 4 just outside of Orlando. The company collaborated with design architect Kubala Washatko Architects out of Milwaukee and Fitch, an interior design firm.

The tilt wall concrete building was designed to recreate the original Harley Davidson factory in Milwaukee. Not so much a factory as the main showroom, the Milwaukee center is around 33,000 square feet. A third of the building is devoted to parts and service. Forum painted the building a dark red color to look like the brick of the original building. Inside is a completely open space with a series of garage doors that expose the Harley Davidson series of bikes to the interstate.

"I think the neatest part about it is that it's kind of a themed building," says Stoehr. "It's not just a building that somebody put a use into; it's a custom design look, style and theme for that particular motorcycle product, even down to the water tower on the roof that we designed with their screaming eagle logo on it."

Another unique project is the Zello Urban Caf , for which Forum recently won a Golden Brick Award from the Downtown Partnership of Orlando. A high-quality gourmet sandwich shop, Zello Urban Caf is the first unit Forum designed and concepted for the company in the Orlando market. The Caf is in a downtown urban location, which posed a few difficulties for Forum.

"The restaurant is on the first floor of a six-story building, so there were a lot of issues with regard to the technical aspects of how to integrate this kind of a use where there are offices and other space above," explains Stoehr. "The main kitchen is on the second floor, so all of the product actually comes down to the lower level via a dumb waiter."

The high-tech building boasts exposed structure and a contemporary color palate. There is an open oven -- the centerpiece of the restaurant -- which runs two floors.

Forum has also recently been awarded the contract to design the 30,000-square-foot Lake Receptions facility, located off of SR 19-A in Mount Dora, just outside of Orlando. Mount Dora is a quaint, almost Victorian small town, and Lakes Receptions capitalizes on that Victorian theme. The building is designed predominantly for wedding receptions and special occasions. A large portion of the building is a 4,400-square-foot screened garden and gazebo for outdoor events, which seats up to about 250 people. There are also dressing rooms for the bride and groom and a series of three different rooms which can be combined into one large ballroom for the reception.

"I think it's great that somebody has come up with this concept," says Stoehr. "Most of the time you end up using country clubs or hotels for a wedding. This alternative is a freestanding building with residentially styled architecture."

The Lake Receptions will be the largest convention/conference center in Lake County. It will be designed to service up to seven separate activities at once. The center will contain advanced lighting, power, data and sound systems to enhance events and is intended to match the character of downtown Mount Dora. Forum is currently working on a similar project called Poplar Hill Inn and Conference Center in Farmville, Virginia.

Looney Ricks Kiss

Founded in 1983, Looney Ricks Kiss (LRK) has worked on everything from corporate facilities to single-family housing and everything in between. With offices in Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee; Celebration, Florida; and Princeton, New Jersey, LRK has evolved over the past several years to include services such as planning, architecture, interior design and graphics, as well as qualitative market design research.

While the company is involved in a number of individual projects, its current focus is creating mixed-use projects. Many of the firm's current projects tend to be village- or town-centered.

For example, LRK was recently appointed the Town Architect and Town Planner of the master planned mixed-use village of Baldwin Park -- site of the former Orlando Naval Training Center and perhaps the most significant new parcel of land to be developed in Central Florida. Located on the shores of the 195-acre Lake Baldwin and 3 miles from the center of downtown Orlando, the park has a 54-acre Village Center, which will include 350,000 square feet of retail space, 220,000 square feet of office space and over 1,100 residential units. Main Street will be a combination of freestanding office buildings and retail, with residential units and office space above the stores.

The company also developed a 100-acre site for a mixed-use traditional neighborhood development (TND) in Nashville, called Lenox Village. It also includes a Village Center, as well as institutional uses, parks and a mixture of housing options, including live/ work units, townhouses and single-family homes. Because the Metro Planning Commission wants this project to serve as a model for future "smart growth" development in Nashville, they assisted in its approval through the designation of a special urban design overlay (UDO) district specifically for the site.

