Research
Restaurants
Shari’s Restaurants
Aven Restaurant
Chapman Park Market
Retail & Restaurant Merchandising
Our Process
We, at Urbana, embrace a multi-discipline approach to our work in order to uncover and highlight design opportunities. We strive to infuse the additional dimension of perceived value into our process, which is vital for creating a memorable user experience. We collaborate with a diverse range of disciplines specific to fit your project. Through this multi-disciplinary process, we creatively-frame and problem solve to produce a rich brand experience uniquely tailored to your vision.
Our inclusive process integrates and honors your business expertise. By introducing valuable concepts and resources from a broad spectrum of experts, together, we discover ways to fulfill your greatest potential.
The Wall-in-Tessellation Screen
The Inspiration
The wall-in-tessellation screen, still in its prototype stage, couples CNC profiling with traditional architectural principles of tension and compression to achieve an aesthetic that recalls the modular and dynamic work of Erwin Hauer and the structural simplicity and accessibility of the Barrel of Monkeys toy created by Leonard Marks and Milton. Great design arises from the unexpected.
The Making & The Result
The wall-in-tessellation screen design explores the intersections of architecture, fashion and material. Created using a unique material, washable paper, the screen design expands the material’s everyday nature and application. The screen looked at how architectural technology can be used to create replicable methodologies for bespoke design.
Created by rapid prototyping and modeling in 3-D, the wall-in-tessellation screen is initially laser cut and then assembled by hand.
Design Process Optimization
The design industry’s current working methods exist within the historical constraints of paper based production and professional norms. As a result, the predicted benefits of isolated innovations such as Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) have failed to materialize.
After a solid decade of efforts implementing BIM and IPD in practice, new research is identifying the conceptual frameworks that must exist around these constituent parts in order to continue to move the industry forward (e.g. Guttman 2012).
In order to compete and thrive in today’s business environment, we must reimagine our core design and delivery processes so they capture the possibilities of current technology and design practice. From its roots in the Japanese industry in the 1950’s, the discipline of production optimization has been a core part of mainstream manufacturing world-wide. These techniques have more recently been applied to service industries.
The value designers produce is in the decisions they make. An architectural profession structured around decision making will lead to the delivery of unique projects.