Especially notable in LRK's portfolio is the STAX Museum & Music Academy. LRK is overseeing the design of the STAX Museum of American Soul Music, located less than 2 miles from downtown Memphis in Soulsville, USA, and a 500-seat performing arts center. LRK is also designing the STAX Music Academy, which will house a musical arts program for neighborhood inner-city youth as well as the LeMoyne-Owen College Music Department.

"We've rebuilt this 1920s vintage recording studio that was an old movie theater and a little neighborhood retail center that had gone through its cycle," says Ricks. "When STAX moved in there, they took all the seats out of the old theater and that became the recording studio. That building was torn down eventually, and so we're building it back almost exactly how it was in its heyday around 1967."

The project is part of an ongoing effort to honor the city's treasured musical heritage and to help revitalize the neighborhood.

"It's stimulating residential redevelopment and is also stimulating the old retail center that was across the street," Ricks notes. "We hope that gets rebuilt."

The unique thing about all of these LRK projects is the blending together of uses and, often, the search for identity, says Ricks.

"We're trying to help our clients find something that's unique to them," he notes. "We hear it both from the municipalities who want to create some controls and from the private sector side as well. That same sense of identity becomes a strategic marketing advantage for them and helps a developer distinguish itself from the rest of the crowd that's been doing the same thing in various forms for 20 or 30 years. So I think we're responding to these situations, trying to uncover uniqueness wherever it can be found."

Pieper O'Brien Herr

Ranked as one of Atlanta's top 20 architectural firms, Pieper O'Brien Herr Architects provides architectural services to a diverse client base, including office, retail, industrial, automotive, justice/correctional, educational and recreational users. The company just celebrated its 30th anniversary last year and opened a second office in Eastman, Georgia.

"We try to have a wide palate by design," says president Chuck O'Brien III. "With economic downturns and specific markets, you don't want to be caught with expertise in just one area."

Pieper O'Brien Herr's range of services includes planning, architecture, programming, interior design and graphic design. Last year, the company designed a 1 million-square-foot building for Core Location in the Metro Technology Center, originally the Sears Distribution Center, located west of downtown Atlanta. The mission was to create a telecommunications center where various carriers could lease any or all of the facility for their telecommunications data hubs. Sprint is one of the users, with 100,000 square feet of space.

The biggest challenge for Pieper O'Brien Herr was turning a building that was designed for a completely different purpose (a retail distribution center) into a use that was never thought of 50 or 60 years ago. It was also a challenge bringing technology to a building that previously had none. The stand-alone facility is electric heavy, with 85 watts per square foot. "It was the first project we've done in 30 years that had its own substation," notes O'Brien. "It's pretty unique to have a Georgia Power substation on your property just to handle the power."

Architecturally, the company tried to promote a new beginning for a building that was old and tired. The building was nearly all brick, so the designers used that as an advantage and combined different types of metal panels and some other interesting shapes to suggest a much more high-tech setting.

"I think we came up with a design that is fitting for this type of high-tech usage," says O'Brien. "We had existing building parameters to work with and, as we do with any building, tried to find its strengths and weaknesses," says O'Brien.

Pieper O'Brien Herr also designed the corporate headquarters for ' in the Buckhead area of Atlanta. The 112,000-square-foot building has an executive floor, including a customer briefing center, and two floors above the parking deck with about 87,000 square feet of garden office space. Like many of the projects the company has worked on recently, the ' project had a very intense schedule and was just completed last year.

Both of these projects involved clients that had a somewhat relaxed dress code and wanted an informal, relaxed space that needed to be corporate at the same time, says O'Brien.

"We try to find that balance," he says. For instance, as opposed to a stagnant row of offices, Pieper O'Brien Herr looks at ways to make a space more flowing, with no ceilings, exposed structure, unique lighting and things that are unusual and exciting, such as stained, concrete floors.

"These tenants have a somewhat younger, high-tech workforce, and they are always trying to attract that workforce and keep them," says O'Brien. "These kinds of spaces seem to help that."


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